On Saturday, September 23, Colin Mellin, Justin Cesar, John McDowell and Paul Brown did a little reshuffling of equipment to get things ready for next month’s Halloween event and other fall events. After getting engine 104 running after the summer off, the crew coupled up to the Haunted Railcar, and moved it out of the shop area over to the depot tracks. John McDowell, the creator of the Haunted Railcar, will be working to get this year’s frightening experience tuned up just right. After the car was in place, the crew rearranged the cabooses to line up following engine 104. This required using the Trackmobile to make the “run around” move. We then parked the equipment and took a lunch break.

After lunch, Colin, Justin and Paul headed out to make some repairs to one of the switches on the track leading into the shop. They did a bit of work to secure the points better when the switch is thrown. The crew tied up and headed home after a very nice first day of Fall.

I have included a few pictures of the equipment switching moves we made.

– Paul

On Saturday, September 16, the Museum hosted a train ride event to celebrate going Back to School! Volunteers Ron Roach, Maureen King, Dwight Maxey, Kendall Crouch, Colin Mellin, John McDowell and Paul Brown entertained about 70 guests with a short train ride in very pleasant weather, almost like Fall. We did see a bunch of children who seemed to be thrilled they were riding a train and not in the classroom! It was busy enough that I was only able to get a few pictures on a break between trips.

Please mark your Calendars for our next event, the Cemetery Express, on October 28, the Saturday before Halloween, and don’t forget we do three train ride events leading up to Christmas in the month of December. At this time, we don’t have an event scheduled for November.

– Paul

Enjoy a train ride on our red, white, and blue “Patriot” engine! This event is Saturday, September 16, from 11AM to 3PM behind the Pueblo Union Depot. Train ride tickets are $15 for a ride in the engine, or $10 for a ride in one of our three cabooses. Children under 3 ride free! Cash or check only, please. Train ride tickets can only be purchased during the event. Purchase your tickets at our Gift Shop, a converted caboose behind the Depot, near where the trains depart. Each train ride is approximately 20 minutes, so there will be multiple opportunities during the four-hour event to ride the trains.

There is no admission fee to attend the event itself. The charge is only for the train ride.

For a list of all of our planned events in 2023, click here.

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On Saturday, September 9, a crew consisting of Dwight Maxey, Colin Mellin, Reid Adams, and Paul Brown worked the entire day pulling weeds, some of which could be considered small trees! We concentrated on weeds that have grown along our main running track. A couple weeks back, we did some mowing and pulling to clear out another section of track. Today, everything had to be pulled out by hand due to the weeds being in the track bed and close to switch stands and such.

As the day progressed, the crew was hampered by high temperatures and the work slowed considerably towards the end. I have included two sets of before and after photos to show the work done.

– Paul

On Saturday, September 2, a small crew braved near record heat and humidity to do a bit of work at the Museum. Dwight Maxey, Colin Mellin and Paul Brown replaced a tie in our main running track. As you can see in the accompanying pictures, we use our ties until they just about turn into toothpicks! It’s always satisfying when we can remove a totally rotted tie and replace it with a solid piece of wood! After this little bit of work was complete, we needed to retreat to the indoors to eat lunch and cool down.

After lunch, we started to work on removing a flat rear tire from our work truck, but we couldn’t remove the lug nuts with the equipment available. So we finished the day by removing a dead tree that conveniently fell over into the back of one of our pick-up trucks! It was a simple matter of driving the truck out to the dumpster and breaking it down with the Bobcat.

The crew left a bit early knowing that we had finished just a small portion of the many projects we have at the Museum.

– Paul