Ride Through The Tunnel

You might find this interesting. Many years ago, I was visiting with a couple of retired D&RGW engineers in Grand Junction. While taking one of them and his wife out to lunch, she said to me that she had done something on the railroad that her husband had never done. I asked her what it was and she said that she had ridden the cab of a rotary and a locomotve through Alpine Tunnel. Needless to say, I was impressed. She shared that her father was a C&S engineer on the Baldwin branch. One day the C&S rotary broke down on the west side of Alpine and they brought it into Gunnison to repair it. The C&S roundhouse couldn't do the job, so they moved it to the D&RG rh which made the fix. When they left Gunnison going east, they coupled the Baldwin branch engine into the train behind the rotary and her father took her along in the cab. When they stopped for water at Pitkin, her dad thought she would be more comfortable in the rotary, so put her up there in the cab with the crew. She stayed there until they came down the east side where they cut out the Baldwin branch engine and turned it. Her dad took her back to the cab of his engine and they ran light through the tunnel to Gunnison. she passed away in the late 70s, but not many people, and surely no women have done what she did. And no, she had no photos as she was only 3 or 4 years old.

Jerry Day