A Brief History

This car has been restored to an “as built” appearance for these cars. This one and Silverton Northern 1005 (ex - DRG 17 / DRG 0516) which is in use in Silverton, CO are the only two essentially unaltered examples of this series. They were among the first cars built for the new Denver & Rio Grande and as such much discussion has gone on about the origination of the first 4 cars of the class whether they were built intentionally as caboose cars or whether they were modified from early passenger cars.

According to Robert Sloan, Numbers 5-10 were built in 1876, then only two were built in 1878 which were 11 and 12. There was a gap of another two years before 13-38 were built and the following year saw 39-68 built. Two more years had to pass before the next batch was built in 1883 which was cars number 69-84. The last four cars were built in 1885. The ownership of these cars was rather interesting as well. Only twelve were owned outright by the Denver & Rio Grande. The rest were owned by various trusts which required cars that were destroyed in accidents had to be replaced.

In 1886, the Denver & Rio Grande settled some legal problems and as a result of that legal settlement, ten cars #70-79, were transferred to the Denver & Rio Grande Western, A Utah railroad which is not to be confused with the 20th century Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad.

Though these cars originally started off with three windows per side, they ended up being rebuilt a number of times and during those rebuilds, the center windows were often closed over and the end with the stove in it often also lost the window behind the stove so many ended up with two windows on one side and one on the other.

Robert Sloan’s, A Century + Ten of D&RGW Freight Cars 1871-1981 is an invaluable reference to this class of cars.