Casey Jones Railbus

Silverton, Colorado is the home of the Casey Jones rail bus. This rolling museum piece was originally built to serve as an ambulance for the mines around Silverton, but was also used as transportation. It is based on a Cadillac automobile drive train.

We had the good fortune to follow it on a narrow gauge motor car trip thru the mountains on the Durango and Silverton rail line.

The steering wheel actually operates the brakes

Fuel is located in an overhead tank and is gravity fed

V8 Cadillac engine

Happy travellers

Julie enjoying the day

Watching the passenger train travel by

Classic narrow gauge view

The valves next to the spark plugs are to allow fuel to be dribbled into the cylinder to allow a cold engine to start easier.

Adding coolant

Heading back to storage in the car barn

Ready for another trip

What's under Blue Mesa Reservoir

In the early 1960's the decision was reached to build a reservoir to the west of the town of Gunnison Colorado. This was to be a huge water retention body of water to be used for irrigation and flood control. This meant that some of the finest trout waters in the Gunnison river would be inundated and under several hundreds of feet of water once the lake was full. The resorts and hotels that catered to the fishermen would also be lost.

The Lake was put in and is now a tremendous asset to the area and offers its own brand of excellent fishing for salmon, trout and other cold water fish species.

We ended up taking a tour of the Pioneer Museum in Gunnison, Colorado and found someone had taken a map of the lake and identified the various businesses, towns, resorts and other spots of interest that were lost under the lake and where they where located. This seems like something that should be retained as a digital record so I photographed the map and description to have on  my blog for future reference.

Snowmobiling in the High Country

We live in the mountains at an altitude of 9,400 feet. One of the benefits of living in the area is the ability to enjoy winter sports of all types.

Snowmobiling is one of those winter sports. Our neighbors often travel thru the mountain Jeep trails in a snowmobile caravan from our subdivision over to another called Arrowhead on the other side of the mountain.  Arrowhead has a restaurant we all gather at to enjoy a meal and then we head back to our place. It is just under a 60 mile round trip.

This was my ride for the day. It is a 1989 Yamaha Enticer 400 LTR with 2800 miles. That means it has a long track and can seat two people although I rode solo for this trip. The bag strapped to the seat with the orange straps is a first responder first aid kit. It is the kind of thing you hope to never need but handy to have. I have newer sleds but for a variety of reasons this was the only one ready to ride. Sort of like riding an antique thru the mountains - a 30 year old sled.

We all met at the trail head to the Jeep trail over the mountain at 10:30 AM. It was minus 7 degrees so we were all bundled up and warm.

The scenery along the way is really something. Lots of powdered snow that it turns out is quite deep. In this particular spot it was about 4 feet deep. If you stepped off the sled you sank to your waist in snow. The folks in the distance are digging out a sled that slipped into deep snow

We travel in a line thru the trails

Eventually you end up on the Alpine Mesa where there are acres of deep powder to explore with your snowmobile. This is quite the playground for snowmobilers.

After a while it is nice to remove the helmets and relax a bit. Driving a snowmobile on powder is a bit of a balancing act and you build up a sweat.

30 years of snowmobile design evolution is shown in this image. The really big improvements are in suspension design. The newer ones can glide over humps and bumps at speed whereas I had to slow down to take them.

There is more of course - electric start, electronic fuel injection, better gripping tracks, newer styling and the list goes on.

There is a place up on the Alpine Mesa where you can ride to overlook the Uncompahgre mountains. It is a rather spectacular view.

Occasionally someone would zig rather than zag so it was nice to have others to help get the machine unstuck.

We made it to the Inn at Arrowhead and had a nice meal and compared snowmobiling stories

We made it back to our neighborhood late afternoon and headed to our homes to relax. It was 26 degrees when we arrived back home. Nice day for a ride.