C&TS - June, 1982 - I get some Class (lights)

For some time, I had lusted after a pair of D&RGW radial lens class lamps. The Rio Grande’s custom of using Handlan Buck Radial Lens Classification was a rather unique practice. Only a few other roads used them, including the Kansas City Southern, Louisville & National and a few smaller southern roads. After the Grande dropped the rule requiring narrow gauge trains to show signals (white for extra trains, green for sections of the same timetable following), class lights were redundant and slowly disappeared from some of the engines. However, 483, 484 kept them until the end of D&RGW operations, only to have then “liberated” while under the cover of the Alamosa Roundhouse in 1969-70. At the same time, all the locomotives lost their builder’s plates. The last active D&RGW locomotive to have lamps was 476, who carried a set into the early 1970’s.

Still….I wanted a set. The locomotives look unfinished without them, like their shirt tales aren’t tucked in, their fly is open, that sort of thing. A guy down in the Phoenix area had a railroad collectible store and in his stock was a radial lens lamp from the L&N. I eyed that up every time I visited his store, thinking “If I could find a mate, I snatch that thing up”.

A few weeks before I came back to Chama in May, 1982, there was a classified advert. In Trains Magazine for a D&RGW class lamp for sale. I sent him a note, he answered back saying he was selling to the highest bidder and the lamp was an electrified “flat top” lamp. I wrote to the guy back, telling him that I worked for the C&TS, that the lamp would go back on the engines it belonged on, blah, blah, blah. I laid it on real thick. I told him I had a lead on a kerosene chimney topped lamp, and would probably cannibalize a caboose marker I had for the kerosene top to make a matched set. He wrote back saying he also had a kerosene top lamp, made by Dressel that he intended to keep for himself, but in light of my plea, he would sell it to me, including two brand new lenses still wrapped in early 1960’s St. Louis newspaper for my bid price – which he pointed out was WAY below what the other one sold for.

Wow….. Furthermore, he said he was coming to ride the C&TS in late June and would bring the lamp with him…….. Double Wow. I quickly got hold of the guy in Phoenix and bought the L&N lamp, and he sent it to me. On Thursday, June 24, he showed up lamp in hand. We put the lenses in, I grabbed the other lamp out of my Jeep and we went to find the nearest locomotive to try them out on. That happened to be 489…..



The next day he rode to Osier and back I was the brakeman. A class lighted 489 took us east, the lamps got transferred to 487 for the trip home.
We now had Class (lights).

It was a few weeks before I got light fixtures in them. Gary had a set of Pyle National lamp plugs that went with receptacles on the locomotives, which because we did things right, had wiring to them. I set up an impromptu night photo shoot for myself one July night after 488 came back to life. These pics took a LOT of photoshopping in an attempt to get the horrid Mercury Vapor green light cast out of them. Some responded better than others..