Trains have been running from Durango to Silverton for 134 years. But you would have never known that Saturday if you’d been in Colorado to witness the first steam train of 2016 to go between those two places. Make that not one, but two steam-powered passenger trains of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, the tourist railroad that operates the ultimate reach of the Denver & Rio Grande’s San Juan extension.
Extra touches were everywhere. The locomotives, 2-8-2s Nos. 482 and 473 (the latter, the cover subject of our new 104-page Colorado Railroads special edition), carried U.S. and Colorado flags on their pilots. The Silverton Brass Band and local residents met the train in Victorian-era garb. Al Harper, head of the railroad, even dressed the part in a vest, long-tailed coat, and walking cane. “I’m ready for 1882,” he said enroute. Snow squalls greeted the first train, a full 13-car consist for K-36 No. 482, before it departed Durango. Snow swept the train along the line, and more snow fell in Silverton, where the railroad opened its newly renovated 37-room Grand Imperial Hotel to the sounds of a street band. The railroad aims to serve its customers with a train trip as well as accommodations in Silverton. Ridership was good last year, and if it holds up, some 190,000 will take this legendary ride in 2016. The season literally started with a bang: We stood outside the hotel in snow flurries last night and watched a spectacular fireworks show on a hillside above Silverton.
While opening day 2016 was special in so many ways, it was also another day on the narrow gauge, where running trains is as challenging as ever. Fireman Nick Breeden shoveled some 4 tons of coal on the 45-mile run from Durango to Silverton. After the crew topped off the tender at Tank Creek, brakeman Tyler Trahan, also an accomplished writer who prepared our D&S story for Colorado Railroads magazine, carefully placed a fusee for the following train. And passengers ooohed and ahhhed as the rushing and turbulent Animas River churned just below them while a shiny black and silver Mikado carried them back in time.
A special opening day? Yes, but also quite ordinary in a land blessed with some of North America’s best scenery, enduring narrow gauge steam trains, and people compelled to railroad in the Rockies.
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