Morning at Monument
The passers-by are largely oblivious.
They speed through the weekend morning on their way to the green spaces and trailheads that weave about the pastoral splendor of the Colorado foothills, doing so in an effort to find respite from the migraine of jammed lanes along a weekday I-25 commute to whatever occupation pays the bills.
Their Jeeps and Subarus slip through a narrow gap in an ancient embankment; an opening abutted with stone and concrete and bridged with riveted steel, a legendary name there embossed in black-on-silver like some Jolly Roger of Fallen Flags flying from the mast of the grandest mountain tonnage mauler of all, its immortal defiance tattered and torn on the winds of change.
Yet, it will forever wave with the legend of sleek and brutish L-105s resplendent in shiny Alamosa green boilers, running boards trimmed in aluminum leaf, pilot shield bearing a sunburst as brilliant as the Colorado sunrise, throttle shoved in, safeties lifting in the cobalt sky as she holds back Pueblo-bound tonnage on the Palmer Divide, brakeshoes smoking and casting a haze about the landscape.
For all those who stand on the cusp of yesterdays, breathing in aromas of white sage and mountain pine under the vivid glow of clouds in the half-moon morning sky, the visage of 70-inch Boxpoks churning with a distinct and resolute 4-cylinder cadence is but an imagination away.
Despite the best efforts of altitude and friction and gravity---and God---the big 4-6-6-4 Baldwins roamed a system as rigorous as it was beautiful; a railroad steeped with twisting grades climbing to treacherous heights. Names like Minturn and Tennessee Pass and Soldier Summit knew the beat of their exhaust, their smoke clouding the skies over Floy and Seahorse Reef as it towered above the Green River Desert, while over-fire jets satiated the environment-conscious citizens of Provo and Salt Lake City.
Ten 3700s rolled out of Eddystone on the eve of World War II, with more to follow. And like so many young men who lined the sidewalks in front of the service recruiters in the days following The Day of Infamy, they would never see their 20th birthday, cut down not by enemy fire, but by the 5,400 horsepower of progress that EMD FT No.103 demonstrated.
Though valiant in their efforts to vanquish the Axis threat, the technology war that followed the end of hostilities was simply unwinnable. There was no putting the Diesel Genie back in the bottle. The doors at La Grange and Schenectady had been flung wide open, and the lights burned round the clock until the tracks at Burnham and Salida and Roper teamed with the aromas of diesel, the rumble of 567s and 244s sounding the death knell.
It was in the year 1956 that Judge McCarthy became one for the ages, and so too did simple-expansion on the Rio Grande standard gauge lines. Before the 1151 made her curtain call on the Creede run in the very last days of the year, the 3708 rolled into Pueblo, pulled the pin on the limestone train that had strained her drawbar since Salida, dropped her fire, and died.
There would be no reprieve, nor quarter given.
Nor would they suffer the indignation of neglect and graffiti in some city park, a proverbial Prometheus chained to a short stretch of going-nowhere track until the city council---save for the lone railfan member---deemed it had reached the level of ‘eyesore,’ and sent it off to be melted down into nails or razor blades.
The pigeons would find someplace else to roost.
But here, on the southbound downgrade at Monument, Colorado, Man’s machines still defy gravity and the elements as an SD70ACe of BNSF heritage noses out onto the old Rio Grande girder bridge with 110 cars of Powder River coal pushing it downhill towards Texas, dynamic brakes whining as the A/C traction motors in her HTCR trucks send current to the resistors in the grid housing, turning them nearly red hot as the fans struggle to dissipate the heat; no plume of spent bituminous to cloud the sky over the Palmer Divide, no moaning steam whistle to clear the track ahead, and no flailing rods as her front truck articulates through the curves on her way down to The Springs---
Just brute power designed to do an age-old job in a modern socio-economic environment.
And in that, it does it well.
Perhaps, for Wall Street’s intents and purposes, the Rio Grande is dead, its trademark being closely guarded by factions in Omaha.
But, to the faithful---
Those who are led by the ghosts of Kindig and LeMassena and Perry to rise early and stand amid the conifers and sage as the sun peeks over a Rocky Mountain ridgeline to light up a perfect Colorado morning---
This will always be Rio Grande Country.
Dare tell them otherwise.
---RAM
Rick Malo©2025
With Mark Cohen.
6:25am, August 16th, 2025.
Monument, Colorado.
