Number 6 and train at Leadville, summer of 1936

[Jim Courtney]

I'm bidding on another August, 1936, photo on eBay, one that I've never seen published.  This time number 6 is about to depart from the Leadville depot with the morning passenger train to Denver:




Just why did the train crew spot the coach so far from the depot?

[South Park]

  This photo reminds me of how I discovered "The South Park" and why this
single RR still captivates my excitement for such things 40 years on ...

  It was 1977 and we were traveling 285 from Buena Vista to Denver and cresting
Trout Creek Pass, I see this line of telegraph poles heading off at an oblique angle
from the highway along a raised bed of bare RR ties.  We stopped and had a look.
It was like nothing I had ever seen before ....  this tiny-scale RR bed with short, little
ties ...  what was it ?  It took a lot of digging in pre-internet days to figure out what
an obscure RR bed in an obscure, remote location had once been, but once I found
intel, it just got better and better.  As if the South Park's locomotives were exceptionally
cool in the early days, they somehow managed to pull off what I consider some of the
most aesthetically "perfect" looking engines ever with those hooded Pyle National
headlights and Ridgway cinder catchers.  The rest of the RR was just added "window
dressing" !  

  This photo exemplifies "perfection" as I would like to see it, were I able to wave
my "magic wand" and be surrounded by operational, every day things like what we
see here.  To just go about my business and have this as part of the backdrop of my
life is what my "wet dreams" are made of.