Re: D&S and C&TSRR Vintage Footage

Nice stuff. Do you have any info as to when it was shot?

The C&TS stuff on the first one looks to be a special run in conjunction with the National Narrow Gauge convention up in Denver. I say this as the only participant I recognized on the train was Jim Trowbridge who was standing on the caboose platform as the train left Chama. In addition to running his own trips, he also set up trips for the NNG convention down here in Chama. Generally, we ran Jim's trip a couple of days before. It would be a freight consist with a couple of outfit cars, an open gon, and caboose for the faithful to ride in. It would be a two day trip overnighting in Antonito. Then we took the a day off. The next day would be the NNG trip. We would add a cut of boxcar coaches to accommodate the crowd of about 200, then fill out the freight portion to make a nice healthy sized double header - in this case 19 cars about 315 tons. This trip would run to Big Horn and return. This one was a bit different in that 463 and 497 were power up the hill, where 497 was cut off and 463 took the train on to Big Horn. 497 came back light to Chama. 463 pulling that heavy train back from Osier was fun.

I see myself running 497 up the hill and running 463 on to Big Horn. John Coker was the other engineer. We decided he would run 463 up the hill, then we would trade at the top. That way both of us could be the star of the show for a while. Tom Evans was firing 463, I don't know who was on 497. If I had the year it was shot, I could look it up. It looks to be mid-1990's. What years the Convention was in Denver at that time would nail it down.

The D&S video might be a NNG trip done over there the same year.

The second video of the caboose ride was when the D&S ran the Rail Camp car to Cascade. There was a while when you got your own train up to Cascade and back. That was a cool deal. The runby videos were shot in the vicinity of Cascade.

The C&TS photo freight with 488 was done after I left the C&TS in 1998. 488 has 483's tender. We had kept 483's tank lettered Rio Grande, and swapped it to whatever engine was being used on the photo charter. It is a good thing it all stayed on the rails, as in the excitement to put 483's tank behind 488, they forgot a pair of essential safety devices......

There are no rerailing frogs on 488's tender.

Somebody should have been screamed at for allowing THAT to happen.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2018 11:47AM by Earl.