“Late in September of 1889, Mr. Gibbs and I were married at Colorado Springs and started for Silverton, going by the way of Montrose and through Ouray where we stayed overnight at the beautiful Beaumont Hotel. The next morning we rode the stage to Ironton and there transferred to the little Silverton Railroad train. As we climbed the grade toward the summit the conductor came through the coach where I was the only passenger and asked me if I were cold. I couldn’t deny it so he stopped the train, picked up some wood along the track and built a fire in the little pot-bellied stove.
“In November and December Mr. Gibbs made a preliminary survey from the town of Dallas to Telluride, which was to be the route for the Rio Grande Southern Railroad, and finished the day before Christmas. We stayed overnight in Ouray and left the next morning in a snow-storm. When we reached Ironton my husband heard the line was blocked by snow so he left me with the Strayers while he went on to Silverton.
“He made arrangements for me to meet him in Red Mountain on New Year’s day, which I did. Two men besides us were going to Silverton. A shallow trail had been beaten in the deep snow between the rails. The two men held the ends of a ski pole while I hung to the middle of it and we plodded down the track. We came to a sharp hairpin curve and cut it out by sliding downhill from the track above to the one below. A few miles farther on we reached an engine with a snowplow, which was a great relief. When we reached Silverton and got to our room a nice warm dinner was sent up to us by Moses Liverman, superintendent of the S. R.
“A few days latter we left for my husband’s old home in Maine. This is what we had planned for our wedding trip but my daughters have always maintained that the others to Silverton by stage and train with all their difficulties were really the wedding journey.”[2]
The table below was furnished by Mr. Ridgway. Joker Tunnel (water drainage) did not exist at the time the map was made but was projected or started by 1892. The second column of figures was taken from the 1892 survey of the locating engineer, R. L. Kelly.
| Station | Mears Timetable of 1889 | Actual Mileage, 1892 |
|---|---|---|
| Silverton | 0. | 0. |
| Burro Bridge | 5. | 5. |
| Chattanooga | 7.5 | 7.3 |
| Summit (Sheridan Pass) | 12.5 | 10.7 |
| Red Mountain | 15. | 11.9 |
| Vanderbilt | 15.5 | 12.5 |
| Yankee Girl | 16. | 12.7 |
| Paymaster | 17. | 13.7 |
| Corkscrew Gulch | 14.1 | |
| Joker Tunnel | 15. | |
| Ironton (Depot) | 20. | 16.5 |
| Albany | 18. | |
The exaggerated mileages of the 1889 timetable would have added considerably to the freight charges, in the case of Ironton over 21%. It will be noticed beginning with Red Mountain that each Mears figure is 3 to 3½ miles more than the Kelly figure. Mr. Kelly was one of the ablest engineers of his day and his mileages cannot be questioned.
The table below was copied from an Official Railway Guide of October 1893 but no date is given for the time it was in effect. It is interesting because the mileages are different and because, at the time, only one passenger train was running.
| 1 | M | Stations | 2 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7:30 A. M. | 0 | Lv. | Silverton | Ar. | 11:50 A. M. | |
| 8:00 | 6 | Burro Bridge | 11:40 | |||
| 8:10 | 9 | Chattanooga | 11:30 | |||
| 8:30 | 13 | Summit | 11:10 | |||
| 8:40 | 14 | Red Mountain | 10:50 | |||
| 15 | Vanderbilt | |||||
| 8:55 | 15 | Yankee Girl | 10:45 | |||
| 16 | Paymaster coal track | |||||
| 9:10 | 17 | Corkscrew Gulch | 10:25 | |||
| 18 | Paymaster ore track | |||||
| 9:20 A. M. | 20 | Ar. | Ironton | Lv. | 10:00 | |
All carrier lines issued paper passes but Mears wanted to do something special for his railroad. Outside of the paper ones his passes fell into four categories—buckskin, plate, medallion and filigree. The first three were for the Silverton Railroad alone while the fourth, though made especially for the Rio Grande Southern Railroad, was usable on the S. R.