Last Update: 8/6/1998 - Jens Moller

As you venture up on the train, you probably didn't know that one of these leads the way and follows behind the train. Their purpose it to look for track problems before the train gets there and in case the trains coal burning locomotives sparks starts a fire - they can put it out. These are really pretty small and offer no real protection from the elements. The wheels are normal railroad track wheels. As you take the trip to Silverton and back, you'll notice small sections of track that intersect the main track and are only 20 feet (or so) long. These are used to manually lift these critters off the main track and place them on for general track maintenance (getting them off the main track so that the regular trains can keep running).

Fire and maintenance vehicles

A snow plowing car

The Plowing car is not used anymore, but is on display in train workshop tour. Its hard to imagine having to deal with snow in excess of 40 feet deep (avalanches!). For clearing normal snow fall, I could see where this car would be useful, but since avalanches often brought down trees and large boulders mixed in with the soft and fluffy snow, this car was not real useful for that sort of work.

When you burn coal, you have to clear out your firebox every now and then. In this case, you drive the locomotive over a pit and you dump it's contents. The contents are usually still very hot and quite a mess. The pits are around 6 feet deep and there are 2 of them here in Durango. Since the Locomotives are never 'shut down' between maintenance, emptying these would be a full time job.

Train near the cinder drop/clean out pit

One of the original train shop buildings from the 1800's

This is the sort of place you might live if you worked on the trains 50 or 100 years ago, Its the original bunk house on the facility and probably less comfortable to stay in than a Barn full of noisy animals would be. Its not used for that purpose anymore. Surrounding this building are many parts of old scrapped narrow gauge locomotives and various parts for repairing cars. Inside the round house, there are many trains and specialty cars in various states of repair. My favorite was looking at the specialty lathes used to true up the large wheels and the gear required to handle parts that weigh a few tons.

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