The Galloping Goose in Dolores is a leftover from a vanished railroad

If you spend time in Dolores, you will hear about the “Galloping Goose,” and it is worth knowing the story behind the odd name.

The Rio Grande Southern was a narrow-gauge railroad that once looped through the rugged San Juan country, linking Durango with Ridgway by way of Telluride. By the 1930s the railroad was nearly broke. Running a full steam train with a crew of several people for a handful of passengers and a few mail bags no longer made sense.

So the railroad built its own answer. Workers bolted automobile bodies and bus bodies onto rail frames, added a freight compartment, and created lightweight “motors” that one person could run. They were cheaper to operate than a steam locomotive and kept the line limping along. People nicknamed them Galloping Geese for the way they swayed down the track. The railroad was finally abandoned in the early 1950s, and most of it was torn up for scrap.

A few of the Geese survived. One restored motor is kept in Dolores by a local historical society, and others are preserved elsewhere in Colorado. They are a reminder that this remote corner of the state was once stitched together by rail, and that the people running these lines had to get inventive to hang on.

To read about the Galloping Geese and the Rio Grande Southern from archival records, see History Colorado’s railroad history pages.