Put some pressure on that.

Turn that down a little.

Will you, please?

All right.

That's right.

That All-Star crank.

I rebuilt this old engine.

Spent a lot of time on it, rebuilding it back to the 1870.

Oh, it looks great.

Period.

Yes, sir.

It burns wood as it did in those days.

Or coal., Either one.

Say, let's get up in the cab.

All right.

John, let me have.

All right, put that in.

Put some wood to firebox, will you?

John, you see this as part of his job.

He does this because he says he's got to look after it to keep it up the steam.

And you can see we've got steam up now.

Oh, yeah.

By the way, do you like to run the engines?

Oh, I'd love to.

Climb up there in the seat box.

I'll show you what you have to do.

The first thing you have to do now to make it move, you push the reverse lever forward.

All right.

Like that.

Then you take the air brake off, push this in like that.

And you whistle a couple.

All right.

Now.

All right.

Now here's the throttle.

Pull the throttle back.

Easy on it, and it'll start moving ahead.

All right, you're going right.

Absolutely.

This is fun.

All right, sir.

Moving right along.

How would you like to have an old locomotive like this to call your own?

Mr.

Roy bought this steam engine, the tender, the passenger car, the baggage car and the caboose to help preserve part of this country's early railroad history.

Such transportation became increasingly important to land development out here in the West as railways expanded in the early 1850s.

Senator, railway companies will agree to expand out west if Congress will not only give them a right of way, but provide as well title to land on either side of the proposed route.

You know, as well as I building railroads costs money.

And with help from the United States government, through land grants and federal loans, railway companies did expand, laying new tracks westward while advertising their newly acquired land for sale in this country and even in Europe.

Tens of thousands of Americans, plus great numbers of newly arrived immigrants, took advantage of the land sales to settle in the new territories created out west.

In Colorado, William Gilpin foresaw before most what eastern trade would mean to this newly settled area.

With the help of the railroad, Denver and Colorado could be the crossroads of the world.

William Byers, through editorials in his Rocky Mountain News, expressed the same theme.

A year later.

The Eastern Railroad must pass through the South Platte goldfields, and thus our city of Denver, at the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains, will be a point which cannot be dodged.

The officials of the Union Pacific Railroad, however, thought differently.

They had no plans to spend great sums of money to run their tracks through Denver and across the high Colorado Rockies, especially when their chief engineer, inspecting a possible route over Berthoud Pass in 1866, barely escaped with his life in an October snowstorm.

In addition, the flooding of the South Platte River in 1864 and a declining production from Rocky Mountain gold mines had reduced Denver City to a quiet village.

Denver.

Why, that town is too dead to bury.

Suddenly, to the dismay of people in Colorado, Cheyenne is chosen to be on the route of the transcontinental railway over the Rockies.

Union Pacific steam engines arrived there in late 1867, pushing further west to link up with the Central Pacific Railway being built eastward from San Francisco.

Finally, on May 10th, 1869, from Promontory Point, Utah, a message was telegraphed to president Grant in Washington, D.C.. With such cross ties and rails in place, people believe that the West was now firmly tied to the East.

But was it?

There were parts of the West that would continue to be isolated for years.

Colorado Territory, for example, was less than ten miles from the Union Pacific line that ran through Cheyenne.

And yet by 1869, there was still no railroad switching mechanism connecting Colorado to the newly completed transcontinental railroad to the north.

For purposes of trade with important supply centers and wholesale markets back east, Colorado was as isolated as it had ever been for this man, John Evans, former governor of Colorado Territory.

It was a dilemma that he and his Denver friends intended to resolve by completing their own partially built railroad north to Cheyenne.

It would be called the Denver Pacific.

On July 2nd, 1869, he hired this man to complete its construction.

His name, General William Palmer, not only be appropriate, but much more functional as well, in that it will allow us to put into operation more quickly the objectives you have in mind.

I appreciate that, General Palmer.

I too am anxious to get started.

Colorado desperately needs to link up with the transcontinental railroad in Cheyenne.

It could well be the decisive factor that could bring us statehood.

May I get you something?

A coffee perhaps?

No.

But thank you for your hospitality and for your patience through these long negotiations to employ your services.

I, too, am sorry for the delays, governor.

However, I'm sure you can appreciate my predicament.

As of today, I am in charge of bringing not one, but two railroads into Denver.

The Kansas Pacific route through eastern Colorado.

And now your Denver Pacific line connecting with Cheyenne.

I'm sure there are those who will protest loudly that a conflict of interests exists somewhere in these negotiations.

Let me assure you, general, that such arrangements as we have made are all very legal.

And as far as any vocal resistance by outside interests, Well, you know as well as I that for years William Loveland and Henry Teller have been trying to make Denver a suburb of their little town of Golden to the west.

Yes.

I have heard a number of reports to that effect.

Well, their tactics haven't gotten them anywhere.

Why, they can't even finance their own proposed railroad north to Cheyenne, much less a route over the Rockies by way of Berthoud Pass No, general, with your help, Denver will become the main railroad terminal in Colorado, linking up with the Union Pacific by way of Cheyenne to the trade centers of Omaha & Chicago.

