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The GALLOPIN' GEESE
(In the Smoke & Steam portfolio.)
Each summer in Durango and Silverton, Colorado, and in Chama, New Mexico, two very special events are staged that are excellent photo opportunities for train enthusiasts or anyone who loves the history of Colorado's narrow gauge railroads: operation of one or more of the legendary "Galloping Goose" rail cars dating from the 1930s. These events are especially noteworthy because these are the only opportunities to photograph these interesting, historic, somewhat unique, and very photogenic rail cars in an authentic setting outside of the museum, public display, or tourist park environments where the "Geese" have resided since they were taken out of service in the 1950s.
Galloping Geese were conceived and built by what is probably Colorado's most legendary narrow gauge railroad, the Rio Grande Southern, which served the mining and ranching operations around Rico, Dolores, and Telluride in the San Juan Mountains from the late 1800s into the early 1950s.
By the early 1930s, however, the mining boom was over, and with the mines closing, the RGS was in bankruptcy. Struggling to reorganize, cut costs and keep operating, the little railroad came up with the idea of operating rail cars as an economical replacement for many of their steam trains. For the occasional full freight loads, a regular train would still be used, but the rail cars could - at much less expense - carry the mail and the few passengers and small lots of freight the railroad still usually had.
The rail cars were pieced together from 1920's era Pierce Arrow and Buick motor cars and miscellaneous scrap materials, and here-in is the beginning of the legend. Because of this "non-blue print" construction, although similar in appearance, no two "Motors" - as the railroad originally called them - were exactly alike. And over the years, each motor was to undergo several transformations. So while only 7 of the machines were built, many variations on the theme as they were altered for changing uses would make it appear to the casual observer that there were 30 or more of these contraptions clacking over the Rio Grande Southern rails.
For example, the original black or dark green color was replaced with silver; some of the Pierce Arrow car bodies were later replaced with Wayne bus bodies; "Motors" #1 and #6 somewhat resembled a 1920's pickup; and in the 1950s most of the Geese had their freight boxes altered with the addition of seats and windows to carry more passengers.
Probably because of the scratch-built construction, along with the railroad's “less-than-perfectly maintained” trackage which caused the machines to sway and rattle down the track with loose pieces of silver colored body tin flapping, and the "honking" of their air horns; no doubt onlookers were reminded of a squawking goose running awkwardly around the yard, leading to their being popularly known as "Galloping Geese" during their later years of operation. Even the railroad officially adopted this term in its last years as a promotional tool to attract tourists and excursionists.
Adding to the Geese's legend was their very unpredictable operation. It was not uncommon for a "goose" to break down in the middle of a run, far from the nearest vestige of civilization, and they were also prone to derailments. In addition, they were notorious for loosing their brakes on downhill grades, providing their few passengers with more "fond" memories of a goose ride than they cared to have!
Other railroads had their own somewhat similar looking rail cars, but none attained the legendary status of the RGS's Galloping Geese.
While a Galloping Goose is a very rare creature with only seven ever being built, amazingly, six remain intact today, with only the original "Motor #1" no longer in existence (and it is believed that the RGS dismantled Motor #1 to build work Motor #6). Three "Geese" (#s 2, 6 and 7) nest and are occasionally operated at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden; and #3 operates at an amusement park in California. Geese 4 and 5 have been on display in Telluride and Dolores, Colorado (two towns served by the old RGS), since the abandonment of the RGS in the early 1950s.
Since the abandonment, outside of operations in a museum or theme park setting, none of the Geese have operated in territory near the original routes of the Geese. But recently, Goose #5, the Dolores Goose, was given a “frame-off”, complete restoration and each June is trucked over to run on the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic RR in Chama, New Mexico, over a portion of the original Rio Grande line from Denver to Silverton.
Then in August, #5 and (usually) one or two of the Colorado Railroad Museum's Geese are run on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad's portion of the same line through the remote Animas River Canyon between these two old mining towns. (These two sections are all that are left of the original railroad.) While the geese never ran north of Durango, they did frequent the Durango yard at the southern end of the RGS line where they interchanged passengers and freight with the Rio Grande trains, so at least in Durango, the Geese are in authentic territory. The photo above is of Goose #5 by the original Denver & Rio Grande depot in Silverton. Ilford's SFX 200 film was used here to create the black sky.
And in 2000, the Ridgway RR Museum beautifully reconstructed Goose #1, and it too is now run at the August Silverton event, along with the restored “Casey Jones”, a similar motor car built around a 1917 Cadillac V8 engine that operated into the 1940s on the Silverton Northern RR running east from Silverton.
With special "photo run-bys" staged for riders, these are unique opportunities to capture scenes with your camera that have been impossible to photograph for over 45 years!
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(In the Vintage Tin and Old Iron portfolio.)
