To Shiny Rails

I only today discovered that the movie “Unstoppable” about a runaway freight train was based on a true story about a CSX freight train. I was watching a YouTube video about CSX’s “Crazy Eights Incident” and realizing that at every turn the story sounded just like the movie. Turns out, there’s good reason for that. The movie was based on this 2001 incident.

I attended the 13th annual Midland Days Symposium held at the John Wesley Ranch just outside of Divide, CO on September 9th. The event is co-sponsored by Midland Days at Divide, Inc., the Teller Historic and Environmental Coalition (T.H.E. Coalition), and the Divide Chamber of Commerce. Among other things, the Midland Days group is working to restore the Midland Depot (see a brief posting) currently located on the north side of Divide on Highway 24. This year’s program included:

Chapel Cars, by Ken Valles (I did a Parlor Car Chat on Chapel Cars)
Life/Times of A.E. Carlton, by Dave Martinek
Samplers (a slideshow), by Mel McFarland
Richard Newell Homicide, by Dwight Haverkorn
Carlton Mill, by Art Crawford

As we were staying over in Saratoga for a few days on our journey to the Grand Tetons, we visited the Saratoga Museum which happens to be housed in the town’s 1915 Union Pacific Railroad Depot. It originally served the Saratoga and Encampment (S&E) lines. The Museum opened in 1980 at the depot’s/museum’s new location directly across the highway from the Saratoga Airport. The museum contains many interesting artifacts from much more than simply the railroad history.

On our way to the Grand Tetons, we stumbled upon this very nice depot/museum in Centennial, WY just east of Medicine Bow. It’s called the Nici Self Historical Museum. The depot dates back to 1907. There are a number of other buildings on the property that you can also explore and contain lots of artifacts. The Museum was formed in the 1970s and is named after Berniece “Nici” Self who was one of the founding members.