# Going back in time



## Pocketfisherman (May 30, 2005)

I was lucky to spend last week in Colorado with my brother. One of our stops was the Cumbres and Toltec narrow gauge railroad which makes a 69 mile run between Chama NM and Antonito CO. Here's a few shots, B&W seemed appropriate to me.





































Larger versions and more shots here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smopho/sets/


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## Arlon (Feb 8, 2005)

Nice shots. We're thinking about trying to make a winter visit to Chama and do the winter portion of that ride. We did the Silverton/Durango train last year and had a good time. Fun way to see the neighborhood.


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## Pocketfisherman (May 30, 2005)

The great thing about the Cumbres versus the Silverton is that in Chama, you have full access to the railyard, shop buildings, depots, roundhouse, etc. In today's litigation ridden society, I found it amazing that you could pretty much go anywhere you wanted to on the property and take pictures. Especially so considering that the operation is jointly owned by the states of NM and CO. On the Cumbres, the ride from Chama up to the summit and the midpoint Osier was steep and scenic overlooking a nice valley. But the spectacular scenery was on the second half between Osier and Antonito with elk, gorges, high trestles, and sheer cliffs. It would be spectacular in winter until the snow sets in and closes the pass. They run until Oct 15 in the fall. We saw plenty of snow on this trip, and the road through Cottonwood pass was only opened up and free of snow on June 5 this year.


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## The Machine (Jun 4, 2007)

choo choo


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## RustyBrown (May 29, 2004)

PF,

These are really cool. I have a buddy on another board that this is right up his alley so I sent a link to your site. Here's his if you have an interest.

http://www.photochimps.com/pp/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/368


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## Koru (Sep 25, 2006)

wow, neat photos. what a great looking place to park up for a while with a camera. i was just going to suggest sepia and found one (4556) in flickr - it sure suits that colouring.

thanks for sharing these Bill

rosesm


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## Pocketfisherman (May 30, 2005)

Karen,
I was playing around with the ones on my flickr site and added grain and sepia tint to a few of them. I find it a bit ironic to use digital to degrade the image quality on purpose. But it does suit the mood of the images.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smopho/sets/

Rusty,
Thanks for the link to your friends gallery, good stuff there.


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## stargazer (May 24, 2004)

Love the old trains. Those are really cool. We rode one from bright angel at the Grand Canyon...Neat to ride on.


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## deebo (May 22, 2004)

Hey man, thats my Country!!! We have a cabin between Antonito and Chama, and love the train there. One of our favorite places to fish up there is on the Rio de Los Pinos right there at the Station at Osier. We park at the Train station where they feed you lunch, and Walk the tracks upstream to get out of the canyon. You just have to know the train schedule so you dont get caught on the tracks at the wrong time. We always really try hard to hook up when the train comes by...gotta show off for the riders, haha. We leave for Antonito a week from today. Where did yall stay? What else did you do in the area? Glad to see your pics, we have some great pictures of the train, from the river looking up.


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## Pocketfisherman (May 30, 2005)

You are a lucky man to have a cabin in that country. We rode Chama to Antonito and took the bus back to Chama. We stayed at the "Chama Suites" which was pretty nice for a family run small hotel and only $76/night for two of us. The Chama and Los Pinos are still running too fast for dry flys right now. Besides hanging around the railyard in Chama, we went to the Cottonwood Pass, St Elmo, and Leadville. We hiked quite a bit of the old abandoned rail line that used to serve St Elmo and found some old rotted out decrepid remains of a couple of barely recognizable boxcars. Did some gold panning on the Arkansas river headwaters and creaks around leadville and came back with a couple of grams of flake gold and two small pickers. Also scrounged through some of the tailing piles at the abandoned mines around leadville and found some nice pieces of Pyrite, Muscovite, Galena, Mica, and Quartz.


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## deebo (May 22, 2004)

next time you are up there, you need to head up the Conejos to Platoro, the old gold and silver mining town (Plata and Oro). You passed right by our cabin in the bus. We are about 12 miles west of Antonito on Hwy 17 on the river. The rivers are coming down each day, and they should (i hope) be hammering drys by next week. My folks got there today so i should be getting reports starting in the morning.

I will dig up some of my pictures of the train, while fishing


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## deebo (May 22, 2004)

*Los Pinos*

here are some pics of the train taken while fishing the Los Pinos about half way between Osier and Cumbress...


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