This is an example of a computer composited image to create a scene from the past. I love antique automobiles dating from the 1920s through the 1940s, and coupes with bullet headlights of the mid to late 1930s are a particular favorite. So I am always on the lookout for such a vehicle, and my ideal setting will have it sitting in an open field with grasses and weeds growing up around it.
But in reality, I am lucky to even find such a vehicle - let alone having it in the ideal setting! So I was delighted to come across this mid 1930's coupe (a 1935 Chevrolet?) sitting right beside the Highway in the little hamlet of Lorenzo in extreme southern Nebraska. Although it was not sitting in a field of weeds, it was fairly easy to photograph without showing some modern items near-by. The car remained beside the highway in Lorenzo for several months after I photographed it, but is now gone.
A straight print of the car made a good print, but with the image of such a car with weeds growing up around it still strong in my mind, I decided to create this setting for the car. I used parts from four different photos: the background trees were photographed in northeastern Colorado not too far from where the car had been found. The field in front of the trees had been recently plowed, so I also shot an open grassy field near-by to replace the plowed ground with. Putting this image together in PhotoShop, I thought something more was needed, and in my negative files I found an image of a deserted house in a pecan grove in Louisiana that I had shot on a previous trip to visit my parents (this old house is also gone - it burned to the ground in the winter of 2000-2001).
I "cut" the house from the pecan grove, changed its contrast and tonality and sized it appropriately and placed it in the field behind the old coupe. The fencing and spare tire lying on the ground in front of the coupe were in the original shot of the car. All that remained was to "clean up" the image using the cloning tool to eliminate any trace of the cut and paste marks.
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(In the Smoke & Steam portfolio.)
This image is a multiple exposure - one of the moon and one of the subject. To get the moon images, on a clear night with a full moon, I make a registration mark on my film when loading (generally, this is a pen mark on the film that lines up with the edge of the shutter opening), and shoot a roll of moons using a 400mm telephoto lens. Only the image of the moon appears on the film, as the black sky does not expose on the film, allowing a second image to later be shot. It is also critical that the moon be placed in a position that will not overlap any succeeding image - usually the top left or right corner of the frame is best.
After manually rewinding the film leaving the leader out of the canister, I then reload the film by lining up the registration mark again to assure the frames with the moon images will align properly when I take the new images of various subjects that might look good with a big moon in the sky. If care is not taken to properly line up the registration marks when re-running a roll of moons through a camera, you may get images with a moon “splitting” the edges of two frames!
“Moon Over the Southern” gets its name from the old Rio Grande Southern narrow gauge railroad in southwest Colorado that was part of a large network of narrow gauge rails that served southern Colorado in the first half of the 20th century. These old railroads are quite popular with train enthusiasts as well as history buffs, with the old RGS - or simply the “Southern” - being a big favorite.
The RGS is no more, but two segments of the old Denver & Rio Grande RR that connected with the RGS still operate today as tourist lines - the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RR (C&TS) which runs over Cumbres pass between Chama, New Mexico and Antonito, Colorado; and the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge RR (D&S), which runs through the wild and beautiful Animas River Canyon between Durango and Silverton, Colorado.
Several times each year, various groups or individuals arrange for “photo freight excursions” with these two tourist operations, where the authentic 1920s’ - 1950s’ era locomotives and equipment are repainted with the original railroads’ names and are operated in as authentic a manner as possible for the benefit of paying photographers wishing to recreate a vintage railroad scene of decades ago.
Because the entire RGS system was torn up with abandonment in the early 1950s, recreating any kind of RGS photo event in the old territory of the RGS is impossible. But in August 1997, one of the locomotives in use on the C&TS which is of the same type that was used on the RGS was re-lettered as a RGS engine, and a special photographers’ train was run to recreate authentic looking RGS scenes.
The night before the train trip, a special night photo session was held in the Chama rail yard (which still uses the original Rio Grande RR facilities dating from the 1880s). With the dozens of participating photographers lined up in an orderly manner to stay out of each others’ photos, the locomotive was hit with multiple bursts of electronic flash, with each flash being aimed at a different location to “paint” the locomotive with light while camera shutters were locked open for a time exposure.
I had pre-visualized this scene to include a large moon, so shot a roll of full moons to use for this night session. About half a dozen “poses” like this were done with the locomotive - this one by the old roundhouse, others by the water tank and ash pit. This scene - which was the second pose of the night, was by far the best result.
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(In the Rustic America portfolio.)
This image has been crafted to capture some of the rustic beauty of the old Colorado railroad and mining town of St. Elmo, by printing with a texture filter (similar to a watercolor texture).
