Durango/Silverton Train

June 14, 2013 Friday

Today we are going to take the train from Durango to Silverton, CO.  It is a narrow gauge train.  They run three trains a day during the summer.  Ours was the third one in line and was scheduled to depart Durango at 9:30 AM.  We had to be there by 9:00 so we got up early, ate breakfast, dressed and left.  We had already found the shortcut from the campground to town so that is the way we went.  In Colorado you can park at a metered spot for free if you have a handicapped placard.  It is $7 a day to park in the lot.  I didn't think it was fair for me to park on main street so I went around the block to find a place. 

The train before us was running late.  There had been a problem with the first train in line and they had to send a new locomotive up to replace theirs.  This started the dominoes rolling.  We were in coach class but in an enclosed car.  We could open the windows.  The open air car would get too much ash for us.  We had some nice people in our car and it was a fun trip up,  Here are some of the sights we saw. 

 

It is about a 3 1/2 hour trip in each direction.  You can take either the train up and a bus back or a bus up and the train back or the train both ways.  We took the train both ways.  The trains usually run about 45 minutes apart but because of the engine problem on train #1 we were about an hour late getting into Silverton.  They did delay our return so that we had some time to have lunch and explore. 

Here we are coming into Silverton, CO. 

The elevation here is almost 10,000 feet  It was called Silverton because you could get silver by the ton when mining here.  The town site was established in 1874. 

We decided to have lunch at Three Pitt's "Again" BBQ.  It has been featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  The food was very good.  I had a pulled pork sandwich and Bill had the hot smoked turkey sandwich that is advertised as Guy's Favorite. 

After lunch we walked the main streets of town and looked at the shops.  We didn't find anything we couldn't live without. 

There is a statue up the mountain from downtown Silverton that is called the Christ of the Mines Shrine.  It was build in the 1950's during a severe downtown in mining and after it was completed the mines once again began to prosper.  It is also credited with being a protecting force in 1978 when Lake Emma flooded the Sunnyside Mine.  Not one miner was killed in that incident.  This isn't a great picture but we forgot to take one until we were on the train so it is a bit far off.

 



 Our estimated time of arrival in Durango was 7:00 PM.  We should have known better.  After we got underway we noticed that we were moving kinda slow.  Turns out the second train in line (remember we are the 3rd)  had an engine problem!  It was decided that they would back the 1st train up and hook it up to the second train to continue down to Durango.  Our train stopped in a location where we could de-train if we wanted. 

We didn't get into Durango until after 8:00 PM but we weren't in a big hurry  as we had not scheduled anything else today.  We had a light snack when we finally got back to the rig and then got ready for bed.  It was a long day but we had fun, 

Here are all the pictures we took during the day.  I hope you enjoy them.