Part 3: Canon City - Royal Gorge              Railway Pages Index

Originally part of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad’s narrow gauge mainline from Pueblo westward to Salida, Leadville, and ultimately Salt Lake City, the Royal Gorge Route was the logo for D&RG advertising for years. It was converted to standard gauge in 1893 and is famous for its hanging bridge that allowed the track to follow the Arkansas River through the narrow 30 foot wide canyon. Here the canyon is 1000 feet deep with near vertical walls. The hanging bridge was built in 1878 by the Santa Fe and inherited by the D&RG in 1880 after the “Treaty of Boston” gave the route to the D&RG. It has been strengthened several times but retains its original design to this day.

The last D&RGW passenger train through the Gorge was run in 1967. The Royal Gorge Route Railroad opened for passenger traffic in 1999. It departs from Cañon City (southwest of Colorado Springs) and is strictly a tourist attraction on standard gauge, using ex Canadian VIA Rail passenger cars still sporting their original CN roster numbers. Some cars have the roof and sides cut off between the undisturbed vestibules to make open-air excursion cars. You can touch the rock walls of the canyon if you are dumb enough to want to do so. Watch for white-water rafters on the river.

The train has a vintage diesel at both ends and, believe it or not, is controlled by Santa Fe RR CTC in Omaha. The ride is out and back in about 2 hours. You have to use your imagination a bit to visualize what this trip must have been like in the early days of the narrow gauge.

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Websites of Interest
http://www.royalgorgeroute.com/

Continue to Part Four

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

E. R. (Ross) Crain, P.Eng. is a Consulting Petrophysicist and a Professional Engineer with over 40 years of experience in reservoir description, petrophysical analysis, and management. He has been a specialist in the integration of well log analysis and petrophysics with geophysical, geological, engineering, and simulation phases of oil and gas exploration and exploitation, with widespread Canadian and Overseas experience.

"I am a life-long model railroader and have modeled in O27, HO, HOn3, and N Scales. Failing eyesight brought me to G Scale. My father started me in model railroading as a tiny tot in 1944 - he scratch built his first locomotive in 1940, the year I was born, and I still have this loco on my mantle-piece. I am a Life Member (#517) of NMRA, a member of the Rocky Mountain Garden Railroaders (Calgary, Alberta), and have toured a lot of model railways, railway shows, and garden railways. I have never seen a model railway I didn’t like. An extensive library of railway magazines and books, covering topics that appeal to me, sit behind my office desk, ready to be put to use at a moments notice. I hope these pages can communicate to you some of my accumulated experience, my successes and failures, and my love of model railways."