Here is my story....Trains - My Childhood - My Dad
My Dad was a closet train fan. Because he was a distinguished attorney who sat on the board of an electric railway, he would not openly admit that he liked trains too. But on Sundays, we jumped in his car and chased Union Pacific 4-8-4s out of Denver.
The Carriage Company
Great Grandad Nathaniel Robertson was co-owner of Denver's distinguished Robertson & Doll Carriage Company. Grandad Howard Robertson was president of the Denver Tramway Corporation, which operated Denver's streetcars, and I spent my early childhood hanging around trains with Dad - the only social connection that was possible between a musician and a lawyer.
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Train of Tomorrow
In 1947, the Train of Tomorrow came to town. Dad took us down to the station and we stood in a long line of people for the opportunity to walk through what was the most magnificent train that I had ever seen! I was 5 years old. I used to try to remember every detail about this train experience, and at night, I sometimes dreamed of passenger trains like this one.
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The RDC Car
The following year, I got to ride on the first RDC car ever built, up to the Moffat Tunnel and back. Grandad was a close friend of Ed West, president of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, and that is perhaps why Dad had been invited. My picture appeared in the newspaper the following day. What fun!
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Last Day of the Streetcars
June 3, 1950, last day of streetcar operation in Denver - a sad day for me. Not for Grandpa, however, who is directly facing the camera in the center of the photo above - he was the one who got rid of them! This was the special dedication of the plaque installed at the intersection of Colfax Avenue and Broadway. It was raining. Mayor Newton spoke and the ceremony was broadcast live on KLZ radio. In the photo, to the left of Grandpa and facing him, is Dad, and I am behind Dad in my short suit pants. You can only see my leg. There was a string of streetcars awaiting nearby and everyone boarded them for a special last tour of Route No. 5, the "South Gaylord - Berkeley Park" Line. It was raining, and Dad said "no" to my begging for a last ride. We went home instead.
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Down at the Depot
Skip ahead to 1956. Mom and Dad decided that I needed to lean how to ski. They were always worried about me because I refused to get involved with any sports. The famous ski train that operated every winter from Denver to Winter Park was very popular, and that's were I would spend my Winter Saturdays, Mom and Dad had decided. Well, I loved trains, so the ski train was a great idea. And, I got to flirt with the cute girls from my school. Everyone rode the ski train! But... when I got to Winter Park, I did not want to ski, and hanging around the lodge just really sucked. So, one Saturday morning, as the ski train was about to depart for Winter Park, I looked out of the window and saw a round-end observation car! I used to love those cars that ran on the ends of passenger trains. I jumped off and took a tour of that train - It was the Texas Zephyr, operating on the Colorado & Southern Railway: a railroad I knew nothing about. I did not get back aboard the train and instead, I started hanging around the station on Saturdays. Mom or Dad would dropped me off for the ski train, and I would then check my skis with the Bellhops and hang out all day long, taking pictures with my baby brownie camera, and exploring the many passenger cars. Passenger trains came in and out of the station all day long.
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C&S 605
On one of these Saturdays in 1957, I was hanging around on the station platform when suddenly I heard an unusual sound. I looked up and behold, there was a steam locomotive pulling a string of freight cars an a track that ran through the station platform area. It belonged to the Colorado & Southern Railway and had a number 605 on the cab. I quickly snapped this photo, and then followed it to its destination, which turned out to be the railway's "Rice Yard."*. A roundhouse containing a number of steam locomotives was situated there, and it was surrounded by a number of other steam locomotives dead in the yards, waiting to be scrapped. For the next few years my childhood friend John Fresques and I would spend our Saturdays photographing steam locomotives working the yards, and after I turned 16 and could drive, pulling trains in Northern Colorado and Wyoming. We were capturing images, an memories, of some of the last steam locomotives that operated in the USA!
* Rice Yard was an amuesment park for me and my friend John Fresques, as we spent so many Saturdays photographing, and riding in, the steam locomotives there. Fittingly, perhaps, today Rice Yard IS an
amusement park!
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Down at the Yards
In 1958, I bought this 9x12 cm Zeiss Eicon camera with a Tessar lens so that I could get better photos, but the sheet film was too expensive to be used all of the time. John and I would take the bus downtown and get off somewhere near 15th street where the C&S tracks crossed Cherry Creek. Usually a steam locomotive was switching that end of the yard, and sometimes another locomotive was switching the other end. In the middle was the roundhouse and the yard office. Every single employee was friendly and supportive of us. We used to check the yard office first thing in the day to see where else steam locomotives were operating that day - sometimes in Globeville or on their way in with a transfer of cars from the CB&Q. Our only problems were created by the railroad detectives, from whom we often had to run. And when caught, we were royally chewed out and told never to return to the yards again. Fat chance!
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Alamosa
My good friend John's dad was a successful councilman and republican politician. He used to take John and me on trips to Southern Colorado when he was down there campaigning to the Spanish-speaking populations. That's how I discovered the Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge trains, still operating between Alamosa and Durango. Man, we always had a great time! We stayed in the Walsh Hotel in Alamosa, in a room that directly overlooked the yards, and I remember the steam locomotives switching the old wooden boxcars on hot July nights, while the pretty spanish-speaking girls with names like Martinez and Gomez laughed cheerfully in the street below, and the mariachi music drifted from a bar down the street. This photo of John and me was taken by a cheerful engineer in Durango. Today, the line from Durango to Silverton still operates as a tourist railroad and the Durango station and yard are still there. However, it is impossible to gain access to the yard, which is barricaded up like a military base.
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Mexico City
In February, 1959, I travelled with the Whiteman-Gaylord private school to San Miquel de Allende, and one day, somehow or other, I managed to get a ride into Mexico City and was free to roam on my own. Not bad for a seventeen-year-old kid. Here I am standing aboard one of the wooden narrow-gauge passenger cars on a train waiting to pull out of Mexico City's San Lazaro Station. The crews and all railroad personnel were very supportive and friendly, and one of them took this picture.
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Sugar Beet Country
The fall of 1959 was an excellent time for photographing some of the last steam locomotives to operate in the United States. I took this photo of a CB&Q steam locomotive in the Great Western Railroad yards in Loveland, Colorado. That's Mom's 1956 Nash Rambler on the right, and Great Western locomotive No. 51 is on the left. My late friend John Fresques is behind the wheel of the car. Mom naturally would have never allowed her 16-year old son to take her car out of Denver, and we were definitely forbidden to go anywhere near any railroad yards, so all of our operations had to remain secret. The best time to go to Northern Colorado and Cheyenne was when Dad and Mom were away for a weekend. I knew how to "hotwire" the rambler with a piece of tin foil, and so we were quickly underway after Dad and Mom left town. This worked well until one time when we returned and I accidently smashed the front end of the car into the end of the garage. John and I bought a new radiator and to try to repair the car before Mom and Dad returned, but we damaged the new radiator when we tried to install it! Man, did I ever get into trouble!
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The "PE"
I joined the Navy in 1960, and was able to ride and photograph the last interurban line of the former Pacific Electric, which ran from where I was stationed, in Long Beach, to Los Angeles. This is a photo of me taken in 1961 aboard a car in the Morgan Yard in Long Beach.
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The Tramway Books
In 1984, I moved from California back to my home state of Colorado. There I joined forces with Rev. Morris Cafky (with me above), Ed Haley, and Kenton Forrest to write the definitive history of Denver's Street Railways.
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