The railroad operates passengers excursions year round, with abbreviated trips in the winter between Durango and Cascade Canyon. When the snow gets deep, the railroad will dispatch its vintage Denver & Rio Grande Western flanger to break trail, but officials say even that is having a hard time keeping up with the deep snow this winter. Officials tell Trains News Wire the flanger has been operated on multiple occasions in recent weeks.
Purgatory Resort, a ski area just north of Rockwood, has received 40 inches of snow in the plast seven days and another 12 inches is expected in the coming days.
“The safety of our passengers and crew remains our number-one concern as we work carefully over these next several days to clear the railroad line so we may continue operations once this storm moves out of the area,” says General Manager John Harper.
Mother Nature has not been kind to the narrow gauge railroad in the last year. In June 2018, the railroad was shut down for weeks due to a nearby forest fire. Then in August, it was closed again due to mudslides.
Just got back from a wonderful weekend of photos and riding on the weekend photo trains. First time I ever saw a narrow gauge flanger actually in action; lots of pictures. Also the picture I didn’t get was seeing the Galloping Goose flanging snow as it ran through the 3+ inch snow storm on the flats north of Durango. Great memories.
Robert Morris:
Ditto. I stop reading as soon as I see “because of climate change.”
An entire article written about weather with no mention of climate change. Bravo Justin Franz.
Likely as not mother nature will not be kind in the future either, not unless we get another strong el-nino out in the pacific. I think we are headed for an ice age and that will mean the end of everything over the northern end of the country. True, an ice age is still probably a thousand or so years away but if one is coming, it would certainly explain a lot of the extremely bad weather around the world in the northern hemisphere this year.