Another comfortable nights sleep, and clear blue skies and around 18°C when we woke up.
Today’s outing was a rail trip along the Royal Gorge through which the Arkansas River flows. The Arkansas is the 5th largest river in the US. We had one stop to make before the railway station… the hospital. The truck hospital that is, so the rear brakes could be replaced. The repair shop had offered to take us to the station after we dropped off the truck, which solved a lot of problems for us. Even better they offered to pick us up when the train returned. Well above and beyond their service requirements.
We got to the station and picked up the tickets, we were also told “no food or drinks could be brought onto the train, bags would be subject to search”. A little heavy handed I thought, but it seems the owners are trying to establish the train as a “classy” restaurant as well as a train ride. We ate our packed lunch on the station!!
There was an old steam engine at the station, it would have been neat if it was in use but I am not sure it would have enough pull to get all 16 carriages moving.
Instead we had one of these at either end and a power car in the middle!
The carriages were all ex- Canadian National Railways from the 50’s, some had been converted to open air ones.
Open Air Coach
Inside of Coach
As we left the station we passed the city’s first gated community, the local jail.
This establishment played a large part in the history of the gorge. About 125 years ago, inmates were put to work in the gorge to build a water pipe to transport water from the mountains into Cañon City. The pipe was built using redwood in sections similar to a barrel , instead of using hoops to keep the pipe together it appears it was wrapped with chord.
The pipe was in use until 1973 when it froze solid and left the city without water for 3 weeks. That was the end of the pipeline! Although there is now water in the city, the outlying areas are not connected to the system. In fact at this campground, there is no groundwater available, and a water truck delivers to the site every day.
Shortly after departure we were followed by a “drone”
We passed under a suspension bridge someway along the gorge, up until 2001 it was the highest suspension bridge in the world at 955 ft above the river. The bridge resulted as a bet between two Texans as to whether it could be built or not. Building started in 1929 and was completed in only 7 months at a cost of $350,000.
The black “blob” in the top right of the picture is a cable car that runs across the gorge.
Below are some general shots of the gorge trip
At one point the gorge narrows to 30 ft across, at this pint there was no land to build the railway on so they built a “hanging bridge” suspended from the rocky side to carry the tracks.
The first half of the trip was spent in the open air car, for the return we went back to our seats to escape the sun and heat!
Back at the station we phoned the repair shop who sent a van to pick us up. When I went to pay the mechanic asked me to go and look at something with him. Uh Oh, we had an estimate from yesterday, but I had a horrible feeling that it was going to increase. He wanted to show me the cause of the problem, the rear caliper had got suck in the on position causing the brake pad to wear. He was full of apologies, but there was no way they could have foreseen this when the gave me the estimate yesterday. I was figuring about $150-$200 more for the fix. In fact it was less than $50! As they could not reach me for approval to do the extra work, they went ahead anyway, they only charged me their price for the part and didn’t charge for the extra labour. What service!!!
The truck is now sqeakless, and stops very well.
On the way into town this morning Lyn spotted a quilt store, so we headed there on the way home. It turned out to be one of the ones we couldn’t find yesterday. Although we put the correct address into the GPS it took us to the wrong location!
More trains tomorrow.