Fred finds a stuffed goose

A couple of days before Dick Strong and I flew into Alamosa, Colo., to ride the awesome Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, I received an email saying that the tourist railroad, one of the last remnants of Colorado’s fabled narrow-gauge empire, would have a special visitor that day and the rest of the week: Galloping Goose #5. I thought to myself: How lucky can we be to ride a narrow-gauge, steam-powered train through the vast, unpopulated mountains of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico and also see one of the most legendary passenger trains of all time?

I think everyone reading this knows about the C&TS. It is the 64-mile survivor of the Denver & Rio Grande Western’s 200-mile-long, narrow gauge “San Juan extension” from Alamosa to Durango, Colo., and beyond to Silverton, Colo., and Farmington, N.M., to tap above all else the silver mines of southern Colorado. It enjoyed a decade of prosperity before the Great Panic of 1893 caused the government to abandon silver as a guarantor of paper currency. Thereupon, silver mining collapsed and both the economy of southwest Colorado and the San Juan extension began a seven-decade decline. The more scenic portion of the Alamosa-Durango line, from Antonio near Alamosa to Chama, N.M., was bought in 1970 by the states of Colorado and New Mexico and became the C&TS.

The story of the narrow-gauge Rio Grande Southern is even more tragic. Built by Otto Mears from Durango north to Ridgeway, Colo., 123 miles, with a branch midway up to Telluride,  its day in the sun lasted a mere two years until silver mining collapsed and the railroad entered its first of several receiverships. One reason this narrow-gauge relic would last until 1951, against all odds, was the Galloping Goose.

In all, there were seven geese, but all were largely alike, the later versions combining a Pierce-Arrow frame and engine with a school bus body for passengers and a fat, wide box for mail and less-than-carload freight. A single motorman replaced an entire train crew, backshop costs became a sliver of their former size, and all passenger train revenue was retained. In RGS’s later years, the scheduled Goose trains were all that ran most days. The fame of the Southern’s Galloping Geese spread far and wide, resulting in the freight boxes becoming passenger compartments, but these birds couldn’t save the dying railroad.

Miraculously, all but Goose #1 still live in 2013, and even #1 has been recreated. Goose #5 was bought by the city of Dolores and slowly fell apart outside for 46 years until volunteers began its remarkable transformation to its original form (except that the freight box is now a passenger compartment). It was this Goose that was being hauled on a flatbed truck to Chama for its visit to the C&TS.

I expected to see Goose #5 at Osier, where it was to turn for the return to Chama. Osier is the meeting point of C&TS daily trains 215 and 216 and the site of a lunchroom for feeding the hundreds of passengers. (The lunchroom employees drive 17 miles each way on a dirt road to reach this remote locale.) So I spent the morning with my friend Dick, imagining it was 1948 again and I was a New York investment banker en route to Durango to talk to oil and gas companies. I had taken the Twentieth Century Limited, City of Denver, and an unnamed overnight D&RGW train to Alamosa, and was on the final leg to Durango aboard the parlor-dinette of the little San Juan Express. My fantasy was a pleasant way to spending the morning. Dick, just a couple of weeks from hip-replacement surgery, napped from time to time in his chair. We were both quite content.

So imagine our surprise to find no Galloping Goose at Osier. “It’s already gone back to Chama,” the conductor of the eastbound train told us. Well, that was that. But no sooner did we leave Osier than I heard the dispatcher back in Antonito talk over the radio to Work Extra 5. I knew what that was! Later she called it “Goose 5.” The good news was that it had backed onto the wye track in Cumbres, the summit of the C&TS, waiting for us, and would follow our train down the mountain to Chama. I dug out my camera; this was a don’t-miss occasion.

When we reached Cumbres at 2:45 p.m., there it was, looking resplendent, brand new, almost. While our crew watered Mikado 488 and turned up the retainers on our airbrakes before descending the 4 percent grade of Cumbres Pass, I took photos. The watchman who guarded the Highway 17 crossing said his son and grandson were aboard the sold-out Goose. It must be pretty rough riding, I said to him from the platform of our parlor car, looking at the spindly wheels of the Goose. Not at all, he replied; his son said it rides well.

Never in my life did I expect to encounter a living Galloping Goose. Why, you may as well have said I’d ride on a reborn Twentieth Century or East Coast Champion. But miracles happen, and Dick and I were witness to one. “Next year, we’re riding the Goose,” he told me. Works for me, I replied.—Fred W. Frailey