For years my longtime friend, Erik Lindgren, who lives in Arvada, Colordo … has been roaming the Mountain West with his camera to photograph trains. Off and on he’d post one on Facebook or send me a new one he was particularly excited about. By now, he has at least a couple of thousand in his collection … so, I said to him recently, “how about sending me a group of your favorites covering a variety of railroads and locations and I’ll share them with my friends as a website Musings feature?”
In the above photo from November 2009, it’s locomotives #487, #488, and #489 of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad — steam engines built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works nearly a century ago for the Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge railroad — triple-heading to pull a heavy freight up one of the steepest grades on the railroad’s San Juan Extension, which reaches into the San Juan mountains of southwestern Colorado. As a result of my request, here are another dozen examples of Erik’s great work!
Before I go on, Erik and I first connected more than two decades ago … not through the love of trains, rather from the love of the style of music commonly known as “beautiful music” or “elevator music” — we were both members of an E-mail chat group made up of those who were “aficionados” of that music and enjoyed discussing its various aspects.
The Photography of Erik Lindgren
To show the breadth of Erik’s subject matter, spanning from historic to modern locomotives:
Union Pacific #1943, the Spirit of the Veterans locomotive, rolls out of a beautiful early morning fog into a hoarfrost coated Crescent, Colorado. If this photo from November 2018 looks familiar, maybe it’s because Union Pacific used this image on their 2019 Christmas cards and calendar!
Still in Crescent, Colorado … Erik shares that this is a favorite spot with the crews and is often referred to as the most beautiful view in North American railroading, on par with Morant’s Curve in Canada’s Banff National Park. Heavy snowfall is still clearing at the Great Divide as the awaited eastbound comes into view. There was snow blindness for sure but it was worth the wait for this November 2016 photo.
Before moving on to other subjects, let’s return to a couple of additional narrow-gauge scenes:
The daily tourist excursion train lead by #487 is just about at the curve where Fred Jukes always photographed the Denver and Rio Grande Western’s San Juan Extension. In this September 2017 photo, you see the line is still in service as part of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad operation.
Deep in the Narrows north of Chama, New Mexico, just this past February, we find the Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge steam-powered rotary plow OY encountering its first snow of the season in Cumbres Pass.
Snow-shoeing to photo locations is a must when the snow is 3-4 feet deep. Again, in this March 2020 photo, you see rotary plow OY displaying its might with help from two pushers. The location is below the tangent and 3% grade at Windy Point just beyond Cumbres Pass … where the tracks are at 10,000 feet in elevation.
And here in 2020, what would a photo essay of railroading in the mountain west be without a shot of the restored and out-on-the-tracks Big Boy!
Here, the Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 steamer is leaving Denver headed home to Cheyenne when it encounters a sudden November 2019 blizzard.
Did you know that Amtrak operates a seasonal weekend run out of Denver to the Winter Park ski resort, a two-hour rail journey west?
Most trips are sold out, as the parallel Interstate is generally clogged with vehicles headed to the same destination. Here the Winter Park Express is just breaking into the sunshine at the end of the fabled Moffat Tunnel as it prepares to arrive at the resort in Winter Park, Colorado.
Amtrak’s California Zephyr is just passing Tunnel 12 deep in the tunnel district — that area to the east of Winter Park where the rail line crosses the Continental Divide — after several feet of new snow has fallen overnight. Over the decades, trees have closed up many of these great photo spots. Here, the heavy snow has pulled the branches down enough to open a good line-of-sight view in November of 2019.
After a chained drive and a mile-plus walk fraught with danger and deep snow, Erik made it to a spot where his Mavic Pro 2 Hasselblad drone could be flown to capture this exquisite scene … an amazing place reserved for professional climbers with proper safety gear, especially after a heavy snow fall. This area is known as the Flatirons, lying southwest of Boulder, Colorado. Thankfully, the BNSF Railway sent a glorious westbound train when the sun and daylight was just right. As with the Union Pacific photo above, this is another shot that may look familiar to some, as BNSF included this image in an upcoming calendar and also in their advertising.
Fall and winter collide briefly for a fleeting wonderful morning that lasted until around 11:00. Here a Union Pacific coal train is threading the tangent at East Tolland, Colorado, on the same line where we found the Amtrak trains pictured above. What a scene to absolutely behold … as it’s one that’s under full sun, with aspens in gold, an inch of snow in the valley plus snow-capped peaks. Erik notes that the day before this October 2019 photo, the peaks were without snow.
After repeated attempts over many years, Erik finally managed to catch an eastbound at Dale Creek, Wyoming, just before the golden hour wanes. Here’s a fast moving Union Pacific “stack-pack” train cutting the chilly 10-degree air at the Sherman Granite formations on the original transcontinental railroad, the Overland Route.
As the last of a “baker’s dozen” of beautiful photographs by Erik Lindgren … another look at the steam locomotive which captures everyone’s attention whenever it comes into view:
In this November 2019 photo … crossing over a dry arroyo, Union Pacific’s Big Boy is tearing up the rails at 50 miles per on its way to Denver.
I do hope you’ve enjoyed this photographic tour of railroading in the United States Mountain West region. If you’d enjoy another set of photos by Erik, please let me know.
All photos copyrighted and property of Erik Lindgren,
Excellent photos, and an excellent story.
Thank you Marlin, great privilege to be featured by you on your website!
So VERY cool to see them in action
I am in awe! What gorgeous photos of some majestic trains!