Blast From The Past – Mid 1980’s – I can’t recall the exact year this photo was made at this time. A bit more research will nail it down though. This is my friend Norm Grant and his son Dale Grant at the Colorado Railway Museum at Golden, Colorado. Norm, his wife Gloria and Dale (my Godson) were avid volunteers at the Museum for many years and they helped out on firing and running Rio Grand 346.
I have always been interested in photographing trains, but I attribute Norm and Dale as the ones that fired up that passion to what it is today! We were all stationed together at Rhein Main Air Base in West Germany for three years and we chased and photographed trains around West Germany and other areas of Europe during that time. When I was reassigned to the states in 1981 and Norm left the service we have continued to be family over the years and meet up a various places for visits and railfan trips. Although Norm has left this world for a better place, his son continues today as an engineer for the BNSF Railway.
According to Wikipedia: The Colorado Railroad Museum is a non-profit railroad museum. The museum is located on 15 acres at a point where Clear Creek flows between North and South Table Mountains in Golden, Colorado.
The museum was established in 1959 to preserve a record of Colorado’s flamboyant railroad era, particularly the state’s pioneering narrow gauge mountain railroads.
The museum building is a replica of an 1880s-style railroad depot. Exhibits feature original photographs by pioneer photographers such as William Henry Jackson and Louis Charles McClure, as well as paintings by Howard L Fogg, Otto Kuhler, Ted Rose and other artists. Locomotives and railroad cars modeled in the one inch scale by Herb Votaw are also displayed. A bay window contains a reconstructed depot telegrapher’s office, complete with a working telegraph sounder.
The lower level of the museum building contains an exhibition hall which features seasonal and traveling displays on railroading history. The lower level also contains the Denver HO Model Railroad Club’s “Denver and Western” operating HO and HOn3 scale model train layout that represent Colorado’s rail history in miniature.
The Robert W. Richardson Library houses over 10,000 rare historic photographs, Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway no 683 was built in 1890 by the Baldwin locomotive works and spent much of his time, pulling coal trains in the eastern United States it was donated to the Colorado Railroad Museum in July 9th 1982.
Denver & Rio Grande Western railroad no 346 was built in July 1881 by the Baldwin locomotive Works in Philadelphia Pennsylvania does 346 has its very own class sister the locomotive number 318.