Beautiful reflections, Steve, on the sunset of a golden time in Colorado railroading. Thank you for an enjoyable read.
A critical review of Beebe's work is in Railroad History Number 193 (Fall-Winter 2005). It is authored by Tony Reevy and Dan Culpepper.
What an interesting discussion! It looks like the memory of Mr Beebe is alive and well among railfans, at least those of an older generation.
As some have commented, I too find his style a little rich for extended reading--his books are the kind you dip into when you have a few moments rather than try to read through in a few sittings. His patrician outlook can be a little hard to take at times, as well. But for all that, Beebe's unabashed love of railroads does seem to have cemented him in the affections of many railfans, even though the railroad industry he celebrated has changed beyond all recognition.
Thanks for another great post, Steve. My first visit to Durango (and ride on the steam cars) was also in 1959, as a 17-year-old, with my parents. Your recollections helped bring it all back. My dad packed an Argus C-3.
We are lucky indeed to still have the experience available to us, and to a new generation, after all these years. Of how many other beloved old things can we say that?
Wow. Thank you, Dave. I just visited the thread, just on a whim (I haven't really ever done that!), and read your kind comments. Again, thank you. I am certainly not a Beebe. I don't have the perfect control of the well-turned phrase phrase that he did. My words come slowly, and are hard to dig out sometimes. But his choice of images have always been like music to me. I do really think he was that one in a million. We got lucky with Lucius.
As for my stories, though, you might have a point. The only reason I know about Beebe is because he sat down and wrote about his railroad adventures. Earlier in the thread a young man commented about how he would like to have more information about some of the railroad stories from older railroaders. It makes sense. He ponders comments by guys who are in their 80s. It made me chuckle: our industry has changed radically in just my short 60 years. We need to write about those changes. We need to share our photosf those days. That was what Lucius Beebe did, in "Mixed Train Daily", and "Narrow Gauge in the Rockies". He knew he was witnessing the last act of an amazing show, and he tried hard to document it professionally.
I don't know where to post this, but here goes a quick one.
We moved to Cortez, Colorado in the summer of 1959, and that was when I first rode the narrow gauge. I was 5, wore a pair of little stripped overalls, an engineer's hat, and leaned out the window on every curve. My father took 35mm color slides with his Argus C-4, and they show the K-28 2-8-2 pulling a train with a boxcar and D&RGW caboose right behind the engine, ahead of the string of eight or nine bumblebee-painted passenger cars. That trip was it for me: the Rio Grande had become mine, my local railroad.
We went to Durango many times as I grew up. It had the bigger stores, and it was a major family event to drive over there. When we were past Mesa Verde along the highway I would watch for the view out the window to the west for the view of the abandoned grade of the Rio Grande Southern coming in from Dolores. Then the Mancos depot was there, right when you went through town. I remember it as washed gray weathered wood.
Coming into Durango, the valley narrowed, and on the right you would suddenly see a long line of narrow gauge freight cars stored on a spur track that had once connected the D&RGW to the RGS. Then there was a spidery steel through-truss railroad bridge over the Animas a River, right beside the highway bridge, and then you drove across a series of yard tracks into Durango. You could see the freight cars and the spire of the coaling tower, with the roundhouse and all the outbuildings. I always craned my neck and frantically scanned the skyline for any tell-take smoke, a sure sign that one of the engines were moving around in the mysterious labryneth of the yards.
Sometimes we would stop to see the little retired D&RGW 2-8-0 No. 315 parked in the Durango Chamber of Commerce Park. The smoke box was silver, and the boiler jacket was painted green. My parents told us it had starred in "Around the World in 80 Days", and that it had survived an exciting dash over a collapsing trestle, and an Indian attack.
If you were a kid, this was better than going to a playgrond with slides and swings: you could climb all over that engine. You could scramble up over the long pointed movie studio cow catcher, up onto the running board, along the boiler, and right up into the engine cab through the forward doors on both sides. And, for some never-to-be known reason, the throttle and Johnson bar on the 315 both actually moved: you could notch them in and out, and really pretend that you were running the engine. We jumped up and down on the tender, flipping the heavy lid on the water tank open and closed. The 315 had a wonderful balloon smoke stack that had been added for the movie, and it looked just exactly (to me) like the Civil War era "General" in my favorite movie at that time, "The Great Locomotive Chase". So we played we were the Andrews Raiders, too, and my parents took lots of photos of my sisters and I swinging from the grab irons on the 315.
