Re: Retirement doin's
| May 21, 2019 11:58AM |
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No the "little" 463 left about 40 years ago. She was only on the property for a couple of years. There was an apparently insurmountable problem with the insurance concerning a privately owned and run locomotive on the City's property. It ran a few times on the regular train, then only got pulled out and fired up for the Park's annual Railfair, before being sent back to its builder in Strasburg CO. It ran for a while at Heritage Square in Golden, CO, but went back to it birthplace again.
Here is a very long haired yours truly with the 463 sometime in 1977-8. It might have been the last day it ran on the regular train. As you can see the foliage has grown considerably in the following years!
The sheer numbers of the place astounds me. On a regular non-special event Saturday we will haul 2600 passenger, making an average of 45 trips around the 1 mile loop. That's 45 miles of running. Like running from Durango to Silverton. If you look at in terms of "5/12 Scale", that's 108 scale miles. Enough to run from Durango to Chama.
No wonder I'm tired at the end of the day.
They haul over 400,000 people annually. At $2 a head (plus the other attractions in the park), the place makes a tidy profit for the City.
Here is a very long haired yours truly with the 463 sometime in 1977-8. It might have been the last day it ran on the regular train. As you can see the foliage has grown considerably in the following years!
The sheer numbers of the place astounds me. On a regular non-special event Saturday we will haul 2600 passenger, making an average of 45 trips around the 1 mile loop. That's 45 miles of running. Like running from Durango to Silverton. If you look at in terms of "5/12 Scale", that's 108 scale miles. Enough to run from Durango to Chama.
No wonder I'm tired at the end of the day.
They haul over 400,000 people annually. At $2 a head (plus the other attractions in the park), the place makes a tidy profit for the City.
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488 stops for water at Los Pinos tank on closing day Oct. 1979. Photo courtesy Don Richter
The NGDF was started by Don Richter and is currently operated in his memory by Nathan Holmes and others. Others who have contributed to the upkeep of this board are (in no particular order): Charles McCandless, Everett Lueck, Ted Wilton, Cole Adams, James Bane, John Moellmer, Jon Bentz, Linn Moedinger, lloyd lehrer, Rod Jensen, John Craft, Steven Forney, Herb Kelsey, Bill Ramaley, Russ Sperry (El Russo Loco), Josh McNeal, John West, Jim Armstrong, Bob Bergstrom, Greg Scholl, Blake Forbes Doug van Veelen and Mark Fuller.