Morning at Monument
The passers-by are largely oblivious.
They speed through the weekend morning on their way to the green spaces and trailheads that weave about the pastoral splendor of the Colorado foothills, doing so in an effort to find respite from the migraine of jammed lanes along a weekday I-25 commute to whatever occupation pays the bills.
Their Jeeps and Subarus slip through a narrow gap in an ancient embankment; an opening abutted with stone and concrete and bridged with riveted steel, a legendary name there embossed in black-on-silver like some Jolly Roger of Fallen Flags flying from the mast of the grandest mountain tonnage mauler of all, its immortal defiance tattered and torn on the winds of change.
Yet, it will forever wave with the legend of sleek and brutish L-105s resplendent in shiny Alamosa green boilers, running boards trimmed in aluminum leaf, pilot shield bearing a sunburst as brilliant as the Colorado sunrise, throttle shoved in, safeties lifting in the cobalt sky as she holds back Pueblo-bound tonnage on the Palmer Divide, brakeshoes smoking and casting a haze about the landscape.
For all those who stand on the cusp of yesterdays, breathing in aromas of white sage and mountain pine under the vivid glow of clouds in the half-moon morning sky, the visage of 70-inch Boxpoks churning with a distinct and resolute 4-cylinder cadence is but an imagination away.
Despite the best efforts of altitude and friction and gravity---and God---the big 4-6-6-4 Baldwins roamed a system as rigorous as it was beautiful; a railroad steeped with twisting grades climbing to treacherous heights. Names like Minturn and Tennessee Pass and Soldier Summit knew the beat of their exhaust, their smoke clouding the skies over Floy and Seahorse Reef as it towered above the Green River Desert, while over-fire jets satiated the environment-conscious citizens of Provo and Salt Lake City.
Ten 3700s rolled out of Eddystone on the eve of World War II, with more to follow. And like so many young men who lined the sidewalks in front of the service recruiters in the days following The Day of Infamy, they would never see their 20th birthday, cut down not by enemy fire, but by the 5,400 horsepower of progress that EMD FT No.103 demonstrated.
Though valiant in their efforts to vanquish the Axis threat, the technology war that followed the end of hostilities was simply unwinnable. There was no putting the Diesel Genie back in the bottle. The doors at La Grange and Schenectady had been flung wide open, and the lights burned round the clock until the tracks at Burnham and Salida and Roper teamed with the aromas of diesel, the rumble of 567s and 244s sounding the death knell.
It was in the year 1956 that Judge McCarthy became one for the ages, and so too did simple-expansion on the Rio Grande standard gauge lines. Before the 1151 made her curtain call on the Creede run in the very last days of the year, the 3708 rolled into Pueblo, pulled the pin on the limestone train that had strained her drawbar since Salida, dropped her fire, and died.
There would be no reprieve, nor quarter given.
Nor would they suffer the indignation of neglect and graffiti in some city park, a proverbial Prometheus chained to a short stretch of going-nowhere track until the city council---save for the lone railfan member---deemed it had reached the level of ‘eyesore,’ and sent it off to be melted down into nails or razor blades.
The pigeons would find someplace else to roost.
But here, on the southbound downgrade at Monument, Colorado, Man’s machines still defy gravity and the elements as an SD70ACe of BNSF heritage noses out onto the old Rio Grande girder bridge with 110 cars of Powder River coal pushing it downhill towards Texas, dynamic brakes whining as the A/C traction motors in her HTCR trucks send current to the resistors in the grid housing, turning them nearly red hot as the fans struggle to dissipate the heat; no plume of spent bituminous to cloud the sky over the Palmer Divide, no moaning steam whistle to clear the track ahead, and no flailing rods as her front truck articulates through the curves on her way down to The Springs---
Just brute power designed to do an age-old job in a modern socio-economic environment.
And in that, it does it well.
Perhaps, for Wall Street’s intents and purposes, the Rio Grande is dead, its trademark being closely guarded by factions in Omaha.
But, to the faithful---
Those who are led by the ghosts of Kindig and LeMassena and Perry to rise early and stand amid the conifers and sage as the sun peeks over a Rocky Mountain ridgeline to light up a perfect Colorado morning---
This will always be Rio Grande Country.
Dare tell them otherwise.
---RAM
Rick Malo©2025
With Mark Cohen.
6:25am, August 16th, 2025.
Monument, Colorado.