Re: USA Today names Cumbres & Toltec Scenic and the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge the two best train rides in the U.S.

Not to pick on my good friend Rich, but the C&TS route does, in fact, traverse what numerous geographers call the Eastern San Juan Mountains. Some geographers consider the area around Cumbres to be part of the range commonly referred to in New Mexico as the Tusas Mountains; others are of the opinion that the Tusas Mountains are the easternmost and southernmost extensions of the San Juan Mountains complex. It should be noted that, unlike many other named mountain ranges in the Rocky Mountain West, the San Juans are, in fact, a massive (not "massif") jumbled complex of various mountain ranges of widely varying origins and geology.

At least the USA today article did not state that the railroad crosses the Continental Divide at Cumbres Pass, which it does not. Both sides of Cumbres Pass reside in the greater Rio Grande River drainage. That fact is lost on a lot of non-residents of the area and gets further confused because the Continental Divide Trail veers well off of the Continental Divide around Cumbres, in order to avoid passing through private landholdings on the Continental Divide that were originally part of the Tierra Amarilla Land Grant.

On a positive note, it's very nice that the C&TS got correctly recognized for what it is--the most historically accurate steam train ride in the US that ALSO traverses an area that still most resembles what it would have looked like in, say, about 1940. There is no other steam train ride left in the US that manages to do both.