After the shopping for the day was finished, my ever-patient father drove down to the depot, parking to the south of where the summer Silverton train passengers parked. Dad would turn off the ignition, and there was silence. My little sisters were asleep in the back of the station wagon. My heart beat faster. This was it: I was here. The trains lived here. The real ones.
It was like watching wildlife in a way. Sometimes there was no movement. Then after an unknown length of time, an engine came out, moving through the yards. They were like big slow grimy black dinosaurs, I remember, steam and dark smoke curling all around, enveloping them, obscuring them. When you could see theor drivers, they looked oddly like the motions of sewing machines. I watched, mesmerized, as they shuffled over to the water tower, and the fireman climbed up on the tender, dropped the spout, and did his job. Sometimes they switched long strings of open-ended gondolas or idler flats. The Rio Grande was running pipe trains down to Farmington, New Mexico for the San Juan Basin oil boom. There weed no good roads in there at the time, and everything had to come in from Alamosa on the narrow gauge. The D&RGW was very busy in the early 60s, and I believe whatever power was available in Durango was used almost daily. It was the rare visit that I got "skunked", and we didn't see an engine or a train.
But the real treat was getting out of the car with my Dad, and walking carefully over the tracks and into the roundhouse. Especially in the dead of winter, when any breath of man or locomotive was amplified into billowing clouds in the cold air. You heard the crunch of the snow under your feet, felt the bite in your nose. It was dark by now, end of day, and only a few lights from railroad buildings fell across the yard tracks, where the rails glimmered silver like elvish swords near Orcs.
My father was fearless. He opened that roundhouse door and stepped into the inner sanctum without seeming to pause to consider the consequences that might lay beyond. The first time he did this, I was terrified: what if we weren't supposed to do this? Were we going to get in trouble? I cringed at the thought of my heros, the towering railroad men who controlled the snorting beasts, the Knights of the High Iron, coming out of the darkness, yelling about trespassing, and chasing us out.
That never happened. Instead, Dad found the office, found the night watchman, and made introductions. I shook hands, and was welcomed into the fraternity of Those who were allowed Inside. We followed the night watchman into a strange cold darkness punctuated only by dim hanging lights.
It was always the distant sound that you heard first, the hissing, which was the live-animal sound. Sometimes it was also the rhythmic thunk-thunk-thunk of the air compressor. And the hostler would be there, usually with a helper, in overalls or coveralls, holding lanterns and always covered with grease and dirt. After pleasantries there would be the walk down between the standing engines in their stalls, always lots of engines, some cold and dead, but others hissing, and always being told to watch your step, watch for tools and parts and piles of unknown things that were part of the magic and the mystery of the place. And then you were outside, and around the end of the turntable, and walking up to the giant hulking shape an engine on the ready track, waiting for its call for a run to Farmington.
It was alive, this thing. Later, many years older, I would call it a cross between a fire-breathing iron-scaled dragon and a giant misshapen black tea kettle. It was panting, and hissing, thunking and shaking. You could feel it move. There was no time for fright, or reflection, or hesitation. I was suddenly being lifted up into the cab by the strong arms of my father, trying to cling to the grabirons, getting my footing up the steps into the cab. And then I was in the throne room, with it's backhead of glittering gauges like jewels, and two high seats for those gifted men who somehow had learned how to ride this beast, and make it do their bidding.
It had a heart of fire. Flames roared around the edges of the firebox. Coal, giant black chunks if it, everywhere. Without a word the hostler hit the floor treadle, and the wings of the firebox door flew wide open as he effortlessly shoveled a scoop of fuel into the maw of the beast. You were staring into the very stomach of Hades in there: white hot coals gave off visible waves of heat as the creature roared its pleasure. Then the doors slammed shut, and the flames licked hungrily around the edges again. The cab was hot, and so noisy you could only hear if you yelled. And then it was over, and I was being helped down again back into the cold and dark and snow.
The ride home was always quiet, but after that first visit to the roundhouse, it was never without fantastic dreams, and in my imagination I rode the locomotive off into the distance, headlight breaking through the night, feeling it jump and buck and lurch underneath me, feeling the strength of it barely controlled in the throttle clutched in my hand.
I always wanted to go back again. Thanks to my dear father, we did, lots of times. From where I sit now, 55 years later, I wish it had been many more. But we humans are lucky. Durango still has dragons in the roundhouse for little boys to meet. I hope to show one to my grandson one day. Soon.
