Royal Gorge Scenic Railroad

Well, The Royal Gorge Scenic Railroad has got to be the ultimate park train for my trip. At least it's hard to imagine anything grander. It's not actually part of the Royal Gorge Park but rather a private enterprise on the road leading in and part of Buckskin Joe's Frontier Town. It was early in the day, so the ridership wasn't so great but it was worth the ten bucks. The lady in the gift shop was a real huckster, selling the train to all who entered ... "Three mile, 30 minute ride to a view of the gorge." Ten dollars a ticket adds up pretty fast for a family so not everyone was buying and it took a while to get enough for a trip. The ride starts off plain enough, through a grassy field with nothing much to look at. Gradually the terrain drops and gets rougher. Blooming cacti adjoined the track along with some rocks that glittered and turned out to have a large mica content. Around a curve and a huge trestle appears off in the distance. But before we crossed that one an even larger one appeared under us. There was a lot of engineering and labor that went into laying these tracks. The roadbed loops about as it descends toward the rim, just like a full size railroad that must take a round-about route to maintain a reasonable grade.

At the promised viewing platform, the engineer announces "five minutes." We actually stayed longer than that and he didn't seem too concerned. The platform was large, sturdy and shaded, with room for all to get their pictures etc. You can see down into the river and both directions in the gorge and are about 300 feet below the suspension bridge and 4860 ft away, according to my GPS.

Like most large park railroad, the layout is a loop to loop so the trip back offers a slightly different perspective of the same terrain.

BTW, the redheaded "fireman" next to the engineer is a large Irish Setter that rides on "most" trips.