Live Steam

We hustled down to Antonito and scored two tickets on the train, riding in splendor in the fancy parlor car, brand new and spiffy, we were plied with drinks and pastries the whole time. But the whole point of this is the steam engine!

When we got there, one of the engines, a 1925 Baldwin Mikado type, was just getting steamed up, and sitting on the ashpit. We were like girls seeing Elvis. We watched it go around and move some cars, and then it was time to get on the bus for Chama. There are a number of different ways to ride the Cumbres and Toltec, with busses to take you back to where you started. The route is a remainder of the narrow gauge rail route that went from Antonito to Durango, this is the only part left . It runs up over the Toltec gorge, at times over a 4% grade! 2 ½ % is all a regular line can do.

The cars to ride in include our nice parlor car with plush seats and a tin ceiling, circa 1870.the other cars are 1880-1930 vintage, and there is an old box car redone as a café/curio car, and a gondola car where you can stand and see everything, narrated by a docent with microphone. The docent was informative but didn’t feel he had to talk all the time.

Black, hissing and the compressor clunking, the engine sits. Grey steam and smoke come out of the stack, and steam leaks lazily from other places. The lordly beings that control this great black creature strut a little, they are dirty and it is very hard work, especially shoveling the huge chunks of coal, but they know that in our eyes they are near gods. The engineer sports a black bowler instead of the usual peaked striped rr cap, a very dirty face and flashing eyes. He has little time for us, tired of railfans I think, but he loves this engine.

We board and the engine gives a great blast on the earsplitting whistle, no other sound in the world quite like it, almost an animal scream. The stack blows dark, black smoke as the engine begins to move, and the shuddering ch ch ch goes faster and faster, the joints on the rails hit the wheels clickety clack, and the coaches sway. Out the windows on a curve we can see the engine pulling, smoking steaming. There are counterweights on the drive wheels which put the drive arms further out and they are very visible, working like the endons on a pulling horse. Some of the passengers are just admiring the view, others have a grin on their faces, a grin that gets bigger every time the engine whistles for a grade crossing. The engineer clearly loves the whistle too, and plays it like some giant musical instrument. The steam leaps into the air, escaping through the whistle to freedom. On a good grade, they blow the bottom dump, a way to get rid of any crud on the bottom of the boiler, and release a cloud of steam, hissing and obscuring everything for a moment.

When I was learning about the steam engine that is a static display in the museum in Campo, I thought the great hulk was pretty nifty, and knowing how it all worked was great. I remember effusing about it to the head of the steam department, and he sighed, and said it was just a dead thing when it wasn’t running. I think I understand how he feels a little better. It is “only” a machine, but starting it up and running it while controlling what is basically a giant explosion on the edge of happening, makes it seem very alive. It breathes and snorts and thumps while still like an impatient race horse, and then when sent forward, clouds of steam and smoke and whistling are more like an unleashed dragon. Most machinery that pulls things have all the action hidden inside, pistons and gears are secrets, but on a steam engine the driving rods are right there, all bones and tendons and stringy muscles working like mad, and covered with black soot and gleaming with oil.

This mountaineering rail line was built in 9 months, mostly by hand, there are two tunnels and plenty of track laid on a rock shelf. Not quite as spectacular as Carrizo Gorge, but pretty grand all the same, we pass through aspen groves where the sound of the engine seems to rattle through the leaves, and then peer over the edge to the bright green valley below, where cattle graze.

At every grade crossing there are rail fans with their cameras, some follow the train the whole way, nearly jumping up and down with excitement. At a huge rock, called Kodak Rock by the train people, there are 3-4 intrepid climbers on top waiting for the perfect shot. I would rather ride it than shoot it, but you can see that we have plenty of company in our fascination with trains!

(This is a picture by a fellow train nut, Marty Bernard who visited here too )

Back at Antonito, we detrain, do a little shopping but keep turning to watch the engine switch cars around ready for tomorrow’s ride. Even the next day, driving on by, we slowed and looked wistfully at the engine getting ready, smoking quietly.

If you have never ridden behind a steam engine, better go do it, it’s a vanishing breed.