To Shiny Rails

I had the good fortune today to visit two depots in Castle Rock, CO. The first (pictured last in the gallery below) was from a distance. It’s the dark green building, a 1911 AT&SF Railroad Depot building that today sits as pictured along the southbound Joint Line route. That’s as close as I could get. The other was a total surprise. I did not know that the Castle Rock Historical Society and Museum was an old Denver & Rio Grande Railroad depot built in 1875. They’re not normally open on Tuesdays, but I just happened to meet some of the staff and board members at a meeting in town and voila, they invited us over! The two depots are basically across the highway (I-25) from each other on the south end of town (“Old Castle Rock”).

While Lynn and I were visiting Steamboat Springs, CO, we found the old Steamboat Springs Depot. It was built in 1909 by the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, but rail service ended by April of 1968, and by 1977 the building housed a theater. Union Pacific Railroad hauls coal through here today. The interior is now a beautiful art gallery and events center. They managed to make the conversion to an event center and still keep some of the great features of the depot, like the bay windows. They’ve also incorporated an amazing wall system that amounts to lots of panels hanging from the ceiling on tracks (get it!) that can be moved around to create all kinds of configurations for the room. Those are trackside hot springs in two of the photos below. The tracks are still live there today, and I did watch the signal drop from red to yellow to black; but obviously never saw the train as it was moving away from us.

My wife and I recently visited the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, CO for the first time. We had a great couple of hours, including a 15-minute train ride. They’ve got quite a collection of full-scale historical equipment. All the day’s photos are here.

My sister Vickie and I played disc golf at Palmer Lake this afternoon. The course is also known as “Rockin’ the Rails” because the “front nine” go right alongside the railroad (BNSF/UPRR) right-of-way from north of the pedestrian bridge over the tracks on the mountain side of the tracks (holes 1 and 2) to south of the bridge and east of the tracks (holes 3-9). The “back nine” are closer to the lake. Had we been stronger disc throwers there would definitely have been a concern about discs going into the railroad right-of-way. We almost finished the 9th hole before the weather drove us off the course (rain, cold, windy). Here’s a big clue for newbies on this course: the 7th basket is back toward the bridge from the 7th tee. We went the other way, quite a ways, to find nothing. The 8th basket is buried in very high, thick bushes. If you happen to be a railfan as well as a disc golf player, you’ll love this course. If you’re there a couple hours, odds are a train will come through.

Here are a few pics from the January TECO Model Train Show that Matteo and I attended at the Colorado Springs Events Center.

We took our California visitors over New Year’s weekend to the top of Pikes Peak via the BROADMOOR Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway. First time on the total rebuild of the system. Took several years and about $100 million. As it turned out, we road on one of the cars that remains in the stable from pre-rebuild days. All the photos start here.