Narrow Gauge Steam

own in Southern Colorado and New Mexico, the Rio Grande operates 571 miles of narrow gauge railroad. Of the equipment listed in the accompanying statistics, 36 steam locomotives, 31 passenger cars, 2,554 freight cars and 142 units of company equipment are included which serve the three-foot lines. The last regular narrow gauge passenger train, on the 200-mile Alamosa-Durango run, was discontinued early in 1951, and the only remaining passenger service is a mixed train from Durango to Silverton, 45 miles, running once a week in the winter, and three days a week in the summer.

Handbook of American Railroads
/ 1951 / image JCH

lthough narrow gauge passenger operations in the United States were widespread and reached from Down East Maine to the Blue Mountains of Oregon and from Michigan to Owens Valley in California, nowhere did they lend so special a character to the landscape they traversed and the communities they served as in Colorado. Here their identification was complete with every aspect of regional life and regional economy. Colorado's ample destinies rode the three-foot cars in a special aura of diminutive romance and the impact of their operations was felt everywhere from the Front Range to the Utah line and beyond. Here, near Romeo south of Alamosa, No. 487, a well-shopped 2-8-2, shows its heels on the smoky end of The San Juan in the closing years of its operations. The automobile might supplant, aye even eliminate the iron pony, but the Colorado heart will be aware of the narrow gauge and steam locomotives forever.

Lucius Beebe & Charles Clegg / Narrow Gauge in the Rockies / 1951