D&RGW Freights Narrow Gauge in the 1950s and 1960s DVD

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This comprehensive hour-long film documents 1950s and 60s Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge steam hauling freight in scenic Colorado. Watch the 400 class engines pulling freight in tandem, sometimes double heading at the front of the train, sometimes with a puller and a pusher mid-train or at the rear.

Experience the D&RGW as a real working railroad when narrow gauge steam brought critical supplies and industry into the Rocky mountains in Colorado and northern New Mexico. Long strings of coal and lumber roll Eastbound. Farm machinery and new Chevies are delivered atop flat cars. Unit trains of tank cars groan over the 4% grade up Cumbres Pass on their way to the refineries. An oil and gas boom in the Farmington region in the 1950s kept narrow gauge traffic alive hauling oil field pipe to the area. Included is a beautifully filmed vignette of the rarely captured Farmington line. Oil pipe was the commodity that kept the narrow gauge a healthy respectable money earner when many in management wished it would dry up and blow away. No tourist line here, but a real railroad hard at work, photographed by the best in the business: Keith Pregler, Herb Craig, Mac Owen and Glenn Beier. 63 minutes

Cover photos and most above by John B. West