September 16, 2009 07:38AM
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Registered: 16 years ago
Posts: 887
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Charlie Mutschler checking in. Born in Albuquerque, but my early childhood was largely spent in the Durango, Colorado area, 1958 - 1964, then the Boulder area, 1964 - 1969. Since 1969 I have called Washington State my official place of residence, though I still tend to think of southwest Colorado as "home."
The D&RGW narrow gauge was still hauling freight and the Silverton was becoming a major tourist attraction then. My patient parents encouraged my interest in railroads and I was hooked on the narrow gauge by age 5. My father managed to get tickets for the Durango - Alamosa leg of the 1961 Memorial Day week end trip, and put my mother, younger brother and me on the train in Durango, then drove to Alamosa to pick us up, and drove us home. Dad didn't take a lot of railroad photos, but one I will always cherish is 498 arriving in Chama from the west in the late afternoon sun.
In junior high school in Boulder I helped gather signatures on a petition to the states of Colorado and New Mexico to purchase what is now the C&TS. I visited the Colorado Railroad Museum at least once a year when we lived in Boulder. High school and college in Washington state didn't offer many Colorado narrow gauge opportunities, but I rode the White Pass & Yukon from Whitehorse to Skagway on the way home from a summer in Alaska to start my senior year of high school. A problem common to many high school and college underclassmen was balancing finances and time. I did manage to get at least one visit to Avery, Idaho before the Milwaukee stopped running electrics, and three trips to Yakima before the Yakima Valley Transportation Co shut down. These came in handy for writing about the street cars in Spokane,Washington, and more recently, a history of the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific. A group of us drove down from Spokane to help lay track for the Sumpter Valley in time for their grand re-opening. I still try to get down and visit every couple of years, since it is the closest narrow gauge outside an amusement park.
I am a life member of the Colorado Railroad Museum and the Rio Grande Modeling & Historical Society. I've occasionally contributed to the PROSPECTOR, usually book reviews and the occasional model product review.
I didn't follow my father into geology, but followed his father into history. I am the university archivist and adjunct professor of history at Eastern Washington University. Mostly I oversee the archives, occasionally supervise an MA thesis in history when someone wants to do economic history or archival administration as their focus. In my spare time I research and write railroad history, and model the D&RGW and RGS.
I have a great appreciation for the wealth of knowledge and good fellowship found on this site. I've met some of you in person, most of you only on line. Hope to meet more of you in person at track side or on the train somewhere.
Charlie
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Samart |
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EBTfan15 |
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TUnfried |
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Jim Grigsby |
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Russo Loco |
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Dan Markoff |
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JJreel |
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Skip |
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Jon Bentz |
April 16, 2010 05:03PM |