Posted By: SAINT roger <roger@thehotel.org>
Date: Monday, July 10 2000 09:35
Richard Mahler For the Journal
Railroad In, Good Hands
It was a scene from another century. Not the last one, but the one before that. The steam engine stood, trembling and huffing like a nervous horse, in the middle of a lush alpine meadow. Wild iris, Indian paintbrush and purple aster splashed the picture- postcard landscape with color. A grumbling thunderhead was building to the east, above the highest peaks of the San Juans. It could have been Switzerland, but it was Rio Arriba County.
"My Lord, what's that lady doing?" asked a fellow passenger on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. It was a good question. The woman in question was staggering toward our idling steam engine under an ungainly pile of, branches and logs, apparently gathered from beneath a nearby copse of Ponderosa pine. "She's helping us stoke our engine," the fireman explained. 'We need firewood because it burns faster and hotter than coal." He must have read the puzzled look on my face. "We must re-fire the boiler, you see, and this will get us back up to our operating temperature and pressure much more quickly." I was learning a lot about steam engines on this bright summer morning.
For two hours our tourist train had been stranded at the Lobato siding, four miles northeast of Chama, while its crew dealt with a problem most of us will go a lifetime without encountering: a bad load of coal. A truck delivering this substance to the Cumbres & Toltec rail yards had overturned on a winding stretch of Colorado highway. When the coal was reloaded it had become mixed with the dirt, stones and weeds that lay beneath it. I later found out that the iinptirities clogged the firebox of our 97-year-old engine, reducing the draft needed to keep her steaming up the four-pereent grade of our approach to Cumbres Pass. The crew was forced to shut down the engine, empty the firebox and rebuild steam pressure from scratch so that it could puff its way over the 10,015-foot pass.
Although about 50 people abandoned the July 3 train at Lobato and were bused back to the Cumbres & Toltec parking lot, the rest of us shared an adventure we will not soon forget. Thanks in no small measure to the several passengers who volunteered to gather and carry firewood, we the canyons and into the broad plain of the San Luis Valley.
Along theway we saw wildlife - elk, beav'er, badger, hawk - and some of,the,most magnificent seenery northern New Mexico has to offer, highlighted by the dramatic Toltec Gorge of the Rio de los Pinos.
Despite our smiles and assurances, members of the train cre were nervous and apologetic. They are under close scrutiny this summer on two fronts. 'First, there's the matter of high fire danger. The Cumbres & Toltec was nearly shut down in early July by the states of New Mexico and Colorado, which jointly own the 64-mile line, the longest and highest narrow gauge steam railroad in the United States. Tinder-dry conditions have improved since then, but Cumbres & Toltec personnel are taking no chances. Smokestacks are carefully screened to catch stray sparks, the roadbed has been cleared and a strict no-smoking policy is enforced on every train. in addition, water is sprayed along the tracks from a tanker pulled behind each engine, a fire-spotting crew trails the caboose in a maintenance car and fire trucks are kept close at hand. So far this summer, not a single fire-related incident has been reported.
The second area of scrutiny concerns the railroad's new management. An Albuquerque-based nonprofit group called Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad began running the railroad this year after successfully bidding against several for-profit eterprises in the competition to succeed the previous operator, whose contract was terminated by the commission that oversees the Cumbres & Toltec. "Some folks in this (tourist- railroad operating) business would like to see us fail," whispered one FCTSR member as we waited for contaminated coal to be removed. "A few individuals don't believe a nonprofit organization made up of old-time railroad buffs has what it takes to make this operation work." I beg to differ. Although I'm no expert on how to run a old rail line, the cool professionalism and careful even loving - attention to detail I observed during my recent trip convinced me that the Friends have what it takes to keep the Cumbres & Toltec operating smoothly and safely.
While we sat in Lobato next to a fake water tower built in 1970 as a prop for the filming of "Shootout," none other than the railroad's new general manager showed up to personally take'charge of the situation. He and others seemed to know exactly what to do. "One of the best narrow-gauge engineers in the country is at the controls today," a long-time train aficionado and former standard-gauge railroad employee later assured me. "There's nobody else I'd trust more to deal with this setback." Another buff chimed in: "The steam engine we're using is in fantastic working order; it's just developed a case of indigestion. But not every engineer would know how to cure it, especially when more than a hundred nervous passengers are sitting behind him wondering what will happen next."
Before taking over management responsibilities, the Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec had spent many years helping to preserve, restore and protect the buildings and rolling stock of the railroad as a kind of living museum for future generations. Yet the group's efforts are more significant than that. They provide every individual who rides the train with a tangible, visceral link to a relatively brief period in New Mexico history that unalterably changed who and what we are. It's one thing to see a museum exhibit that explains the way such railroads brought new people, new ideas and new jobs to the most remote corners of northern New Mexico. But nothing can match the experience of smelling a steam train's coal-scented smoke, hearing its shrieking whistle, ' feeling the swaying lurch of its carriages or seeing the untrammeled wilderness from its open-air gondolas.
There's something else that happens when you're on an old- fashioned train for much of the day. You're inclined to chat not only with the engineer, brakeman, conductor and docent but with your fellow passengers. There's a "we're all in this together" camaraderie that doesn't exist on other forms of public transportation. For a morning and an afternoon, I had a new family. By the time my 11-hour adventure was over, thanks in part to a generous Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec volunteer who personally drove several of us from the Antonito terminal back to our starting place, I had newfound respect not merely for the brave and determined souls who created this marvel of Industrial Age transportation in the first place, but for those who keep it alive and well in the digital era.
Our little engine-that-could is in good hands.