Qualla: Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad

Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad: Introduction

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wiringa, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ferguson's Trestle is named for a man who was hanged from a locomotive there. That grim bit of frontier justice is just one of the stories carried along 64 miles of narrow-gauge track between Antonito, Colorado, and Chama, New Mexico - a route where the train crosses the state line eleven times, threads through a tunnel bored into volcanic ash and braced with wooden pillars, and climbs to Cumbres Pass, the highest point reached by any narrow-gauge railroad in North America. The Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad is not a theme park ride. It is an original piece of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad's 19th-century network, still running steam locomotives built by Baldwin Locomotive Works, still hauling passengers over the same trestles and through the same gorges that miners and ranchers depended on more than a century ago.

Image: Wiringa | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad: Rails Through Impossible Country

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Subhrajyoti07, CC BY-SA 4.0. On February 20, 1880, track crews of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway began laying narrow-gauge rails south from Alamosa, Colorado. They chose three-foot gauge instead of standard four-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch because narrower track was cheaper to build and could handle the ti...

Image: Subhrajyoti07 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad: Five Hundred Inches of Snow

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Milan Suvajac, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cumbres Pass is the railroad's greatest asset and its worst enemy. At over 10,000 feet above sea level, it offers passengers views that stretch across the San Juan Mountains. But every five or six years, winter buries the pass under as much as 500 inches of snow. The railroad pur...

Image: Milan Suvajac | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad: Two States, One Railroad

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. What happened next was unprecedented. In April 1969, New Mexico passed legislation allowing the state to purchase the track between Chama and Antonito. Colorado followed with similar legislation in 1970. The two states took joint ownership, and by 1971 the Cumbres and Toltec Scen...

Image: Jonathunder | Public domain

Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad: Hollywood's Favorite Railroad

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arthur Meyer, CC BY-SA 3.0. The C&TSRR has appeared in more than a dozen films, from the 1969 western The Good Guys and the Bad Guys to the 2021 Netflix film The Harder They Fall. A water tank at Lobato was originally built as a movie prop in the 1980s and later appeared in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusad...

Image: Arthur Meyer | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad: The Morning Whistle

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. From late May through late October, two trains depart each morning - one from Antonito, one from Chama - and converge at Osier, Colorado, the midpoint of the line, where passengers eat lunch in a modern dining hall. At Osier, riders can continue to the opposite terminus or switch...

Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0