Description

Volume 1, Number 2 of the Prospector, our professionally produced and beautifully illustrated quarterly magazine featuring the finest work of historians and other experts on all aspects of Rio Grande Railroad was published in quarter 2 of 2002. The 34 page issue contains seven articles.

In the first article D&RGW GS Gondolas by Jim Eager Jim describes Rio Grande fondness for GS gondolas with a complete history of the ten series of steel GS gondolas used between 1908 and 1954 on the railroad totaling 8,251 cars.  The article describes how the Rio Grande’s fleet grew, detailing each car series, mechanical notes, car color, lettering and modeling notes for anyone interested in modeling the Rio Grande prior to the era of unit coal trains will need a fleet of GS gons.

In Remnants of the Rio Grande: The South Local by Frank Keller describes how it was increasingly more difficult to find Rio Grande power in action. Fortunately the local was assigned three Rio Grande GP40-2s at the time article was being written almost three years after the UP merger.  Frank covers the south local movement from Denver’s North Yard as this local operates  and runs south along the Joint Line often the local spends 1-2 hours switching industries as far south as Sedalia, Colorado before returning to Denver.