Rosso Wrote:
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> I'm partway through "Little Engines and Big Men",
> (thanks btw to whoever recommended it),
Fun read, isn't it? Just remember it is known to be less than historically accurate at times, for various reasons.
> in which
> Lewis Lathrop recalls a number of small details:
> " Our boxcars and coal
> cars held 10 tons apiece, and our heaviest engines
> weighed only about twenty-six tons. They would
> handle about twenty-five cars at the most." This
> was likely a Baldwin C16.
More likely a class 56 engine (28 tons)
> He also recalls a monument at the mouth of the
> tunnel in Toltec Gorge, commemorating 13 persons
> who died when the last car of a four car passenger
> train left the rails and fell a thousand feet into
> Toltec Gorge
This, I've always assumed, would be Lathrop of the 1930's, who'd been on the Gunnison area lines since the mid 1880's, misremembering the Garfield monument.
> Which brings me to a question: Lathrop mentions,
> in '83, the D&RG bought 30 "giant" new
> narrow-gauge locomotives from the Grant Works.
> "weighed thirty tons apiece....with straight
> topped boilers and deckless cabs."
Only engines purchased by D&RG in '83 were Class 47(later T-12) 4-6-0's 166-171.
Probably referring to Class 60 engines 200-227 (later class C-16) delivered 1881-82, but which Lathrop may not have seen for a time. And, again, he was remembering things from 50 years previous or so at the time.
Other questions already answered. btw, to the person who mentioned the Class 70 engines, #'s 400-411, yes, they were delivered in '81 but at the time Lathrop was a fireman out of Chama & Durango and the 70's were only being used on Marshall Pass.
Hank
