Winter 2024 on the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge

As the calendar has flipped from the winter and slid past the vernal equinox into spring, we present our retrospective on the 2024 Winter Season of trains on the Durango and Silverton. We focus not on the coal-burning 481, which is in its final days of operations as such, but instead, will follow K-36 480 and K-37 493 as they head up the truncated winter versions of the famed Silverton Train (cue up the C.W. McCall, but only halfway as we won't be stopping at Needleton, the Snowshed Slide, nor Silverton of course). We take you inside the Durango Roundhouse and onto the turntable in the predawn hours as 493 steps to greet the day. Watch as 493 struts her stuff pulling the string of golden coaches out of this wild west town in La Plata County. We take to the air above the Rio de Las Animas Perdidas, The river of Lost Souls as the train winds its way into the Silvery San Juan Mountains. We go deep into the Animas River Canyon under the peaks of Purgatory Ski Area. Adventure through the cut that Robert Redford jumped onto this very train in 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" in 1968 where we check out the wilds of this canyon near the Tacoma Hydroelectric Generating Station. Join us as we take to these vertical cliffs like a mountain goat, or Sylvester Stalone in 'Cliffhanger' (No, it's not that good).