08/27/2025
🚂🍂 The countdown to color is on! Soon, our trees at Down Home Lodge will turn golden and fiery, just like the breathtaking views along the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. 🌄
✨ Book your stay now and be here when nature puts on its most remarkable show!
Saluting our K-36 Locomotives: A Century of Steam with #489
Our No. 489 is one of ten locomotives from the Class of 1925, K-36, 2-8-2 “Mikados” that were built specifically for the Denver & Rio Grande Western by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, PA. The C&TSRR also owns No. 483, 484, 487, and 488 from this class.
No. 489 had a distinguished career as a helper engine hauling freight and passengers over the Rocky Mountains out of Chama. Back then, it took two K-36 engines to haul 15 freight cars up the 4 percent grade of Cumbres Pass: a road engine at the front and the helper “pusher” engine in the rear. Heading west out of Antonito, sometimes a third engine was put in as a mid-train helper. 489 was the last narrow-gauge locomotives overhauled in the Salida shops at the D&RGW.
No. 489 was always solid and powerful. It was No. 489 that served as a helper engine on the last D&RGW revenue train over the Gunnison-Salida Marshall Pass in Colorado in May 1951. In 1980, a fully restored No. 489 blew its whistle once again and became part of the stable of hardworking operational locomotives for the C&TSRR.
No. 489 was the first of the C&TSRR's K-36 engines to be converted from coal to oil burning. The steam that drives the locomotive is created by oil fire instead of coal. The 489 - and also the 487 - now burns reclaimed lubrication oil. The conversions of 489 - and later 487 -help ensure the C&TSRR can continue to operate all season long.
Are you coming to our Century of Steam celebration, August 13 - 17 where you can check out all our K-36s?
