By Justin Franz
The Cumbres & Toltec Scenic is acquiring a rare wide-nosed, narrow-gauge, Alco-designed and Bombardier-built DL-535E from Alaska’s White Pass & Yukon.
On November 11, the Cumbres & Toltec Commission, the board that oversees the 64-mile narrow gauge railroad, approved a deal to acquire WP&Y 114 for $120,000. The locomotive will arrive next year. According to a summary of the meeting by Samuel B. Seiber, the locomotive will be used in work train service as well as a backup for the steam locomotives that regularly run over the former Denver & Rio Grande Western trackage. The commission noted that two of the former D&RGW 2-8-2s are usually fired up to be on standby in case a mechanical issue crops up at either Chama or Antonito, where excursions originate. But now the diesel could be used in that service, saving the railroad the effort of keeping a steam locomotive hot just in case.
U.S. Gypsum 111 is seen in service at Plaster City, Calif. The Bombardier product is a sister engine to the one going to the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic. Photo by Charles Freericks.
The DL-535E would not be the first White Pass locomotive to come to the former Rio Grande. The Durango & Silverton purchased four DL-535 locomotives in 2020 and has been using them ever since. While some online have griped about the prospect of a road diesel arriving on the C&TS, which until now has only employed a few industrial diesels for yard work and light work trains, the DL-535E the railroad is getting is unique in its own right. The locomotive was one of four ordered by the White Pass in the 1980s from Bombardier, which had acquired the Alco/Montreal Locomotive Works designs. The White Pass had previously ordered ten DL-535s in the early 1970s from both Alco and MLW. While internally, the DL-535Es were similar to their predecessors, they had one major exterior difference: they featured the full-width “safety cab” common on Canadian MLWs. However, by the time the locomotives were complete, the White Pass had suspended freight operations. The DL-535Es, among the last Alco-designed locomotives built for domestic use, sat in Quebec with nowhere to go. Then in 1991, U.S. Gypsum purchased two of the locomotives for us at its Plaster City, Calif., operation. A few years later, after wrecking one of the locomotives, it went back for a third. The fourth locomotive was eventually acquired by the White Pass & Yukon once that railroad resumed operations as a tourist line. Locomotive 114 arrived in Alaska in 1994, 12 years after it was originally ordered. Since then the locomotive has been used in excursion service but was recently replaced by newer units.
