Today we drove to Antonito, CO to ride this train.  It is an all day excursion with a stop for lunch.  But first we had to pass these horses and look at the beautiful scenery. The sunflowers/black eyed susans have been gorgeous all over northern NM and southern CO this summer.

Here we go!

The train passes in and out of NM and CO a number of times and passes a couple of these old (and no longer in use) water tanks and some small railroad ties (that we thought maybe Grumpy could use) .

The scenery changed pretty regularly so we didn’t get bored.

We went through here. And then on to lunch.

After lunch (a good hot meal with a salad bar – um) we went through a couple of tunnels (what is a railroad ride without tunnels and steep drops!).

Unfortunately, about 8 miles from Chama (end of the line) disaster struck in the form of a derailment. The coal car came off the track which didn’t result in any major accident but we sat for 2-3 hours while they tried to repair it. Finally they directed us to walk about a mile back up the track where we could climb up to the road and take buses back to Antonito (where our cars were parked). As Bob said, they could have backed a train up the 8 miles and taken us to the buses in Chama a lot more easily than what they (and we) did. They were not very well prepared for the situation but the staff could not have been nicer.