Chugging

Chugging. For those of a certain age and a certain disposition the term chugging has one connotation. For me, it may be somewhat different when I think of chugging. It brings to mind the smell of wood smoke along with the huff, huff, huff of big wheels turning and clouds of steam escaping into a cool mountain morning.

That’s why, every so often, I get the hankering to seek out transportation powered by the outdated, but still mesmerizing, hissing, grinding, and clanking of a steam locomotive. Living in the modern metropolis that is Denver, Colorado you might wonder where I could get my rail fix. Yeah, Denver’s got Light Rail and a sometime working Train to the Plane, but they can’t compare to the chug, chug, chug that you can feel in your bones when a steam engine gets slowly up to speed. Fortunately, just 40 minutes or so west of the crowded city lies a little town from a bygone age called Georgetown which still harkens proudly to its 1800’s mining roots when picks and shovels and gold and silver were all the rage. And to get all that rich ore down from the mines there were little engines that could winding their way up through forests of Aspen and Pine (at least until they cut all the trees down for building the mines). Today the Georgetown Loop Railroad hauls a treasure of a different kind - tourists who come from all over and can only vaguely imagine what Colorado in the mid-1800’s must have been like. Of course, the guides do their best to share stories of yesteryear about the men and boys who toiled in the many mines that beckoned those seeking their wealth into the bowels of Mother Earth. Most came away with little more than mining-induced lung diseases and a grudging admiration for how hard it is to earn a living doing hard-rock mining.

The railroad must have been a godsend, far better than relying on horse and burro power to haul the tons of ore required to yield ounces of precious metal. Completed in 1884, the Georgetown, Breckenridge, and Leadville Railroad, as it was first known, was considered an engineering marvel of its day. Conditions between Georgetown and Silverplume at the top of the hill were tough enough that the tracks stretched twice as far as the straight line distance between the two mining camps. Built as narrow gauge (the rails are 3 feet apart compared to 4’ 8 1/2” standard gauge) the route features up to 4% grades, horseshoe turns, and four bridges with the Devils Gate High Bridge as the crowning achievement. The line was dismantled in 1939 but was rebuilt in the 1980’s in partnership with History Colorado and today transports tourists along the three miles of operating track and back 129 years.

There is also an optional mine tour into the Lebanon Silver Mine shaft. Don a hard hat and crouch (they were a tad shorter in the old days) as you walk 500 feet underground. The shaft takes you into Republican Mountain. Above you the present day traffic of I-70 flies by with nary a thought of what lies below. We visited in October and the Mine was decked out in its Halloween finery which only detracted a. little from being able to appreciate the real history of the place. The scary skeletons and monsters don’t quite do justice to the more than $3 1/2 billion (in today’s dollars) worth of silver and gold the Lebanon yielded.

Still, if you’re in need of a rail fix, the Georgetown Loop Railroad is not bad and will likely leave you yearning for more. Here’s a short video of what you can expect...