Train – Page 2 – Not Your Average Engineer

June 12, 2015November 8, 2015

Georgetown Loop Railroad

For my birthday, Heather, Jeff, Matt, and I went up to Georgetown to ride the famous Georgetown Loop Railroad. As a kid I rode this train with my parents when we came to Colorado to visit my aunt and uncle. The train ride was just as good this time as I remember from the last time I rode.

Pulling away from the station.

Backing down underneath the famous bridge.

Piling on the steam and oil to head up the hill toward Silverplume.

Rolling over the bridge and looking down toward Georgetown.

Crossing Clear Creek.

Pulling into Silverplume.

Filling up with water for the return trip down to Georgetown.

The commemorative photo that we didn’t buy.

Heading down the grade.

Engine #9 running down the hill.

The bridge in the distance.

The train pulling away from the station at the old mines. We got off here to do a mine tour.

Getting ready to go underground.

We went into the Lebanon Tunnel. I remember touring this mine as a kid.

Looking back out toward the entrance.

A deep shaft filled with ghostly water. The shaft goes down a few hundred more feet to flooded levels of the mine deep below. When the pumps get switched off in a mine like this, the old shafts and adits flood quickly up to the level at which the water can escape to the surface. The adit we walked down is the high water point.

Old and new rails. When this adit was reopened for tourists, they used a wider gauge of ore cart to bring out rock.

Looking up along a drift.

Leaching ore.

There is probably some good, rich rock behind this wall.

Looking back toward the entrance.

An old hoist and bucket line.

Miners’ footprints in the muck left over 100 years ago.

An interesting form of rock only really seen in old mines.

End of the line. This is a big water tank that helps regulate how much water is released from the mine.

Engine #9 coming back down from Silverplume to pick us up and take us down to Georgetown.

It’s a geared locomotive with an offset boiler. Really neat design seen throughout the world on narrow gauge lines in mountains, on logging railroads, and on mining railroads.

Heading across the bridge and into Georgetown.

Georgetown as seen from the top of the bridge.

Toot toot! Birthday train!

July 6, 2014July 25, 2014

Leadville, Colorado & Southern Railroad

One of the old steam engines that used to run on the old Colorado and Southern Railroad Highline that the Leadville, Colorado, & Southern Railroad occupies today. Maybe someday they’ll get this old beast up and running again.

The Leadville, Colorado and Southern currently runs a couple of diesel locomotives on the short line that they have preserved between Leadville and Fremont Pass.

Greg, Heather’s dad, getting ready to board the train.

The engine is sitting at the very end of the tracks here in Leadville.

Looking out toward some very big mountains.

Passing some old boxcars with doors built in on the way out of Leadville.

Heading up toward the pass.

The old roundhouse where they still store engines and do maintenance.

A few maintenance cars on the siding.

A wye where things can be turned around.

Heading up through the aspen.

The old diesel rumbling along.

An area to set speeders on for when trains pass by.

The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad railbed is visible in the valley below.

Big mountains ahead.

Looking back down the valley toward Leadville.

Starting to cross the part of the Highline route that gave it its name. The drop-off here is very steep and goes a long way down.

If the train left the tracks here, it would go all the way to the bottom.

This part of the line was blasted out of the rock.

The train working its way through a narrow notch between the mountain and a protruding bluff.

A new zip line goes alongside the train in one area.

This is the spot where a big washout occurred. When I rode this train as a child, the washout hadn’t been fixed yet and we stopped here. Now the train can go along the full right-of-way once again.

There used to be a little mining town down by the highway.

Heather enjoyed the train.

The big Climax Mine on Fremont Pass where molybdenum is pulled out of the earth starts to come into view.

This is the site of a large portion of the world’s easily accessed molybdenum reserves.

The horn on the engine echoes and reverberates off of the mountains near Fremont Pass. On good days, the horn can be heard several mountain ranges away.