Trains

There’s something otherworldly about a train—a mysterious power beyond ordinary horsepower. As a kid, I would lay in my bed listening for the deep rumble of the midnight freights, a sound that I felt in my bones long before I could hear it. Then the whistle would pierce the air and echo across the frozen valley, a mournful cry in the night. I’ve heard lots of folks, especially the newcomers, complain about the trains interrupting their sleep, but for me they have always been soothing. Like an old clock striking the hour, or church bells ringing on a Sunday morn. Often unnoticed but always there, countless tons of steel hissing and squealing through the middle of town at all hours of the day and night, through blizzards and sunshine, providing a century of background music as the generations of Fraser families live out their lives.

The first train came through Fraser in 1904 via Rollins pass, a small gap in the Front Range of the Rockies a little over 11,000 feet high. Known to engineers as “The Hill”, this amazing bit of road building (as in RAILroad) consisted of more than 30 tunnels and an elaborate series of loops and trestles designed to get trains up and over the continental divide on a year round basis. The purpose was two-fold: First, tycoons wanted access to the resources of northwest Colorado, such as beef, timber and coal, and second, Denver was at the end of the line and feared for its future lest it be eclipsed by Cheyenne to the north or Pueblo to the south, growing cities situated on cross-country rails. The only solution was to blaze a twin steel trail up and over the mountains as soon as possible, so that’s what happened.

Despite the hardships, such as avalanches, tunnel fires and 40 foot snowdrifts, the railroad was remarkably efficient, delivering newspapers, mail, and wooden crates full of fresh bread to all the towns between Fraser and Craig, where the line ended. During the winter the dirt road of Berthoud pass (later US 40) would be inundated by snow, remaining that way until late spring when crews would shovel it out by hand. This meant that for up to 6 straight months the train was the only way in or out of the snowbound valley, unless you wanted to snowshoe. Catch the eastbound at 2 am and if all went well you’d be in Denver by 8:30 that morning, just in time to catch the trolley to high school, which my Grandmother did a few times.

Eventually Rollins pass was bypassed by the Moffat Tunnel, a seven mile passage that went under the great divide, and a few years later the Dotsero cutoff was completed, which connected the railroad to Pacific bound rails and put Fraser right on a true transcontinental railroad. Around this time the “Victory Highway” was paved and made into U.S. Highway 40, and modern snowplows allowed the road to stay open year-round, more or less. By the 1970’s, when I was growing up in Fraser, local service was obsolete, and rail traffic consisted mostly of the long haul freights and coal trains that one sees today.

There were still remnants of the glory days to be seen however, such as the California Zephyr. Three or four times a week this gem would pass through town en route to Chicago or San Francisco, gracing the valley with streamlined orange locomotives and a string of glassy silver dome cars, a real blast of 1950’s sleekness and space age style. Another glimpse of railroads past were the old stockyards next to the siding, a whole mess of rotten and splintered boards with gates that still opened and closed. Lots of rusty nails too. My mom wouldn’t let me near the place, telling me that they were old and rickety when she was a kid, but most of the rest of the kids in town spent plenty of time there.

My first ‘hike’ was a walk on the tracks with Grandma. She showed me the trail that used to parallel the rails, and then we walked up towards the cemetery, stepping on the crossties and avoiding the globs of tar. The crunch of black cinders underfoot, the old spikes scattered about, the smell of creosote...everything having to do with the railroad seemed filthy, but in a good way. We got to the trestle and turned back cause you never knew if a train might come out of those woods.

Back then all the engines were of the Rio Grande Railroad, black with orange or yellow lettering, sometimes 10 or more locomotives to a train, with a caboose at the end. The Rio Grande locomotives are rare now that Union Pacific owns the line, and cabooses disappeared in the mid-1980’s, but back then there was always one, sometimes two or three, usually orange. Often these were followed by a set of two “pusher” engines which would help the long coal trains reach the apex of the line at the Moffat Tunnel. These are obsolete now as well; I guess the new locomotives are more powerful.

The bulk of a train consisted of the usual cargo: tankers full of oil or ammonia or who knows what else, black or white but always stained with unknown grime; gondolas laden with woodchips or stacks of lumber from the local sawmill; grain hoppers and boxcars covered with graffitti; autocarriers laden with fresh Detroit iron and glass, and plenty of piggy back semi truck trailers, with the UPS and postal service trailers always at the very end. But most of the time it was King Coal, as mile long strings of 100 or more coal hoppers passed through town from remote Colorado strip mines to the power plants and steel mills of Front Range cities: 10 trains a day, 6 days a week, for the past 3 decades or more.

Every so often a non-Rio Grande engine would appear, causing some excitement: Union Pacific, the green of Burlington Northern, or the grey and red of the Santa Fe railroad. Much of my youth took place during the height of the Reagan era cold war, and about once a month we were reminded of this fact when a military train would pass through town. No cannons or tanks, but plenty of jeeps, troop transports, fuel trucks, trailers and heavy equipment, all of it painted up in camoflauge or olive drab like GI Joe toys. It was a strategic shuffling of war implements, conjuring apocalyptic images of doom which frightened yet intrigued me all at once.

