Choo choo Chama

So I went to Chama, and while I am too lazy to finish the race report for that one, or the one the week after, I can at least give you pictures of cool old trains. Now, I took almost exactly the same photos a few years ago (here) but these are new ones. This is the Cumbres and Toltec Narrow Gauge Scenic Railway.

Me and the rotary snow blower train car, I still can't get over how cool this thing is:


Coal fired engine


I would like to live in this one:


A small part of the yard:


Check out the rest of the set

I choo choo choose

To take too damn many pictures of trains.



See the rest of the set from a fertile hunting day at the Santa Fe station here on Target Salad on Flikr

Rolling about santa fe, yet again...

Spent some time this weekend tooling around Santa Fe on the picnica, even more photos. Enjoy...

derail?

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Oh!, Derail!

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Some young and green goatheads hardening up for another rough fall:

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I will go and append those images on my popular post on goatheads


Now with 50% more dog!

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Sky and wires at the corner of Chama and cerillos

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watching a caboose on the Santa Fe spur from Ohori's

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Boring same old folding bike santa fe post

Hit the Lamy trail last week, took the same pics as always, enjoy

thought it was DRY mud:

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not so dry:

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open car with train wheels

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with housings!

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While the zia caboose slowly decays

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In the arroyo there are not roadrunner footprints:

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Mutant chicken? Raven? Pheasant? Velociraptor? Nagini?

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Thanks to a recent article in Naturwissenschaften 94, 657–665 (2007)I learned that they found nice roadrunner like fossil footprints in China. How did they know they were roadrunner like? They had zygodactyl toes. Which means one of the front three toes is rotated clockwise so there are two forward and two back, giving footprints like a nice X look when they hit the ground. Unlike the mystery snake footprints I found above. Hopefully the article link is available to all, as they have some nice pictures of bird footyprints.

Cumbres and Toltec Narrow Gauge Railroad

A few weeks back when Elena and I went up to Chama so I could race the Chama Chili Classic (here), I spent some time tromping and photoing about the Chama station for the Cumbres and Toltec Narrow Gauge Scenic Railroad. It is a vestige of the massive NM-Colorado narrow gauge rail system that used to serve the ranches and mines all through the rockies. The narrow gauge railroads (3 feet) were able to traverse the high passes in the rockies where it was cost, curve and grade prohibitive to send a normal gauge (4'8") railroad.

Chama station is up at 7863 feet and hops over the Cumbres Pass at roughly 10,000 feet before dropping down into Antonito, Colorado 64 miles later.

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They keep the coal fired engines in here during the winter

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The Cumbres and Toltec Narrow Gauge Railroad was on the same line as the possibly more famous to cyclists Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. The Antonito to Durango part does not exist anymore. The rail line was part of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway. The cyclists know of the Iron Horse Classic where you can race the train between Durango and Silverton. But thanks to my buddy Clay, I learned that there was once a Chama-Antonito bike race where they raced (and easily beat) the train from Chama to Antonito. Clay is a long time NM resident, ex pro bike racer and handily, a civil engineer who spent some time working for the railroads. Thus he is a font of info on pretty much anything I don't know about regarding trains, bike racing and New Mexico. (Wikipedia filled in the rest, see here).

Anyhow, I got really excited when I saw these puppies:

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Check it out! Turbine rail engines! My mind just about exploded, fortunately Clay set me straight, they are rotary snowblower trains for clearing the track, often taking 14 hours to clear the pass when the line opens for tourist season. Not quite mind blowing, but cool nonetheless.

The yard in Chama had a huge number of cars. Pullmans, cabooses, stock cars, etc. They also had a huge rebuilt stockyard down the road from the station a bit.

Some pullmans:

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Caboose:

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Hmm, I am running out of entertaining facts about Chama. They had a truly insane number of cars for a tourist line, including this thing:

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A nice pullman in front with possible long shot president Gov Bill Richardson's name painted on it:

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A long shot of the trainyard, there were so many more, but the 2-3feet of snow made it hard to get around:

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Anyway, maybe when the parents visit we will take the long rail trip up to Antonito. We drove through Antonito last week on the way to the Stampede ski race. It did not look quite as nice a little town as Chama, but it looked OK for a visit.