Steve Hites
cmulligan01Books from Beebe's era found at a used book store are about the only source I have. Trains magazine (I have the DVD) was covering contemporary trains so they aren't a good source that far back.
Something you should be aware of is the growing number of books covering this era that have been digitized, and made available for free download in the United States, by entities like Google Books. This includes many of the trade papers and periodicals, such as Railway Mechanical Engineer or Locomotive Engineering, and books on various aspects of contemporary railroad operating practice.
If you like Colorado NG and Beebe, then look for his books on the Rio Grande and Narrow Gauge in the Rockies. I bought both books in the 60s. Most of the NG pictures were from the 30s & 40s, but there were also a number from around the turn of the century and earlier. One picture showed President TR at a dedication of the Gunnison irrigation project.
I had heard of Beebe but my first exposure was last Christmas. Mom found a copy (w/o dust jacket but it's the inside that counts) of The Age of Steam. I'm younger than a lot of you in the thread apparently. I'm in my early 30s. The Age of Steam had a number of pictures by Fred Jukes who I'd never heard of before the book. I was a Narrow Gauge fan before living in Colorado for 4 years (late '09 - late '13). There are a lot of pictures in The Age of Steam that I'd never seen before. An era that authors and editors don't seem to think readers are interested in, at least not enough readers. Classic Trains covers the '20 - '70s. I've seen a few of the famous William Henry Jackson pictures, the D&RG double header on an S curve on the Silverton High Line taken from well below the train then post WWII pictures. I'd never seen much in between. There are fantasic Fred Jukes shots, many from 1907 some from '08 and '13. Personally I find the late 19th Century to pre WWI fascating. Of the 60 and 80 year olds in this thread you likely knew people from that era. I don't want to give too much personal information away on a public forum but I always like to learn about my grandfathers era. He had his family later in life. He was born in Teddy Roosevelt's administration and died in a construction accident during Eisenhower's administartion. What he saw, what was normal to him growing up. Also Mom's grandpartents who were less than a full generation older what they saw. Books from Beebe's era found at a used book store are about the only source I have. Trains magazine (I have the DVD) was covering contemporary trains so they aren't a good source that far back. I found a book years ago, 20 or more maybe, from Trains it was 11"x14" or 11"x17" about the B&O, less than 50 pages. I found it when a store at McCormick Railroad Park in Scottsdale, AZ went out of business, it was maybe a I'm not sure what to call it. I remember old tools, laterns. I found the book when they were closing, Mom insisted I get one. One of my originals interest was the B&O. My first model was an Athern GP35 Chessie with B&O below the cab.Not sure if this will work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-M6z1qlGLwI had the freight set, my younger brother had the Amtrak train and 2 level passenger station. They were tough they were heavily played with, the couplers were plastic and were what finally gave out, and some of the paint from so much handling. Turns out we had most of what was available. Later we had Micro Machines trains, saw an unopened package for $200 I think at a train show recently.
YOU, Steve, can be Beebe's successor. You wrote beautifully. Why don't you publish your LIFETIME IN RAILROADING. You might begin by posting a few of your adventures on this forum and let us comment Please, start a new thread, and let us hear from you. You have a lot to tell us.
Describe your visits to Durango and your DAd's taking you to visit the locomotives. Let us have all the details.
My parents bought me a copy of "Narrow Gauge in the Rockies" when I was six. We were living in Cortez, CO, and my M. D. father had his office in Dolores. As the years went by, I climbed all over the rusty Galloping Goose across the street. My Dad did clinics in Rico for the Rico Argentine Mine while I played in the old RGS yards in the shadow of derelect outfit cars by the ruined engine house.
I went to church camp at Illium where the engines had turned on the "Y", explored Vance Junction, collected Jeffrey spikes along the abandoned right-of-way, and hiked the Ophir Loop. My sisters and I drank from the leaky water tank at a Trout Lake. Durango was the big city. We went there to go shopping at Woolworth's. My Dad always took me over to the roundhouse to see the big K-36 and K-37 locomotives being readied for runs to Farmington or Alamosa. The hostlers would let me up in the cab, and I watched them stoke the firebox.
All of these railroad adventures were perfectly orchestrated to the lyrical words of Lucius Beebe. "The faithful sigh for the snow sheds of Lizard Head, and by the waters of the Gunnison they sat them down and wept."
