Re: 487 and 483 at Coxo

Having grown-up in the Chicago area in the 1950's and 1960's, I rode many of the Illini one-day steam fantrips. I believe that the "Journey to Yesterday" Colorado narrow gauge trips started in 1958 or 1959. The first year, CB&Q 5632 did the honors between Chicago and Lincoln, NE, where it was relieved by sister O5B 5626 which handled the train to Denver. On the return, 5626 was stricken with running gear problems (thrown eccentric?) just out of Denver and diesels handled the train back to Lincoln where 5632 was waiting to forward it to Chicago.

I was fortunate to have ridden the final trip in 1966. The cost for a coach seat (in CB&Q dome-coach "Silver Stream") was the princely sum of $185.00. This included many of the meals and three nights in the Spanish Trails motel at the north end of the strip in Durango. We had "Q" 4960 both ways between Chicago and Galesburg, covered the D&SL between Denver and Phippsburg, and backtracked through Denver over La Veta Pass to Alamosa. Four days were spent on the narrow gauge on a special train in which we covered Alamosa-Durango, the Silverton branch, the Farmington branch and back to Alamosa. It was back over La Veta in the dark and up the Royal Gorge route to Texas Creek. Then we backtracked to Pueblo, into Denver on the "joint line" and back to Galesburg and Chicago on the "Q".

Probably the most amazing part of the trip was that I was fifteen at the time and went with another friend who was only eighteen. Our parents trusted us enough to allow us to make the trip by ourselves. The biggest disaster was my friend losing his wallet on the narrow gauge somewhere around Lava Tank and he had to have more money wired to him in Durango. I never lobbied as hard for anything in my short life as we knew the "Q" steam program would be dead on July 17, 1966 and that this was advertised as the final Illini trip to cover all of the remaining D&RGW n.g. trackage. That trip made me a narrow gauge fan forever.

Don C.