Galloping Goose Society to Restore 1908 Railcar for Dolores Display

Denver & Rio Grande Western refrigerator railcar No. 45 has sat at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden for years, but the Galloping Goose Historical Society of Dolores intends to change that. The society has received the 1908 narrow-gauge "reefer" as a donation and launched a multi-phase restoration project that will ultimately land the car outside the Galloping Goose museum in Flanders Park.

It's a project the society's board has wanted to pursue since 2019. Project leads Kent Aikin, a board member, and Joe Becker, the society's president, are now moving it forward with partners including the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad shop and the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project.

The restoration unfolds in four phases. First, the car will be stabilized at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden. From there it travels to Durango, where the D&SNG shop will perform the actual restoration work. Once complete, No. 45 moves to its permanent home in Flanders Park. Neither the final cost nor a completion date has been determined yet.

Built to haul perishables, No. 45 once carried apples and other cargo across the narrow-gauge network. Refrigerator cars like it ran throughout the system, including on the Rio Grande Southern. That agricultural history is central to how the society plans to interpret the car at Flanders Park: the final display will incorporate signage and actual apple varieties tied to the region's orchard heritage, developed in partnership with the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project.

For Aikin, the railcar is a vehicle for something bigger than railroad history. "The railroad transformed society," he said, noting that the project is meant to tell the broader story of how the rail network shaped the Four Corners region.

A 116-year-old reefer that once kept fruit cold on narrow-gauge curves through the San Juans is a hard artifact to beat for that kind of storytelling.