In the thick of swirling plumes of coal-fired smoke and greasy engine parts, 11 men, mostly middle-aged and clad in blue overalls and steel-toed boots, are getting ready for a day of class. Everyone’s standing in the tiny rail village of Chama, New Mexico, gazing at clanging, heaving locomotives.
“It’s a strange beast,” says Tom Chenal, a sheep farmer who hails from New Jersey. For him, it almost seems alive, “like it’s got a heartbeat or something.”
Each of the men here are signed up for a rare and remote school near the Colorado-New Mexico border: the Cumbres & Toltec engineer and fireman school.
To read this Colorado Public Radio story, visit http://www.cpr.org/news/story/if-you-want-to-drive-a-steam-train-you-can-learn-on-the-cumbres-toltec-railroad