Return of the son of the zia caboose...

A month or so ago I spent a Friday in Santa Fe, dropping the car off to get some maintnance way down south. I packed the Picnica in the car and rode up the arroyo de las chamisas trail to the lamy trail. Alas the going was slow as the trail was really muddy with the rapidly melting snow:


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I was reduced to walking a few miles as the bike became encrusted:


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But it was worth it as when I got to the zia caboose as the owner, Hunter, was hard at work inside. He generously gave me a tour and explained his plans for the train and some other insight on the area.

I learned that the cupola was not originally part of the caboose, Hunter fabbed it out of the ceiling panels and some other steel bits. He and his friends have put in a full hot water on demand water system for the shower and sink and wired it for electricity a-la a motor home. He is planning on having an office/bed/bath and kitchenette and placing the caboose along the tracks near the second steet brewery along with a his future restored train car projects.

Hunter in his caboose:

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Another shot of the inside and Hunter here

Although it really does not look he did that much on it since the first time I photographed the inside, the amount of work in wiring and plumbing were pretty impressive. He is getting ready to start finishing the inside. He is in a constant battle with the local graffiti artists to keep his caboose clean. The "do not hump" pullman parked next to his caboose is loosing that battle:


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Hunter says that the "do not hump" car is getting a $50k new suspension system and will be restored for the santa fe southern (warning clicking link yields extremely obnoxious music) tourist line from Santa Fe down to the amtrack station at lamy. I was glad to meet Hunter, he has lots of ideas and fab skills and I am eager to see how the train finishes up over the next months.


After more hiking, I rode downtown for a lunch at tia sophias and parked my tiny wheeled burro next to the iron one near the lensic.


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See previous entries on the zia caboose here

Sandia Crest Snowshoe race report

So before the report a bit of a preamble...

SO no fooling there I was in the hospital last night bleeding away happily when the doctor comes in and looks over the wound. The conversation went something like this:

Me: So, can I do a snowshoe race tomorrow?
Dr: I don't see any reason why not.

The good doc pokes around a bit and then looks up thoughtfully, conversation continues:
Dr: So, where do you go to race horseshoes.
Me: Uh..
Dr: er snowshoes...
Me: Up in the mountains, usually where there are hiking trails covered in snow.

some more poking about:
Dr. What kind of horseshoes do you race in.
me: Uh...

Me: Smaller snowshoes than the backcountry ones, which are lighter...etc.etc.
Dr. Hmm, horseshoe racing..
Me: Uhhhh. So if I go SNOWshoe racing at 10,000 feet tomorrow and my heartrate gets to 200bpm there will be no problem, right?
Dr: no, should be OK.

Doc leaves me, a RN comes in a bit later to clean the wound.
RN: So what kind of race are you going to tomorrow?
Me: Snowshoe
RN: Ah, because the Doc told me that you were horseshoe racing...

So in conclusion I was definitely allowed to race horseshoes at 10,000 feet today, but I am in still unsure whether snowshoeing was OK. Onwards to the longwinded report:

So the race was up there at the very tip of sandia mountain overlooking Albuquerque. Zach and I left Los Alamos at just before 7 and made it up to the top of the peak via 14 (the Turquoise trail) in well under 2 hours, not too shabby and a beautiful drive. I had never been up there before, it was pretty damn cool, but cold as crap. Maybe it hit 20 by racetime, but not too much more. The peak is pretty bare sporting an impressive array of radio towers:


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and a damn good view all over the place, looking SW over the fog enshrouded ABQ:

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Looking east, or north east, or something:

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Me and Zach prerace overlooking ABQ. We should form a band and use this as a cover photo. It turns out we both play Ukelele a bit, so keep an eye out:

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Anyhow, the race. Lets see, cold, maybe 100 people (going by the bib numbers), pretty great turnout. The race consisted of a wide start, and then essentially singletrack snowshoeing in a big loop around the top of the peak. It was beautiful and there was a ton of snow. The race started fast, but I got a good start and ended leading the race briefly when Zach postholed and nearly bit it.

