Galloping Goose! Having just turned on the wye, the former RGS Motor #5, aka "Galloping Goose #5", backs slowly into the Silverton Depot at the end of a late afternoon excursion on the Durango & Silverton. Back in the early 1930s, a struggling Rio Grande Southern Railroad needed a way to cut costs in order to continue to provide passenger, freight and mail services to its customers. Unfortunately, the loads on some of its scheduled runs were not sufficient to justify regular, steam-powered trains. In an early example of "out-of-box" thinking, the line conceived the idea of a hybrid railbus-railcar that could carry small loads of people, freight and mail....and the Galloping Geese were born. The front half of this critter is (more or less) a conventional bus and the aft half is basically a boxcar. It rides on three trucks, the second of which is powered (note chain drive on this truck). When the "geese" were initially deployed, the passengers rode in the bus portion of the car and freight/mail was carried in the boxcar portion. The result was pretty successful in keeping the RGS solvent...until the US Mail contract was pulled around 1950. When this happened, the railroad adapted again, cutting passenger windows in the boxcar portion and installing seats so the "Motors", as they were called, could be used for scenic excursion service. Although the RGS is no more, six of the seven "geese" that were built survive. Most of these are in museums. Unit #5, seen here, is the only one that still occasionally runs wilderness excursions, typically on the D&S or C&TS. She is owned by the City of Dolores, Colorado and is operated by the Galloping Goose Historical Society of Dolores.
While Colorado's narrow gauge steam railroads are the major draw, the state is also home to several diesel-powered tourist railroads that take passengers to the Royal Gorge and other sites.
