The Denver & Rio Grande Western was the famous narrow gauge (3 foot) railroad in the Colorado mountains. As their business failed in the 20th century they gradually abandoned their mountain lines, so that by 1970 there was only one segment still in operation. They kept part of it as the famous Durango and Silverton tourist railroad, and sold a very scenic 60 mile section to the state tourist boards of Colorado and New Mexico, who run it as the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad.
The C&TSRR is more of a museum than a railroad, because this section of the system was primarily used for freight. There are terrific steam engines and lots of freight cars, but hardly any passenger stuff. It's clearly the best historic railroad, but you have to be somewhat of a hard core enthusiast to enjoy it.
The "Friends of the C&TSRR" is a club that has for the past nine years been working to restore an old pile driver, used to build retaining walls and trestles. This project was just completed a few weeks ago here in Colorado Springs, and the equipment shipped by truck to Antonito to rejoin the system. We tried it out a few weeks ago with some depressing results, but this past weekend got a proper steam line from a locomotive to the pony engine in the pile driver, and managed to get it working properly. Here are a couple of pictures from the event.
No graffiti involved... :-)
Pile driver "OB":
Hooking up the steam line:
Demonstration:
Utsukushikereba sore de ii
Rock drill:
And I am NOT arguing! :-)
BUT: John Henry was driving the drilling steel into the rock so it could be blasted for making train tunnels. That is what a rock hammer is used for, although actual rock hammers run on air, not steam. http://www.ibiblio.org/john_henry/steel.html
Pile drivers drive huge piles (bigger than telephone poles) into the ground to make retaining walls or the foundations for bridges. You can't do that by hand, you have to have a pile driver.
I appreciate this discussion! :-)
The story is, of course, about a heroic man versus a machine. It doesn't really matter what the machine is, the matter is that it recorded the transition between human labour and machine labour - and is thus iconic.
Years later I made a movie about a Tamrock rock drilling machine with thee drilling jibs that used lasers to align itself automatically to ensure tunneling accuracy. I actually thought of the John Henry legend during that time: it was about me as an 11 year old singing about a myth about which I understood basically nothing, compared to a later appreciation of the problems in involved in making tunnels through rock.
Me, me, me. But that's what it's about....... the baggage that comes with imagery. You can't be me, I'm taken
The finished version is now up as the Midnight Thought for this weekend's Midnight Oil at the EENR Utsukushikereba sore de ii
Geography:
