Motion picture directors, producers, and writers have long recognized the multitude of possibilities for comedy, drama, and suspense that railroads offer. Chases, races, robberies, wrecks, derring-do, and intrigue on and around trains provided the kind of excitement that kept audiences coming back for more. In a quest to find interesting locations, Hollywood filmmakers "discovered" various mainline, short line, and narrow gauge railroads. Some of these lines were used in movies and television shows again and again, achieving their own special place in film history. Hollywood's Railroads tells their stories. In Volume Three: Narrow Gauge Country, we travel to southwestern Colorado and northern New Mexico, with its spectacular mountain and desert scenery. Quaint narrow gauge trains have been part of this dramatic landscape since the 1880s, first serving mining and ranching interests, then tourists. For more than seventy-five years, filmmakers have used the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad and its modern-day successors, the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad and Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, in dozens of motion pictures that featured many of the industry's biggest stars. This volume takes you behind the scenes, from early films in the 1930s, through epics made on the Silverton Branch in the 1950s
- when Durango nicknamed itself "Hollywood of the Rockies"
- to major movies made on the Cumbres & Toltec in recent decades.