Rio Grande Southern 20 Steam Train photo charters Durango and Silverton

0:00 bridge 4:57 torpedo more amazing train content-    • Chasing trains   Here’s a video just like this one    • Virginia and Truckee (V&T) #18 Steam Train...    Rio Grande Southern Railroad No. 20 is one of the most famous surviving narrow-gauge steam locomotives from Colorado’s mining era. Built in 1899 by Schenectady Locomotive Works as a 4-6-0 “Ten-Wheeler” for the Florence & Cripple Creek Railroad, it hauled freight and passengers in the Cripple Creek mining district until that line was damaged by flooding in 1915. In 1916 it was sold to the Rio Grande Southern, where it worked for more than three decades hauling trains over steep mountain grades between Durango and Ridgway. In 1949 the locomotive even appeared in the movie A Ticket to Tomahawk, temporarily dressed to resemble an older wood-burning engine. When the railroad was abandoned in 1951, No. 20 escaped scrapping and was preserved, eventually going to the Colorado Railroad Museum. After a lengthy and detailed restoration completed in 2020, the locomotive returned to steam, allowing a new generation to see and hear this historic Colorado narrow-gauge engine operate once again.