Brief History of the Rio Grande Southern
The Rio Grande Southern was a narrow gauge railroad located in southwestern Colorado that existed from 1891 to 1952. It was built to access the newly discovered mineral deposits in that area, and ultimately opened up the vast area it served to other markets (livestock, lumber, and tourism) and helped develop that area through its sixty year history.
It ran from Ridgway in the north to Durango in the south, connecting in each place with the Denver and Rio Grande Western, another famous narrow gauge railroad. The railroad was only profitable for a short time in its early history in the 1890s, and spent much of its life struggling to maintain itself through two world wars and a depression.
The Rio Grande Southern (RGS) has had much written about it, and is thoroughly documented. But one must actually visit the area it transversed to get some idea of how unusual a railroad it was. The lure of the Rio Grande Southern can best be expressed by those who have written extensively about it, and the passages that seem to best summarize why this long extinct railroad still inspires those of us who choose to recreate it in our modeling efforts are reproduced below the map, in the romantic and emotional language of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg.
"The outstanding characteristic of the Rio Grande Southern Railroad was its complete and overwhelming improbability. Except for the evidence of photographic record, it would be possible to doubt it ever existed, and the doubt would be amply justified. Except in the extravagantly optimistic railroad thinking of the time and place, the Rio Grande Southern could never have come into being. In the biological sense of the word, it was a sport, valiant, lonely, tenacious beyond the call of duty or reason. Say its name with bugles in the lexicon of the Old West, for the Rio Grande Southern was a lost cause, an allegory of futility when it was first conceived and it ended its long, unquiet life contributing to the essence of the destruction that was Hiroshima.
"Perhaps in the Valhalla of railroads where the lights on the tangents are green forever, the Rio Grande Southern has achieved some tranquility and repose. They will be wholly out of character.
"Terrible tempered, like its builder Otto Mears, to the end the improbably Rio Grande Southern nevertheless confounded prophets of doom for decades and outlived many a more robust and promising contemporary. The Friar Lawrence of the narrow gauges, its entire life span a record of confusion and mistaken missions, it left its impress on the elemental Colorado earth and in the memory of two entire generations of the American West. In the roundhouse of eternity there are neither derailments nor creditors and its rest is untroubled in the surrounding night."
From Narrow Gauge in the Rockies, copyright 1958, by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg
My fascination with the Rio Grande Western is not only due to its extremely beautiful and rugged locale, but also because it represents for me the foresight, grit, determination, creativity, and hard work required to build, maintain, and operate it, all of which qualities I greatly respect and honor.
I hope you enjoy this homage to a uniquely American railroad.
Michael McCaffery (December 2007)