Into the San Juans

Growing up, I often got to go camping with my father at a small campground above the town of Silverton, Colorado. We would be there about a week, and we had ample opportunities to explore the areas around Silverton. We would drive up to Animas Forks, hike around Red Mountain, stop in Ouray, visit Ridgeway and Durango, and watch the new Durango and Silverton Railroad arrive in Silverton before racing to beat the crowd to the Pickle Barrel for lunch, before going to Smedley's Ice Cream Parlor for root beer floats.

Silverton is an interesting railroad town. Isolated in Baker Park, no less than four narrow gauge lines radiated out from town. The Silverton Railroad climbed over Red Mountain Pass serving the mines north of Silverton towards Ouray, before topography prevented the line from descending into Ouray. The Silverton Northern extended out of Silverton along the upper Animas River,  first to Eureka, and ultimately to Animas Forks to serve mines including the Sunnyside Mine. A third road, the Silverton, Gladstone and Northerly, wandered up the course of Cement Creek, to th town of Gladstone, serving the mines there. While different entities, all three lines were ultimately owned by Otto Mears, and operated as a unit.

But Silverton had a fourth line, the Denver and Rio Grande Western, reaching the line via a branch from Durango. Thus, Silverton became something of an oddity, a rare location where multiple narrow gauge lines interchanged. Even at the other end of the branch, a similar situation evolved. In Durango, not only did the D&RGW come in from the east from Chama, but the Farmington Branch went south, and the Rio Grande Southern extended north, working up through Telluride to connect to the D&RGW at Ridgeway, where the D&RGW came through on the Marshall Pass line. In addition, at this end of the line, was the D&RGW Ouray Branch, that came within a few miles of the Silverton Railroad. In fact, the Silverton Railroad came within about 5 miles of Pandora, at the end of the RGS Telluride Branch. Admittedly, there was a pretty big mountain between the two, and so by rail it was closer to 150 miles, but, the point is, these lines were all intertwined into the same area.

The RGS is famous in its own right, climbing over Dallas Divide, Lizard Head Pass and Cima Hill and the lesser known Millwood Summit between Ridgeway and Durango.Towns such as Rico, Mancos, Dollores, Ophir, and Vance Junction all dotted the line. And there were bridges of all sizes all along the line. The RGS is at least as common a modeling subject as the D&RGW, and the two were very much intertwined.

Many of the towns, and mines and mills in the area are fascinating subjects. And in N-scale, several would make fantastic models that could be done with limited or even no compression. Many of these roads saw smaller steam engines, instead of K-36s and K-37s, K-27s and K-28s were common, and a number of consolidations (C-class) 2-8-0's also served the area.

K-27 DRGW #463

DRGW K-28

RGS #40 (Consolidation)

So, if I was to build a San Juans layout, what might it look like. Well, first there is a clear choice to make, 1) anchor the layout in Durango, or 2) anchor the layout in Silverton. Durango was the larger set of facilities as the terminus of the D&RGW, with both the Silverton and Farmington branches radiating out. The RGS becomes a essentially a bridge route between the four corners region of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona, and the D&RGW mainline north of Ridgeway.

Silverton on the other hand is a hub, but it is the hub at the end of a branch line, and really, the three Silverton roads are just branch lines off the branch line. Traffic would be in any realistic scenario, much less on a Silverton centric model, than on a Durango centric model. Furthermore, by World War II, the Silverton lines were essentially over, whereas the RGS continued into the Post WWII era.

Part of this success was the presence of Uranium ore on the line, and its need for the Manhattan Project. As I have worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and have a bit of a hobby in learning about Atomic History, this is intriguing. Furthermore, it is plausible to formulate a history where the RGS did not just struggle into the post WWII era, but maybe even prospered due to its atomic connections. While I am not opposed to modeling an era set a century or more ago, I am more drawn to a post-WWII era, and one of my favorite model railroads, Dave Frary's Carrabasset and Dear River, did just this to extend the life of a Maine 2-footer into the post WWII era. So, if a Durango Centric line is my preference, what would it look like?

Well, I think you start with Durango. The line to Chama, and the branches to Silverton and Farmington continued to operate into the 1960s and beyond, in part due to the oil and gas discoveries near Farmington. Much of this traffic came via Chama, but by then, the RGS was long gone. Perhaps if it was still there, the traffic could have come via the RGS. In this scenario, the RGS could have become central to the production of Uranium, and so the line may have even prospered after WWII, long enough to benefit from oil and gas discoveries in the 1960s, and even maybe to become a bridge route of sorts between the central railroad corridor and the southern railroad corridor. Maybe not likely, but not entirely implausible, particularly with a military-industrial complex need to maintain the line and perhaps discourage easy alternative access (so as to protect the resources in the event of an attack). Maybe it even becomes a transition era steam/diesel NG railroad more like the White Pass and Yukon.

So, what might the operational LDEs look like? I think that they would include:

• Durango (Connections to Farmington, Chama, and Silverton)
• Mancos/Dolores
• Cima Hill
• Millwood Summit
• Rico (Enterprise Branch)
• Lizard Head Pass
• Ophir
• Vance Junction (Telluride/Pandora Branch)
• Vanadium (Uranium Source)
• Dallas Divide
• Ridgeway (Junction with D&RGW - NG to Grand Junction/Gunnison & Ouray Branch - or - SG to Grand Junction)

Scenically, the LDEs might include:

• many of the bridges enroute
• the Highline by Ophir
• Trout Lake
• Dolores Canyon
• and so many more...

There is honestly a lot of potential scenery here; much more than I can think of on the top of my head. There is obviously a fascinating railroad here. I am more than a little tempted to imagine narrow gauge diesels in a black and orange scheme for the RGS... In Nn3, there are now some very nice steam engines, or at least chassis options, based on Z-scale Japanese steam and from offerings from AZL. But more exciting, the diesels have dramatically improved with GP-7s, GP-9s, new F-7s, GP35s, and SD40s all becoming available. At the very least, these new chassis become the basis for a lot of interesting models, or free-lanced models that could be deployed. Even DCC and sound are becoming practical in Z and Nn3. This could be a very interesting railroad indeed. And in fact, I am aware of at least one massive Nn3 project to build a model of the RGS. Having played with Nn3 myself, I am convinced that it could be operable as a layout. And, both this and Marshall Pass offer the ability to operate with a much smaller crew, and yet not be unrealistic, as these lines often had a much lower traffic density than the standard gauge routes discussed thus far. Since I am not sure how much of a crew I can draw, this is a consideration.