Re: Today's Silverton visitor

snowtownbob Wrote:
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> All looks good. Are you intending to go far
> towards Animas Forks -- now that WOULD be a train
> ride. We got up there three years ago on our last
> visit to Colorado and look forward to our next.
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As someone pointed out, the line to Animas Forks really wasn't feasible when built. It was mostly a figment of Otto Mear's ego.

It's a pretty easy drive now (SN's ruling grade was 7%). In 1960, I eased a standard-sized rental Chevy station wagon up there. Road was narrower and rougher and there were a number of mines, complete with corrugated metal buildings, along the river between Eureka and Animas Forks. Some of them still had electric power and seemed to be active, at least at times.

About halfway up, the ROW, with the narrow road on top of it, crossed the Animas; when we came back down, I spotted some boards and what looked like wreckage among the rocks at that crossing. the railfan press a few years later said it was wreckage of a runaway flat car. A few years after that, I went nosing around that wreckage and found that it was a boxcar, not a flat, and found a bolster brace end casting with the letters "B&S" cast into it. A small section of box car siding completed the picture. I have both here. A boxcar ran away on that 7% and smashed into small pieces. Apparently, the hardware & running gear were salvaged (except for that casting), probably as cleanup just after the wreck. The road has been widened so much that there was no trace of the wreck in 2006 and no traces of all the metal artifacts that were along the edges of the old road in 1960.

Not a place for a rod engine (which the SN used on that grade) and definitely not a place for an expensively, laboriously, and carefully restored antique like the 315!

Here's what I found on 7/24/1960:



Best regards, Hart Corbett