Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad - Oct 15 - 18th - Day 2 on the train and walkabout Durango

Tuesday morning, neither of us had a very restful night, Ray because of his back and me because of Ray being so restless. We woke at 6 am. Breakfast service is muffins and coffee mochas delivered to our room. Found out later it's $28 for stale muffins and OK mochas. At this time of year there are not many options available in Silverton, as the town kind of goes to sleep for the winter. Only during train arrival hours, are most businesses open and of course our tour is on a completely different time schedule. The hotel is open because it's owned by the railway.

We took a walk up and down the main street before checking out and heading back to the train station for 8:30 am. 

Here's some pictures of our "walk about".

Good morning Silverton.

City Hall Circa 1908

Apparently the town has really been cleaned up over the past few years compared to how derelict it seemed before. There is also talk of a ski resort starting up in the area.

Definitely cold out with frost on all the cars. This time we're able to board right away after dropping our luggage off at the baggage car. Ray walked around snapping some more pictures as I secured our seats. A little warmer inside, but not much with no heat.

Apparently there was supposed to be a night shot of the train in the station and about 40 people went to take it in, but some of the staff .... had themselves a party so it didn't happen. This was not a scheduled event but was decided in the afternoon on the train with Russell, the event organizer. There was a lot of peeved people and I'm sure the event organizer, heard all about it. 

I imagine due to "this little party" the girls running the concession were moving really slow. (I saw them in the hotel lobby where they were talking about their party.) It took almost 2 hours for them to get the coffee on, and box lunches packed before they opened the concession. A lot of people were not too happy about this either. Too be fair though, the staff were working overtime hours with this tour and already had a long day. They pulled all their most experienced crew for this train which required enough manpower for two trains, conductors, brakemen and engineers. They had never run this combination of cars and locomotives before. Most of the crew started work at 5:30 am to get the trains ready and we didn't get into Silverton until 4:30 and they had stuff to do before shutting them down for the night. Anyone who has worked with the public can appreciate that you would be tired of people after 12 hours of "being nice" lol

Maria

The first photo shoot this morning is of the trains in the station before leaving. 

A very small train station.

Getting hooked up.

Today the trains will be split into two separate trains due to the downgrade percentage of the rail line. Too much weight with them together. We will be doing runbys with both trains separately.

Just like yesterday, Katarina and I stayed aboard the whole ride, closing all the windows etc and making sure no one's bags were blocking the windows on the filming side. We also had Bry join us today as she had some kind of allergic reaction yesterday. We think it's because of the sulpher in the smoke as she said she was allergic to sulpher. Ray figured this out.  

Having us take care of our coach saved the conductor from having to do it and he appreciated it so would give us more info on the stops and what's going on.They would do 2 or 3 run bys each time for the photo shoots. Today they separated the freight train from the passenger train so would do 2 run by's with each one so it definitely takes awhile. The people filming or taking photos would be off the train for at least 40 minutes or so.

Although they gave us a schedule of stops, it's pretty "liquid", as the regular passenger train took precedence over the tracks and we pulled onto a siding twice on the way up to Silverton and once on the way down. 

On the way to Junior's Kitchen

Today the passenger train's late, so we waited longer and missed out on a couple of photo shoots. Apparently one of the crew on that train, sliced his leg open on a metal bracket on a work box and they couldn't get the bleeding to stop. That meant we gave up a brakeman on our frieght train to work on the passenger train to be legal with the amount of crew. They sent him back to Durango on the speeder car. We could do with less on the freight as there are no passengers. The train crew decided that this is a good spot for the Crew Shot before one of them moved to the other train.

Old Needleton Tank

All of the rocks and steel on the freight train will be taken back to Silverton tomorrow and dropped off at the bridge replacement site we passed over.

Old Needleton Tank Movie

Pigeon and Turret Peaks

Lots of sediment in the Animas River from the mine in Silverton that is no longer working.

PIgeon and Turret Peaks Video

These guys are hard core trying to get rid of a tree in the view ... tree wins! lol

After this point the trains were joined back together again.

The climb to High Bridge

Horseshoe Curve

Horseshoe Curve Movie, this was the last one for the day.

Heading back to Durango. The regular scheduled train was in "our rearview mirror". You could see it's light right behind us.

And finally the last photo shoot in the Durango Station. The Triple Steam Engine Photo in honour of their 100 year anniversary. All three were built in 1923.

After all the stops we finally arrived back in Durango at 5:30 pm with the regular passenger train coming down right behind us. The final photo stop with all three of the K28's lined up at the station. Instead of a 20 minute shoot, everyone had only 5 minutes to shoot this once the passenger train off-load to get their photos as well. I stayed on the train and Ray managed to jump on just before we cruised around the station to get onto another track. We then walked over to their warehouse, by the parking lot, and retrieved our luggage. What a long, but fantastic two days.

We're a little hungry, so we stopped for a bit to eat at Carver Brewing Co.

Dinner was so so ... but we were too tired to care. I had a salad! and Ray, a burger.

The Central Hotel

Then it was back home to the coach. After minimally unpacking we were both in bed shortly after 8pm. We were both exhausted and were looking forward to a good night's sleep.

Unbelievable, we both slept until 6am. Definitely felt better, although Ray's back still quite sore. By 7:45 the Ibuprofen and Tylenol kicked in and out the door he went to catch today's train at the bridge in the City Park and a few other shots around town. So beautiful here with the fall colours on the leaves.

Here comes the train :)

Ray returned at 10 am.  Here are a few of the pictures he took.

A man and his dog.

The General Palmer Hotel (This is right in front of the train yard)

The bakery where Ray bought us breakfast.

The Strater Hotel

At 11:30 am we headed back to town to walk the downtown area. Cute little stores everywhere. Other than a new sweatshirt for Ray we kept our money in our pocket. lol 

Me and my horses. lol

At 12:30 we stopped at the Season's Rotisserie and Grille for lunch. One of the few places where everything isn't spicy. Delicious food. More of a wine and cocktail place so limited in beer so I had to have a Manzarita instead lol

Back home for 2:15 pm. Both of us tired from all the walking and now Ray has 600 plus pictures to go through as well as about 10 videos lol The temps came up this afternoon to 75F. We hid inside with the A/C on. 

Durango is a beautiful town. We certainly enjoyed our visit and everyone is super friendly. The downtown core obviously has a night life as a lot of the restaurants with patios on the streets did not open until 4 pm. The areas we went to there were no homeless, no pant handling, no garbage and all store fronts were well-kept. I wish other places were able to achieve the same thing.

Tomorrow we head to Chama, New Mexico to get ready for our steam train ride there aboard the Cumbres and Toltec Naroow Guage Railway.