As for the Rio Grande Southern: "The Friar Lawrence of the narrow gauges, it's entire life span a record of confusion and mistaken missions, it left its impression on the elemental Colorado earth and in the memory of two entire generations of the American West. In the roundhouse of eternity there are neither derailments nor creditors, and its rest is untroubled in the surrounding night."
As soon as I left high school I worked for the Colorado & Southern, then went north to the White Pass & Yukon Route. I bought more Beebe and the books gathered in my bookcase in Alaska. Years later, when I went on to become a partner in a narrow gauge tourist railroad in the West Indies, Beebe's reflections on past railroad glories traveled there with me.
It was always about the drama, drinking, dancing, grand adventure, the guts and the glory for him. It was the great timeless beauty and poetry of it all. "Their recollection is a gentle one, cherished in the hearts of many men. Lonely are the meadows of Middle Park, and white the snows under the night winds at Telluride, for the past is there. And a great blaze of memory for a golden time."
Yes, he was a society columnist, a journalist, a newspaperman. But no one ever wrote so beautifully about railroads. Lucius Beebe was the best. I am very grateful to him for sharing his words with me when I was young. They helped bring me into the railroad profession, which I take as a high calling, and helped me shape my view of the world. Would that there were more Beebes learning to write out there. In an age of tweets and #character counts, I won't hold my breath. But like Beebe, like railroaders all around the world, I am the eternal optimist. If you're out there, start publishing. Let us read from you.
BaltACD
Thanks, Balt ACD.. I appreciate the cartoon!
Being a bit of a Luddite myself.
But time to bring this Thread back to some semblence of the Realities of Lucius Beebe and how his 'Edwardian presence' played in the rail fan community. I went on a search for some relevance of the interactions between TRAINS ( and of Course David P. Morgan). I found an old Fred Fraley column on Beebe, in which he neither mentions DPM or TRAINS, but the comments of the TRAINS Posters from that July 2010 column are very interesting. Linked @
http://cs.trains.com/trn/b/fred-frailey/archive/2010/07/22/lucius-beebe-s-finest-hour.aspx
And linde here is a linked story about Beebe and Clegg from the January 17,2011 issue of TRAINS, an article by John Gruber (founder of the Center for Railroad Photography and Art.) @
http://trn.trains.com/railroads/2011/01/lucius-beebe-and-charles-clegg
[Check out the "hot linked" stories within this article. Well worth the reading.]
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Be 83 Jan 25. Nice to Know I won't be alone at that age on this forum. The race continued into the diesel era. I know I witnessed it once, probably summer 1952.
Just for fun I started re-reading Beebe's "20th Century" a few nights ago. His description of the morning "Parade O' Trains" (my phrase) down the east shore of the Hudson River, up to and including the passing of the "Century" is pure poetry.
Hey, either you like Lucius or you don't.
And Mr. Cobb, don't worry about being an 83 year old dinosaur, I'm a 61 year old dinosaur-in-training! One day I'll get it right.
What you people think being a dinosaur is easy? Try it some time!
Oh, and the "Century" and the "Broadway" weren't racing? Suuuuuuuure they weren't....
If a 83 year old dinosaur may comment ... the painting of NYC #5232 racing PRR #5491 eastward from Englewood (Chicago) is quite a classic. Both engines were built in 1927 ... the May 1929 Railway Guide of Chicago shows the Broadway Limited leaving its Chicago terminal at 12:40 pm and arriving at Englewood at 12:57pm. The20th Ceentury Limited leaves its Chicago terminal at 12:40pm and note D (stops on flag to pick up passengers). Thus the stage was set.
Which, of course, both railroads officially strongly denied. My guess is that both crews would stoutly deny any racing ... they were simply keeping their trains on "The Advertised". May thanks for finding that painting, brought back a flood of memories.
Who won? Well, both trains were scheduled into their New YorkCity terminals at 9:40 am the next morning. A schedued tie (?)
I've always felt the David P. Morgan developed his own style and, further, held no great liking for Lucius Beebe. DPM was known for accuracy, Beebe for his lack hereof. Can't find it right now, but in a review of one of Beebe's later works, DPM made the famous comment that it is relatively easy to acheive a mediocre success in an uncrowded field.
Yeah ... Beebe (read that: Clegg) had great photos but don't put much trust in what he wrote.
P.S. - Anybody know where to find the 14 steps that a Pullman waiter was supposed to go through to properly serve a bottle of Beer ? I posted it here a couple years ago, but without a functional search function (redundancy there ?), there's no hope of finding it again that way.