And then, of course, with the completion of your Kansas Pacific tracks to our city, freight and passenger lines to Kansas City and Saint Louis will be open as well.

Now, sir, when can you get started?

I already have Governor Cecil Lofton, my surveyor, has traveled the route again just yesterday.

He estimates some 50 miles of track will need to be laid to complete the connection with Cheyenne.

I have venture completion date within a year from now.

That is, if I can get the numbers of men and materials I need to do the job.

Well, if I can be of any help in that regard General, please don't hesitate to call on me.

Now, I'd like to talk a bit about the contract and the law... On June 22nd of the following year, General Palmer sat down to write yet another of his many letters that kept his fiancee back in New York, apprized of what was happening to him out west.

Denver was much excited today.

The last spike on the railroad in the heart of the town was driven.

Poor creatures.

It was an event indeed for them.

They have been so long out of communication with the rest of the world, and I suppose most of the children had really never seen a locomotive.

With railway expansion came many improvements.

Passenger cars not only increased in size to handle as many as 44 adults in one car, but the comfort of sitting was also improved.

Walk over seats were introduced so that family and friends could sit facing one another while traveling.

Seats were cushioned and covered with materials like this crimson plush.

It made the journey out here to the west at least more enjoyable and less painful to certain parts of the body than the hard and sometimes splintered wooden seats of earlier years.

The effects of Colorado's new railroad connections were nothing short of spectacular.

New towns begin to spring up all along the railroad lines.

These first railroads also gave cities like Denver the boost that they so desperately needed.

Within only four years of completing the railroads into the Mile High City, Denver's population tripled in size.

Its business also increased threefold.

The biggest impact of all, however, came with the use of these old conveyances, carrying at first as much as ten tons of freight in each car.

Inside such transportation came west heavy building materials, furniture, farm equipment, food supplies, and industrial machines.

To the east went a variety of crops as well as cattle and sheep, there were even refrigerator cars made to keep cool perishable goods all the way to wholesale markets in the east.

Important as well was the help provided by the railroad in rescuing the declining mining industry of Colorado.

For the first time, the heavy high grade ores mined in Colorado could be shipped back east for special processing that made for higher profits.

Local mills could now be run economically as the cost of machinery, wages, food, clothing and fuel all fell sharply.

Businessmen and politicians desiring statehood now voiced a new theme how can we tie together the newly completed 200 miles of track in the northeast, with a barren and unpopulated expanse of southern and western Colorado Territory?

Once again, it would be this man who would fulfill such a vision.

I had a dream while sitting here at the car window.

I thought how fine it would be to have a little railroad a few hundred miles in length, all under one's own control with one's friends.

Palmer actually envisioned more than just a little railroad.

Imagine the Rocky Mountain West, with its own rail system, helping to make the region almost self-sufficient by distributing food grown in our soil, minerals mined in our mountains, and products made in our own factories.

And the tracks of the generals railroad would run not east or west, but rather north and south.

Palmer planned his first segment from Denver to Santa Fe, and then further south to El Paso, and perhaps later even to Mexico City.

It's little wonder that he named his little railroad the Denver and Rio Grande.

By October of 71, the new railroad reached Colorado Springs, Palmer's dream town that he helped organize, name and in which he would later make his home.

A year later, tracks reached Pueblo, changing this sleepy Adobe town of 600 in just a few years to a growing center of population for southern Colorado.

Suddenly, the panic of 1873, along with a direct confrontation with the expanding Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company, blocks Palmer's vision of developing his little railroad south to Texas.

He did, however, see to the laying of tracks into some of the most rugged parts of the Colorado Rockies, including crossing La Veta Pass and the continental divided Marshall Pass, elevation 10,846ft above sea level.

More importantly, General Palmer pioneered the development of mountain rail systems with his vision and financial backing of what would be called the narrow gauge railroad.

Tracks, not the usual four feet eight and one half inches apart, but rather rails that were only three feet apart.

Then, a revolutionary concept in railroad development.

What it meant for mountain rail travel is reflected here above Georgetown, Colorado, at an elevation of over 9000ft.

This famous Georgetown Loop Railroad, finished in 1884, has been completely rebuilt so that today tourists can experience what the original narrow gauge railroad was like back in the 1880s.

This relatively light steam locomotive on this narrow gauge track, pulling either passenger or freight cars, could not only power itself up a steep mountain grade, but could also make 180 degree turns on curves so sharp that the locomotive would pass its own passenger or freight car.

The narrow gauge tracks were also much cheaper to construct than the standard gauge, especially up through the narrow Gulches and mountain passes.

It meant that Colorado mining towns were at last linked to a network of tracks that would lead to a reasonable balance between mining, production and sales.

There is little question in the minds of historians that the comic huffing and puffing of these narrow gauge locomotives had a great deal to do with the growth of the mining industry here, as well as the founding and development of towns and cities in our mountainous regions.

Such expansion, of course, would later lead to statehood and a five fold increase in Colorado population and wealth.