29 March 2018
Cottonwood, AZ
Thousand Trail Resort
On the advice of our friends Stan and Marylin, we booked first class seats on the Verde Canyon Railroad in Clarkville, Az which is only 12 miles from our home in Cottonwood..
When we arrived at the train station at 1030 for a 1240 boarding time, we browsed through a museum, sat and drank a coffee, then walked around reading the various story boards of the local area. I walked to the front of the train to take a picture of the locomotive.
The engineer stuck his head out of the window and thanked me for my service to our great country ( I was wearing a Veteran’s hat). We started yelling at each other as he was inside the engine and it was “idling” and loud.
He was a Paratrooper from 1960-63 at Ft Bragg and has 36 jumps to his credit. In fact his car license plate so states his accomplishment. I’m very grateful for this, because I never thought that jumping out of a perfectly good airplane was a good idea. The engineer and I yelled back and forth sharing stories, until he shouted, “I’ve got to go to work”.
He blasted those big air horns three times and the two engines with 14 cars began to back up. The train stopped after about 30 feet, and I shouted what are you doing? He stated they had to dump the black and gray water tanks from each passenger car. I shouted to him and asked if he would drain our rv’s tanks, and he said rv’s were not allowed on the track…………lol.
For you train buffs, the FP7 locomotive ( 1,500 horsepower (1,100 kW)) is a 1953 ElectroMotive Division diesel, built in LaGrange, Illinois. They have two of only 10 remaining in North America, and of course it rides on a standard gauge track of (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in).
The Verde Canyon Railroad is a heritage railroad running between Clarkdale and the ghost town of Perkinsville. The tracks on which the Verde Canyon Railroad runs were opened in 1912 as part of a north–south branch line linking a copper smelter at Clarkdale and the copper mines at Jerome. Copper is (was) king in Arizona.
To mine copper, it used to be smelted in an ore in a furnace. The by-product was slag. The slag is like red-hot metal waste, a lava skimmed from the copper melting kettles. Smelters melt enormous quantities of crushed ores and discard the vast majority of what is melted as molten slag, trying to keep only the copper. The enormous amounts of slag was skimmed off and dumped about every 15-20 minutes, 24 hours a day, almost every day.
There is a large black mountain of iron and glass rises out of the the ground, just as we began our journey. Covering an area roughly the size of 15 football fields and composed of an estimated 3 million tons of copper mining waste, the slag pile has been a staple of the local landscape since World War I.
When we first saw it, we thought is was just a mound of black dirt, we didn’t know it was hard as steel……
We boarded at 1240 for 1300 departure. Ann Marie and I sat in individual overstuffed chairs facing each other with a 2×2 table between us, and in front of a window. The coach was air conditioned with ceiling fans, but the weather was perfect (75).
The train excursion involves a 4-hour, 40-mile round trip where the engines disconnect at Perkinsville (20 miles away) and moves along a side track to reconnect at the opposite end of the train for the return trip to Clarkdale. Scenes from How the West Was Won were filmed at Perkinsville in 1960s.
Besides narration through our journey, they provided chicken wings, small sandwiches, fruits, veggies, dessert, and a full bar. Life is good.
The route follows the Verde River, through an awesome canyon, where we saw three bald eagles, one javillina, a couple of mallard ducks, and a bunch of open range cows.
We crossed bridges and trestles, and passed through a 680-foot-long (210 m) curved tunnel. Between milepost 30 and Perkinsville, most of the land along the railroad right-of-way is in the Prescott National Forest or the Coconino National Forest.
We met some awesome folks on-board and shared stories and experiences as we watched the beautiful Arizona scenery pass by us.
We had a great relaxing day seeing another area of our awesome country.
We finished up the day with a great kiln fired thin pizza at “Pizzaria Bocce”, a local pizzeria in Cottonwood. Life is good.