It's a good thing the "search community" feature still works from the Classic Trains forum interface: is this the thread? -- "How is a Reputation Built?" Indeed!
Paul_D_North_JrAnybody know how many different trains were in that movie ? The key one was supposed to be the Orient Express, but I suspect 2 or 3 were used / depicted altogether. Anything notable about any of them ?
I remember at least two-both of which were supposed to be on the Orient Express. One was a 4-6-2, which looked right, but the other was a 2-10-2, which looked very odd on a passenger train.
BTW, SPECTRE is coming back in the next Bond movie, coming out in late 2015.
(What the heck is a "ukase", anyway ? )
nhrand Beebe is not appreciated today as well as he should be partly because of some misimpressions. His style did get florid with time but his early books were very readable. His factual errors are sometimes cited but they are relatively small in number when you consider how little information was available in the 1940s or even the 1950s -- there was no internet and few books to consult. Some say his photography was dull but I think people should look more closely and consider his work as a whole. In my opinion his best has never been exceeded. Some of his output was ordinary but it was published as a record not because it was meant to be "artistic". His best photos were the most exciting steam shots ever printed. Don't judge his work from the poor reprints that are available.
Beebe is not appreciated today as well as he should be partly because of some misimpressions. His style did get florid with time but his early books were very readable. His factual errors are sometimes cited but they are relatively small in number when you consider how little information was available in the 1940s or even the 1950s -- there was no internet and few books to consult. Some say his photography was dull but I think people should look more closely and consider his work as a whole. In my opinion his best has never been exceeded. Some of his output was ordinary but it was published as a record not because it was meant to be "artistic". His best photos were the most exciting steam shots ever printed. Don't judge his work from the poor reprints that are available.
I think this gets it about right. It is easy, after the passage of years, to discredit somebody for outdated mannerisms or beliefs ... which, at the time, were shared by many, but now stand out (among us enlightened moderns) in their lonely nakedness.
The point to me is that Beebe was present at the creation of modern rail fandom, which might not exist at all, for all we know, without him.
Besides that contribution, the man had nerve and tons of style. If he's not for somebody's modern taste, I understand that ... while wondering how some of our up-to-date (for now) styles and beliefs will stand the test of time.
cefinkjr Wizlish Just noticed - a week and a half later! - that you illustrated a poem about the 20th Century Limited with a painting of both the Century and its arch rival, PRR's Broad Way Limited. Good job.
schlimm Lotte Lenya (died 1981) played ex-KGB and SPECTRE villainess Rosa Klebb in the James Bond hit feature,"From Russia with Love" (1963).
Anything notable about any of them ?
- Paul North.
An 1930s version of the entire "Threepenny Opera" in German is at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-igC0jAV_zQ
"Mack the Knife is well performed.
AT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QXJ3OXWaOY there is a clip said to be Bertolt Brecht himself. I've also seen a version with video, but not on youtube.
Apparently you can detect an Augsburg accent if you expert in regional German.
Michael J. Walsh,
Ireland
I've always found Beebe to be curiously entertaining, but not a man to emulate. I don't want to get political here, but I suspect his inherited wealth gave him a mindset that most of us can never imagine.
Tom
I tend to hold Lucius Beebe in low esteem. His florid writing style is wretched and seems intended to entertain in its own right rather than inform or narrate. His lifestyle was probably based on inherited rather than earned wealth, which may explain his disdain for the egalitarianism of the Progressive and New Deal eras and the corresponding demise of the class system in which he regaled.
Wizlish "Hold the Vanderbilt, stab the Mail Annul the Limited, flag the Flyer, leave the Iroquois in a fix; This is the World, revealed and true: Give green to twenty-five and six; The 20th Century must go through!"
"Hold the Vanderbilt, stab the Mail Annul the Limited, flag the Flyer, leave the Iroquois in a fix; This is the World, revealed and true: Give green to twenty-five and six; The 20th Century must go through!"
Just noticed - a week and a half later! - that you illustrated a poem about the 20th Century Limited with a painting of both the Century and its arch rival, PRR's Broad Way Limited. Good job.
ChuckAllen, TX
When I became a railfan as a teenager, I used to read a library's copy of The Central and Southern Pacific Railroads. This book was a major reason I became an SP fan, mostly because it did a great job of covering the SP empire, particularly with a fine assortment of photographs.
Fast forward 40+ years, I go to a train show where a vendor was selling the book for $30.00. Many, many books have been published on the SP, but I feel this is one of the best, so I bought it.
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