FL9

Not a bad locomotive lashup, and a pretty fair poker hand also.  In the summer of 1998 when it was evident that the UP would be closing the Tennessee Pass line, I scheduled one more vacation dedicated to that area of Colorado.  I followed another car of railfans as we left Fort Worth at 5:00pm and drove all night to reach Parkdale at sunrise the next morning.  I don’t think I could pull that off again now at the advanced age of 51!

After a day of rubbing shoulders with other fans catching trains with pure SP power over the Pass near Minturn, the next day I decided to drive back to Parkdale on a “fishing” expedition.  It was overcast east of Leadville, so everyone else decided to stay around Minturn and Tennessee Pass.  The clouds became broken around Salida, and in the late afternoon I heard the dispatcher talking to the Rio Grande 5403 West just east of Canon City.  Hoping for at least a Rio Grande leader, I set up next to the highway where the tracks emerge from the Royal Gorge at Parkdale.  When he rolled out of the Gorge, even though one cloud had decided to obscure the sun, I felt like I had discovered the Holy Grail when I saw this pure lashup of SD40T-2’s.

The Rio Grande #5403, #5411, #5386 and #5383 had an empty coal train in tow as they snaked on west through the canyons.  I managed to catch him in multiple locations both with and without sun.  Here is one of the full-sun shots near Cotopaxi along the banks of the Arkansas River.

I kept expecting someone to show up and join in the chase, but I was alone at each spot that had been crowded the day before.  I lost the light before he reached Leadville, and so I headed on over Tennessee Pass to Minturn to have dinner at the Turntable Restaurant with the other foamers.  When I arrived and everyone was joking at my expense about my heading into the clouds for the afternoon, no one believed the story of my catch since this was pre-digital.  But an hour later when he pulled up outside the back door for a quick crew change, no one was laughing but me.

I feel that for me this was one of those lucky chases of a lifetime, never to be repeated.  Thank goodness for the invention of the camera, and so I’ll share more from that afternoon sometime in the future.