A short time later, two really fast guys blew by us and dissapeared up the trail with zach shortly behind. I was feeling OK in 5th or so for the first kilometer or so. We dropped down a fairly steep offcamber hill and I noted that without heel crampons, I could not go down as fast as the rest as I was sliding off the trail. Then, essentially, I exploded in a big mass of falling down repeatedly. I think what happened was that the trail was off camber and my snowshoes were pivoting on the toe spikes and getting the tail of the uphillside over the nose of the downhill side causing me to fall suddenly and violently often up to my elbow in snow. I was cleverly protecting my wounded hand, by landing on my right forearm and left hand. Getting up was harder than one would expect. Needless to say, I started going backwards. I may have fell 30 times over the next few km. Sheesh.

After the top 5 or so, the guys who were passing me (digging myself out of snow) were not faster than me, they just were not crashing to the snow. So I caught and passed a few of them a bit as the race ended with a long gradual up hill. The last hill was relatively level, so I finally went full throttle and only fell once. I think the final position was 10th-15th in a time of 41 minutes, results might be here at some point.
Zach finished at 36 minutes in third a few minutes back of the really fast guys, well done Zach!

I am a little disapointed in the race, I think I would have been easily in the top ten, maybe duking it out for a top five without the repeated falling, but overall it was a good workout at 10,000 feet on a beautiful course and a pretty good morning. They had a nice spread of coffee, hot chocolate, bagels, Odwalla juices and bars and a hilariously frozen cheese platter at the end.

Some more photos from the rest of the day:


The guy in the car next to us was kicking it super old school:

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From just south of Madrid, NM, some good use of boxcars:

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NJ-NY trains

My folks live about an hour from NYC by train. Hazlet to Penn Station in NYC via the NJ Transit's North Jersey Coast line stretches from the beaches up through the raritan bay to the meadowlands of north jersey before disappearing below the river and depositing you in the bowls of Penn Station.

The sweeping cattail swamps of the meadowlands are both the indigenous landscape and the default decay of the crumbling factories located along the tracks. Stand still long enough and the cattails will get you too.

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While stopped waiting for the tracks to clear in secacus station.

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As you get north of the raritan river, you can start to see the NYC skyline peeking over the cattails, swamps and industrial detritus of North Jersey:

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Of course your day of trains has only just begun, from Penn Station you can get whisked anywhere the subway can take you. Here Prince St Station:

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Happy New year all. A few more back log posts to come and then reports from xc skiing and the new year.

A return to the zia caboose...

Elena and I had some shopping to do in santa fe. I hate the southern portion of santa fe shopping, so elena graciously drove me to the southern cerillos hell and did the shopping while I toodled about on my picnica. I met her downtown a couple hours later and helped her shop at the great weakness, whole foods, and then on back to the alamos.

Along the way I took some photos for your viewing pleasure.

I took the arroyo chamisas bike trail that runs from the sams club gas station to the santa fe high school where it connects to my old favorite the lamy trail. They had put in a frisbee golf course on the trail since I last rode it. There also was some really funny graffiti paint over modifications, some sort of ongoing battle between the kids and the man. There were big square black paint on the trail where presumably grafitti was painted over. Next someone came along and painted the squares with white paint into little heads:

Last time I rode the trail there were 10's of these, but the black censor paint covered all but two this time...

Next the lamy trail and its dirt trail. Some of the arroyo crossings were a bit sketchy on the 14" wheels, but I managed. You get to see all sorts of neat trestles on the way. This one seemed built in incremental haphazard repairs:

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Shortly thereafter I found a couple of xtracycle warantee registration cards on the trail. Weird eh?:

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Then I arrived to the watering post and the zia caboose. First it looks like the "no hump" train is up on blocks and getting farther on its way to being stripped:

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I checked out the zia caboose and it is definitely getting rebuilt. Lots of progress since last visit. It has proper locks on the door and the windows are blocked off. But you can see lots of repairs, like new windows on the side, new conduit and the like.
Picnica and the zia caboose:

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Big zia made of circular saws on the far side of the train:


I ended the ride at the historic santa fe station:


Grabbed some coffee at the too hip to serve you in a timely fashion aztec cafe, got some comic books at the local comic book store and rode on to whole foods just before dark. It was a good tiny ride on a nice warmish afternoon.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I think I may have saw carfree families goats somewhere on the path too, I almost took a picture, but someone was doing yard workwith the goats and I did not want to freak anyone out.