Railroads have fascinated me since I was little. I grew up a city boy and there were no tracks nearby to sit beside and dream of steam engines and train robbers.
I guess my fascination came from my mothers’ father. He was an engineer on the Rock Island Railroad from 1898 to 1915. I imagined myself at the throttle steaming towards the mountains of Colorado on those ribbons of steel. Railroad yard, Rockwood, CO That dream never came true. The ribbons of steel were mostly replaced by asphalt corridors. Steam was replaced by diesel fuel, the locomotive by tractor-trailer trucks.

Over the years, my career path took a different fork in the road from the dream of the rails and took me into different places. It never diminished my fascination with the steel rails.
I have the pleasure of living here in the Four Corners region. Aside from being diverse geologically, topographically and culturally, we have two operating narrow gauge railroads.
The old railroads are rapidly fading into our distant memories. Only a handful are still in operation as tourist attractions. Colorado Railroad Museum, in Golden, Colorado has done a fabulous job of collecting and preserving Colorado’s railroad history. Sadly many of the old locomotives were scrapped during the Second World War for use in the war effort.

This project is my attempt to pay tribute to those pioneers that helped build this country. My efforts are going to be limited to the San Juan Extension of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and the four railroads built by Otto Mears.

Thank you for visiting my website. I hope you have a pleasant journey through the Four Corners. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave them in the Comment Section.

Thank you,

Bill