Osier is used as a stopping point for lunch roughly midway on the line from Antonito, Colorado to Chama, New Mexico. Before the railroad, Osier was a toll station on the road from Conejos to Chama. It was once a small community with a store, rooming house for travelers, section house for railroad employees' families, depot, coal loading dock, covered turntable and cattle pens. Here we met #489 on the way back north. This locomotive is a K-36 class; one of ten 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge, Mikado type, 2-8-2 steam locomotives built for the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (DRGW) by Baldwin Locomotive Works. They were shipped to the Rio Grande in 1925, and were first used along the Monarch Branch and Marshall Pass, but were later sent to the Third Division out of Alamosa. The K-36s were used primarily as freight locomotives. They were built with special valves to allow brake control between locomotives while double-heading. #489 was retired in 1962 and went to the Cumbres & Toltec in 1970. It rejoined the line in 2008 after extensive reconditioning. The whistle being used on #489 was donated to the C&TSRR by John Reed, the late president of the Santa Fe Railroad. He claimed the Santa Fe whistles had a nicer sound than the Denver & Rio Grande Western whistles normally used on the K-36 locomotives.
