"There's a high level of excitement and interest in the Rio Grande's narrow gauge lines today. Perhaps more so now than at any other time since the narrow gauge lines were built. There has always been a certain romance of the rails where 3-foot-gauge trackage is concerned, and even more so with those lines that ran through the scenic wonders of our country, such as the Rocky Mountains. Dreamer and railroad builder General William J. Palmer projected a railroad to Mexico City, but instead his 3-foot railroad went west, to Salt Lake City and Ogden." --From inside of book jacket
Large black and white photos and detailed route maps show how this gutsy railroad worked through the Rockies, rather than navigating around them. Shows one of the most scenic stretches of North American railroading ever engineered.
A journey through part of the Colorado Rockies aboard a steam locomotive of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. Includes historical and descriptive notes on the Durango & Silverton trains.
The Uintah rail line, one of the last of the narrow gauge railroads, was a steep, tortuous line built to haul gilsonite, a unique asphalt deposit in the Colorado Rockies. ETHS graduate, Bender, presents a well researched study.
Journey from the everyday to the exotic with this alphabet on the move also bold graphic images evoked the time period and a sense of mystery about travel.
This book picks up where the previous two Classic American titles left off, focusing on the golden age of American railroading from 1945 to the early 1970s. It extends to the present day where applicable, providing a colorful look at locomotives, passenger and freight operations, development, and, in some cases, demise. Full color.
The Rio Grande Railroad operated in the spectacular Colorado Rockies. Their slogan was "Through the Rockies, not Around Them." Photos include 2-8-0 Consolidations, 2-8-2 Mikado's, 0-6-0 six-wheeler, 4-6-0 ten-wheeler, the big 4-8-4 Northerns that Rio Grande liked to call "Westerns" and the larger 2-8-8-2 Mallets. Also included are Electro-Motive passenger and freight locomotives FT, F3, F7, General Purpose and Special Duty series, Electro-Motive SD40T-2 "Tunnel Motors," SD45 and SD50 locomotives, American Locomotive PA-PB and RS-3 series, Fairbanks-Morse H-15-44, and diesel-hydraulic ML-4 locomotives from German manufacturer Krauss-Maffei.
The work of many of the most famous railroad photographers is represented in hundreds of illustrations that went into this multifaceted portrait of the line's development.