Of living time machines … in Colorado

We’re rumbling along the 3-foot gauge rails near Osier, Colo., in a beautiful wilderness that, thankfully, is unspoiled, non-commercialized, and truly the home of the deer and the antelope. A group of us who love mountain railroads and steam locomotives have come to play.

Rio Grande Mikado No. 489 rumbles across the wood bridge at Los Pinos Creek in Colorado on Oct. 24, 2015. (Jim Wrinn photo)

Ahead of us are two narrow gauge Mikados built for this part of the Denver & Rio Grande Western almost a century ago. They roll off the miles effortlessly as they have almost continuously since Baldwin outshopped them and Rio Grande fired them up. One is at the point of this 28-freight car consist, and the second one is buried mid-train, nosing against a boxcar. The cars speak of the commerce of the area in the early 20^th century: stockcars for sheep, pipe flats for oil drilling, a lone refrigerator car for perishables, boxcars filled with the necessities of life, and gons for whatever minerals might come out of the ground here. The only example that is missing is oil tankers. From a drop-bottom gondola made into an open-air car and placed ahead of three cabooses, our small group marvels at ever twist and every turn, at this living time machine.

We're at milepost 317 (from Denver) near Osier, Colo., watching a doubleheader snake around horseshoe curves with one engine in the lead and one engine mid-train. (Jim Wrinn photo)

I’ve come back to visit the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad for the sixth time since 1992. I remember thinking to myself at the time of my first visit, a glorious September day with glowing yellow Aspens and dark soot against a topaz sky, that I had waited too long to come here to this sacred place. I had missed the show. As I stomped around the crunchy cinders in the yard, it was, as I’d been told, like stepping back I into the 1920s. I kicked myself along every mile of spectacular scenery and every exhaust from the K-36 pulling the train. I wished that I had visited the tourist railroad in its early years or the Rio Grande when the San Juan extension was on its last miles in the 1960s. Almost 25 years after that first visit, I’ve come to realize that it is never too late for a place that is as unique and special as this one. Thomas Wolfe wrote that you can’t go home again, but out here in narrow gauge country, you can certainly get pretty close.

We're rumbling along with an authentic freight train near Cascade Creek on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic on Oct. 24. From the open air gon, it's as if we've boarded a true time machine. (Jim Wrinn photo)

So I’ll cherish this outing as I have the others, with a sense of appreciation for those who continue to make this time machine available and for those who are eager to experience it for the first time, I have good news: It’s not too late to visit the place where the past is still present.