St. Elmo sits beside the rushing waters of Chalk Creek, surrounded by large stands of aspen and below a scenic mountain backdrop southwest of Buena Vista, Colorado. The old town also has a colorful and interesting history, including the story behind the Stark Brothers’ store seen here. Dating from the 1870s, St. Elmo grew out of a mining camp into an incorporated town of as many as 3,000 residents (according to some accounts) in the 1880s. The Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad ran through St. Elmo on its way west to Gunnison via the Alpine Tunnel through the Continental Divide, and so St. Elmo also served as a railroad supply town and base of operations for railroad men. In addition, St. Elmo was a terminal for the stage line that crossed the Continental Divide to Tin Cup City, and for toll roads running to other near-by towns, including Aspen.
St. Elmo was originally called Forest City, but the U.S. Post Office required a name change because there was a Forest City in California. It is believed that the name St. Elmo was taken from a popular "St. Elmo" novel of the time, about a character named St. Elmo Murray. (St. Elmo displaced a town called "Alpine", located a few miles east of St. Elmo and originally the chief town of the surrounding mining district. But when the railroad arrived, the residents of Alpine packed up and moved to the new end-of-track town. Today, the site of old Alpine contains modern vacation cabins.)
But by the 1950s St. Elmo claimed only a handful of residents and was nothing more than a dying - if very scenic - ghost town.
St. Elmo boasts some interesting legends and tales. The first - a tale of lost treasure - occurred long before St. Elmo was established. Gold stolen from the local Indians by early Spanish explorers was hastily hidden in the Chalk Cliffs that line the valley St. Elmo now sits in, when the Spaniards were being pursued by the gold's angry owners, and never found again. To this day, a fortune may be awaiting some lucky finder!
In 1890, a fire destroyed the post office, and the story goes that the postmaster was both the town hero in this incident for saving all the mail, and also the anti-hero, as he allowed a supply of whiskey to burn!
But the story of the "Queen of St. Elmo" and the Stark Brothers’ store is probably the most interesting lore of the old town. In the 1950s, Annabell Stark, known for her striking beauty and also her generosity to others in times of need, and her brother Tony continued to "operate" the Stark store long after most town residents had moved on.
When, suffering from malnutrition and looking as if they were living in deep poverty, they were finally removed to nursing homes, their store was found to contain large stocks of firewood and canned food, and several bags containing thousands of dollars, all saved in anticipation of hard times; along with hundreds of old newspapers and other items the Starks were hoarding.
Today, the Stark’s store still stands in the middle of St. Elmo, along with about two dozen other well preserved buildings. (Sadly, one of the other very picturesque buildings in the town - the Town Hall, right across the street from the Stark Brothers' store - burned in April 2002, along with several adjacent cabins and a unique wooden phone booth said to have been used by President Theodore Roosevelt. As of mid-2008, this building is being rebuilt to original appearance.) Weathered wood, old door knobs, window displays, lace curtains in the windows, etc., present many interesting compositions. (A few years ago, one of the houses behind the town even had a sign in the window saying "Danger - crystallized dynamite in the basement", but this sign has been removed - hopefully, along with the dynamite!)
In the summer, dozens of people-friendly chipmunks and hummingbirds populate the town.
Above the town, several large mine structures still stand near the old railroad grade which climbs up to the caved-in Alpine Tunnel on the Divide, and the former stage road over the Continental Divide will still take a traveler (in a 4-wheel drive or off-road vehicle) into old Tin Cup, another late 1800’s town with a history to match its colorful name.
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(In the Smoke and Steam portfolio.)
In the days of year around service over Cumbres Pass on the narrow gauge Denver & Rio Grande RR in southern Colorado (now operated by the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic), rotary snow plows were frequently required to keep the line open in the winter. Even today conditions and circumstances occasionally come together to require the line over Cumbres be opened by one of the C&TS’s two operating rotary snow plows.
Such was the case in early May, 1993, as rotary OY and three locomotives fought the deep drifts for two full days to reach the top of Cumbres Pass, including a full second day to go the final 2 1/2 miles! Here, the plow train approaches the highway crossing below Cumbres Pass, the old rotary's wooden sides literally shaking apart with the vibrations from the effort to chew through the packed snow.
An especially big problem was water. With three locomotive tenders and the rotary to keep filled, workers were frequently shoveling snow into the tenders, trying to make it to the water spout atop Cumbres. Despite their best efforts, the plow train rain out of water and stalled within sight of Cumbres late on the second day. A fire truck was brought up and hoses strung from the highway below the train to fill the tenders before the plow could chew its way to the top of Cumbres and tie up at the section house long after dark.
With five feet of snow covering the ground at Cumbres, most of a third day was needed just to clear the yard, wye and sidings before plowing could continue eastward. A look inside the cab of OY reveals there are no plush seats and electronic controls for the operators, just hand manipulated gears and levers that must be cranked hundreds of times a day.
The crew and equipment persevered though, and once again the line over Cumbres Pass was opened in time for a busy tourist season.
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