Durango & Silverton No. 473

Design and Construction

No. 473 was one of ten K-28 class 2-8-2 “Mikado” locomotives the American Locomotive Company’s Schenectady, New York works built for the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad in 1923, numbered 470 through 479. Rio Grande crews nicknamed the class the “Sport Models,” a reference to how light and quick they rode compared to the railroad’s older, heavier K-27 Mikados and the larger K-36s that would follow two years later. That lighter frame made the K-28s well suited to fast passenger schedules, and it is also what set No. 473 apart from seven of its sisters less than two decades later.

Revenue Service (1923–1941)

No. 473 and its sisters worked Rio Grande’s premier narrow gauge passenger assignments across Colorado and New Mexico, including the branch between Durango and Silverton, itself built in 1881 and 1882 to reach the silver and gold mines of the San Juan Mountains, along with runs to Alamosa and the “Chili Line” connecting Antonito to Santa Fe. Where the K-36 and K-37 classes handled Rio Grande’s narrow gauge drag freight, the K-28s were the engines the railroad put in front of its varnish, the name trains carrying paying passengers rather than ore and lumber.

The Wartime Requisition (1942–1945)

In the fall of 1942, with the U.S. Army concerned about a Japanese threat to Alaska in the wake of Pearl Harbor and the Aleutian Islands campaign, the government requisitioned seven of the ten K-28s: Nos. 470, 471, 472, 474, 475, 477, and 479. All seven were shipped north to work for the White Pass and Yukon Route, where they were renumbered 250 through 256 in WP&YR’s own series. The transplanted Rio Grande engines struggled badly in Yukon winters; the counterweights on their driving wheels tended to climb trackside ice and lift the locomotives partially off the rail, a defect the White Pass’s own home-designed power did not share. All seven were withdrawn from Alaskan service by 1944 and barged south to Seattle for scrapping soon after the war ended, so none of the seven ever came back to Colorado. No. 473, together with sister engines 476 and 478, was one of the three K-28s Rio Grande managed to keep on its own roster, and it continued working the Colorado narrow gauge through the very years its seven requisitioned sisters were freezing to the rails a thousand miles to the north.

Transfer to the Durango & Silverton and Continuous Operation (1981–2018)

When Rio Grande sold its Durango-to-Silverton branch in 1981 to become the independently operated Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, No. 473 was part of the roster that changed hands, and it was restored to full operating condition that same year. Unlike locomotives that spent years on static display or working industrial sidings before returning to steam, No. 473 has effectively never stopped working since it left Schenectady in 1923, moving from Rio Grande revenue service directly into D&SNG excursion service without an intervening retirement. That unbroken record makes it one of the most continuously operated narrow gauge steam locomotives left in North America, hauling passengers over the same 45-mile route along the Animas River that Otto Mears’s construction crews first blasted and graded through the San Juans in 1881 and 1882 to reach Silverton’s silver mines.

The 416 Fire and Fleet-Wide Oil Conversion (2018–2021)

That unbroken operating record came with a serious cost. On June 1, 2018, a wildfire that came to be known as the 416 Fire broke out along the D&SNG’s right-of-way north of Durango and eventually burned more than 54,000 acres of the San Juan National Forest; federal investigators concluded it was sparked by a cinder from one of the railroad’s coal-fired steam locomotives. The railroad and its parent company, American Heritage Railways, ultimately agreed in 2022 to pay $20 million to settle the resulting federal lawsuit and related claims from dozens of affected businesses and homeowners, one of the largest financial settlements ever tied to a heritage railroad’s operations. Rather than abandon coal power across the whole fleet, D&SNG committed to converting its locomotives to burn 100 percent recycled oil and to avoid running coal-fired engines at all during periods of elevated fire danger. No. 473 was converted from coal to oil firing in May 2021 as part of that fleet-wide response, becoming one of five of the railroad’s eight steam locomotives to make the switch.

Recognition

No. 473 and its surviving K-28 sisters, 476 and 478, are among the only Rio Grande Mikados whose entire service life, revenue and excursion combined, has played out on the same physical railroad they were built to run. The Durango & Silverton line itself is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and No. 473’s continued daily operation over the route through the San Juan Mountains between Durango and Silverton keeps that designation attached to a working locomotive rather than a static one.