The Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad takes you behind a steam locomotive through otherwise-uninhabited parts of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.
For Dave’s birthday, our family took an overnight trip to the quiet town of Antonito, Colorado for a trip on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad.
More Americans will have heard of other Rocky Mountain tourist railroads, such as the Rio Grande Scenic, the Royal Gorge, or the very-well-known Durango & Silverton. I personally haven’t been to any of those other tourist railroads, but they’re all located in bigger cities/towns/communities than the two endpoints of the C&T: Antonito, Colorado and Chama, New Mexico. The Cumbres & Toltec is a narrow gauge railroad and is absolutely spectacular and takes you through some VERY uninhabited parts of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.
Okay, bear with me with this map…the grey line running along the CO/NM border is the route of the railroad. Turns, twists, switchbacks, etc. dominated our trip. We started in Antonito, which is on the left edge, near the intersection of US 285 and Colorado route 17.
For Dave’s birthday back in August, after Dave finished work (it was his first day of teaching physics at the AF Academy), we headed south.
Happy Birthday Dave!
It’s about a five hour drive from northern Colorado Springs to Antonito. Unless you get stuck in a hailstorm just west of Walsenberg, Colorado:
A smudge of sunlight shines through the clouds at the rain and hail wrap up.
This picture is not as clear as I would like, but that’s a puddle filled with hailstones.
After that rain event, we continued along, as the clouds broke up, we saw some stunning mountains emerge:
East (left) and West (right) Spanish Peaks.
Enjoying my telephoto lens. This is Goemmer Butte near La Veta, Colorado, which was really about 10 miles away from our road.
By the time we got to Alamosa, where is where we turned from westward to southward, it was dark. I wasn’t able to take any more pictures until the following morning.
This is the 1911 Steam Train Hotel. It’s very old, but the people who work there are VERY welcoming and quick to help out when you need it.
This is a Bed and Breakfast, but we had to travel to a different building for the breakfast part:
This was the Jones family home in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We ate breakfast there. It’s under new management, so I hope it gets cleaned up a little.
We had tickets for the 10am ride. I couldn’t possibly post all the amazing pictures we took during the ride, so I’m going to just point you to my Picasa album at the start of the ride and you can scroll through. I’ll include a few favorites here.
It’s a pretty long ride. About 5 hours of travel, with a one-hour lunch stop at a location called Osier. The lunch was quite good, I highly recommend the turkey meal, which includes mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing and cranberry sauce. There’s also meat loaf, which Jacob enjoyed.
One you get to the end of the line at Chama, New Mexico, a motorcoach takes you back to Antonito by about 5:30pm. We drove straight home from there.
Tickets for the Cumbres and Toltec can be purchased online, and tickets start at $79 for adults and $39 for kids. During the summer months kids ride free with a paying adult, but you will be charged $10 for each kid’s lunch at Osier. If you’d prefer more luxurious conditions, you can book the climate-controlled parlor car for $169. There are discounts for military, AARP and AAA. You can take the entire route between Chama and Antonito with a motorcoach return to your parking, or else you can take an out-and-back route from one end to lunch, then a return to your parking.
Do I recommend this for kids? I’ll be honest, my sons were VERY sick of being on the train by after lunchtime. Unfortunately, every experience will be all day. Bring plenty to do for the kids if you choose to bring them.
Here are a few more pictures from our trip.
You drive under this when entering the railroad property at Antonito.
Boarding our coach car.
Our pretty ticket.
Mr. Conductor. He even tried to clip a word into Timmy’s ticket, but he didn’t do such a good job.
The eastern 1/3 of the trip isn’t very interesting. It’s mainly scrub brush. We’re slowly ascending the whole time.
Look closely…do you see the line cut into the terrain? That’s the 37th parallel, the boundary between Colorado and New Mexico.
There were 17 of these border crossings.
A group of ATV tourists were following along with us.
We come around a curve and the terrain suddenly goes from desert-like scrub to a coniferous forest!
These are hoodoos…vertical spires of eroded land.
These hoodoos were at a distance. Thank you telephoto lens.
These pretty asters were in Osier, but they were all along the route once we came out of the desert.
The final 1/3 of the trip was along a river valley.
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