The best and rarest occasion of all was the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus Train that would pass through each fall on its way to Denver. For days before it actually appeared, every whistle would divert the entire school’s attention away from lessons as we peered out in unison for a glimpse of what just might be the circus train. But luckily it always came in the evening. We would park up near the main crossing with dozens of other folks in the know and wait. Soon it would appear, a series of Rio Grande engines pulling the painted train. There were no open cages or anything like that, but it possessed an aura of timeless excitement comparable to a gypsy wagon of old.

Despite my love for trains, they were often the target of our bored mischief. My first taste of train track delinquency took place one day after kindergarten. At this point there was not yet an Amtrack nor a train station, and both sides of the tracks through town were lined with enough big willows to provide hiding places galore. The elder Klancke girl and I took sticks and smeared tar on the rails, hoping to either stop the train or cause it to slide like in the movies. We tried many times, but were always disappointed (and secretly relieved) when the train just rolled on by. In the end, all we ended up doing was permanently staining our clothes with industrial grade tar—only gasoline would get them clean again. Eventually, hoping to derail a train, we started putting rocks on the tracks, but they would simply be shattered by the sheer weight of the engines. Rumor had it that a plain old quarter could derail a train, but none of the 20 bucks or so worth of coins we tried over the years managed to net us a train wreck.

The first trackside fort I ever saw was on the other, bad side of the tracks. The collective gang of Morrows, Murrays and Tuckers had built an elaborate rail tie bulwark designed to protect them from the buckshot and salt pellets that caboose men were rumored to shoot at hoodlums who dared to throw rocks at the trains. Soon we on the eastside had our own forts, starting with some hay bales right next to the old depot building. But this was right on the road, dangerously close to adult supervision, so we moved 100 yards up the tracks near what would later become the Divide condos. This wasn’t too far from my Grandparent’s house, which gave us easy access to my Grandad’s gardening implements to trim willow branches or transplant weeds to help hide our forts. Once they were built, we would gather up rocks for ammunition, and then we would wait.
And wait.
And wait some more, now and then checking the tracks for a hint of rumble or peering into the switch lights for any color, red or green, for either meant that something was on the line. Soon that tell tale rumble sent us rushing to our designated spots, where we prepared to attack the train. The anticipation was intense, and the fear factor would build as the locomotives got closer and the ground started to shake. Suddenly the enemy was upon us and we would all let go with a flurry of cinders and stones...rocks shattering harmlessly against 40-ton coal cars. Soon we were using slingshots and bb guns, which were small potatoes compared to the sight of exploding glass when 2 siblings let loose with 12 gauge shotguns on a trainload of shiny new automobiles…my older cousins, who shall remain nameless, did this once back in the early 60’s.

There were still a few hobos riding the rails back then. Once a shirtless and bald tattooed giant gave us a wave from his dangerous resting place between coal cars as we walked the summer tracks to baseball practice. He had just come through the tunnel and was stained with soot. Another time, an evening game of tag was interrupted as we rode our bikes up to the tracks behind the new school by the St. Louis Creek trestle to throw rocks at a passing freight. Gondolas, tanker cars...suddenly I saw a group of Mexican hobos lounging in an open box car just as a rock bounced off the car right next to their heads with a CLANG! We fled in a panic, fearful that they were going to jump off and hunt us down.

While the trains were a constant source of amusement and games, there was always an element of danger and death as well. Stories of getting sucked under a fast moving freight turned out to be false, but the story of my granduncle losing an arm when he fell across the path of an oncoming train was true. Once, in the first grade, a chemical leak in a tank car forced us to spend recess indoors, which led to a grand game of school wide dodge ball in the tiny gymnasium. Years later an Amtrack derailed in the Fraser Canyon, resulting in no deaths, but giving us a rare spot on the national news. The worst incident occured in the mid-80’s when a train smashed into a car up at the 4 bar 4 road crossing one frigid winter night. My step dad was a tow truck driver and was one of the first on the scene. They looked everywhere for the body, assuming that it had been jettisoned from the vehicle upon impact, but they simply couldn’t find it. Turns out she was still in the mangled remains of the automobile, dead silent in the midst of a frantic search effort.

Incidents like this were rare, however, and most of the time the trains passed through town without fanfare or disaster, just like they have for the last 100 years. The rails provide a sort of long term calendar for Fraserites to guide their lives by: trains throughout the day and night are like the hours on a clock; the Amtrack is like the rising and setting of the sun (but don’t set your watch by it!); the annual circus train was like a new year’s celebration; and the ski train was the harbinger of winter and hordes of tourists. Longer cycles and stages of life were mirrored by the crews of gandy dancers that would come through twice in a decade to replace the rails, sleeping at the siding in bunkhouse cars next to the bizarre array of machinery unique to the railroad.

The railroad looms large in the history of Fraser, for it brought sawmills, settlers, and civilization to the cold, quiet valley, and led to the very creation of the town itself. These days, for better or for worse, it carries the seemingly endless tons of coal necessary to power our computers, lights and teevees, and will, in the future, surely play a larger role in the transport of both freight and people. Certainly the railroad is big and important, but it’s the small things that have a hold on my heart: the way the rail sinks and flexes as a loaded coal car passes over it; the squeals and squeaks and occasional CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK as one of the flatwheelers passes by; the flashing lights and clanging bells of the crossing gates; the lingering hiss of the rails right after the last car goes by; walking the thousand mile-long balance beam on the way to little league games and elementary school, and, of course, the sound of the whistle at night. Sure, the mountains are the soul of my Fraser, but the train is its beating heart.