Riding The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Siverton Narrow Gauge Railroad

The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railway is a beautiful ride (as long as the conductor leaves you alone, as I discuss in the prior post). You leave from a cool little train station in historic downtown Durango (there's a pic of the station in my Durango post below) and climb up to Silverton, have lunch there and walk around, then ride on back.

It's a great ride, though I would certainly suggest just taking the train one way and taking a bus or cab the other, the two-way train ride takes all day, but to drive to Silverton takes only 30 or 40 minutes, ha! One way is enough to see all the scenery. I felt that the morning ride was prettier, however, we got quite a bit of ash in the face and all over our clothes in the morning because we were in an open car (best for photographing of course) and on the way up to Silverton, a climb of several thousand feet, the train is working much harder and burning far more coal, thus blowing loads of ash. I didn't notice any ash on the way down, when the train is coasting back, relatively speaking.

Check out some pics from the ride:

Blowin' off a little steam as it crosses the Animas River at 7200 feet above sea level.



Aspen and purple mountains majesty!



Looking good ;)





Two shots of an abandoned old mine shaft:


The Animas river was filled with these intensely bright colored rocks, its was gorgeous!



Here is a series of the train in old-timey color schemes. I'm a sucker for machines like this and who doesn't dig an old steamer?









Some more Aspen and that's one of the "Galloping Goose" there on the right. Those were smaller vehicles fitted to ride the rails to carry smaller loads back and forth more quickly than the train could, mostly mail, if I recall correctly.



Although many of the pics I've posted here were of the tail itself, the scenery was totally spectacular, as it is practically everywhere in CO.