Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad

Monday, August 23, 2021
Durango, Colorado, United States
This morning we were up early to get ready for the train ride to Silverton.  Philip and I have talked about taking one of the narrow gauge trains for a long time, and now seemed like a good time.  We looked at both the Durango to Silverton train and the Cumbres and Toltec line, but Durango won out since it looked like the scenery would include more mountains and forests.  
We left the hotel shortly after 8 a.m. for the drive across the street to their parking lot.  When I booked the train tickets, I did not yet know where we were going to stay so I bought a parking pass at the same time.  It turned out that the best use of our Hilton points was for the Doubletree right across from the train depot.  We could have walked, but decided to go ahead and drive in case we wanted to go to a restaurant as soon as we got off the train.  
We boarded the Cinco Animas train car about 8:30 and found our seats easily.  This car is the last one on the train with a wide viewing platform off the back of the car and another smaller one off the front.  There are seats for 16 people in two sections — Pullman berth seating where we sat at a wide booth for two and Parlor seating which had what looked like less comfortable wooden tables and chairs.  There is a toilet compartment and separate sink area at the front of the car and a galley for the crew’s work.  The Cinco Animas car had one excellent guide and host, Ellie, for the entire trip.  She described what we were seeing and where to go for the best photos.   She also served drinks and snacks along the way.  Ellie was a geologist in Alaska before moving to Colorado and has been working for the train for seventeen years.
The 45.2 mile trip to Silverton left the Durango depot at 9:00 and arrived in Silverton at 12:30.  The top speed limit for the train is 18 mph, but often slowed down to 5 mph.  On the way to Silverton, we saw beautiful views of mountains, the San Juan National Forest, and the Animas River.  This river is the one that was polluted a few years ago when a breach at a mine north of Silverton released a flood of water full of heavy metals into it and turned it bright golden orange.  The river is a beautiful light turquoise green now and has recovered from the worst of the pollution.  
The train has two engines that are necessary to pull it up through the mountains.  However, there is one bridge that cannot hold the weight of two engines so the extra one had to be released at one point to go ahead of the train.  Once we were past the bridge, we stopped again to re-attach the second engine.   The train stopped two more times on the way up to take on water.  Natural springs in the mountains are diverted at two spots right where the train needs water to make it possible to add some to the train.  It has steam engines running on oil now.  It used to run on coal, but was converted to oil a couple of years ago.  Philip reminded me of the Jacobite coal-fired train that we were on a few years ago where we had soot coming in the windows from the smoke stack.  This one is cleaner and safer.  On the trip, we had a small car following on the tracks.  The man in that car was there to look for fires that might be caused by the train.  In 2018, the 416 Fire, one of Colorado's largest wildfires which burned over 50,000 acres and started about ten miles north of Durango, was probably caused by embers from one of the D&SNGR's coal locomotives.       
Just before arriving in Silverton, Ellie went around to each table in the car to check that every person knew where to find what they wanted in Silverton and to emphasize that we were to return on time.   Be on board by 2:35 for the 2:45 departure.  The train does not wait for late arrivals.  We told her that we had picked Handlebars Food and Saloon for our lunch.  She explained how to take a shortcut to get to the restaurant so that, hopefully, we would arrive before a big crowd got there.  When we were on the way out of the train, the couple that sat across the aisle from us asked where we were going.  They had not picked a place yet so we invited them along.  We had a nice enough lunch with them.  Not long after we sat down at our table, the woman started a conversation criticizing Obamacare and blaming it on her having to retire from her job as a physician’s assistant — there was just too much red tape and computer work for her.  I don’t know what prompted that subject, but it sure seemed inappropriate when talking to people you hardly know.  We changed the subject, and the rest of the lunch was fine.  We had good food, and the service was okay.  We already knew to expect slow service since every place in town is short-handed, but it wasn’t too bad.  
We walked slowly back through town after lunch toward the train doing some window shopping on the way.  The one store that I wanted to go into was “Closed for a Wedding”.  I wanted to see the rare, pink Astorite stone that is mined in the area and available only there.  
The ride back to Durango was on the same track, but we were on the other side by then so we had some different views.  Ellie kept up her descriptions and pointed out one beaver-gnawed tree for me that I’d missed the first time by.  The train stopped several times on the way back to Durango.  Each time the train stopped, we saw the rear brakeman walk around the last few cars inspecting them and the track.  He stood back on the train when he was finished and held his hat at arms length out the side to signal the engineer that all was well.  One of the stops we made was just on the edge of town.  Ellie looked a bit concerned and said that it was an unscheduled stop.  She decided that the train must be a little bit early and is waiting so that it will pull into the station on time.  She said that the train can be late, but it can never be early.  Pulling into the depot in Durango right at 6:15, our train car was the closest one to the parking lot.  We were in our car and pulling out of the parking lot before most of the other riders had gotten that far.
Since we have a daily food and beverage credit in the hotel in lieu of the free breakfast that they used to give Diamond members, we decided to spend it in the hotel for dinner.  We were kind of tired and didn’t think we needed to go back out again.  

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