John Scarffe, Nederland. Nederland’s historic Train Cars in the Caribou Shopping are being totally re-stained and repainted. Nederland Resident Scott Smith has sanded off the old paint and stain and applied long-lasting stain and red paint. He just has some trim to do, and he will be done.
Smith, a Nederland resident for the past eight years, said painting the Train Cars was a chance in a lifetime. A painter by vocation, Smith noticed the exterior of the cars was deteriorating significantly.
While in Backcountry Pizza, he heard discussion about repainting the Train Cars. “I’d been waiting for this for eight years. It was deteriorating, and I leapt at the chance. This is for me.” He talked to Manager Jim Graves, and they worked out an arrangement.
Smith said that when the cars were brought to Nederland, they were orange, and the paint was lead-based so it was sandblasted away. It has probably been at least 50 years since it has been repainted.
Smith sanded the paint down to the wood. It had been covered with polyurethane and it was blotchy. He decided to use a tinted polyurethane to give it some color. The front door and office area was painted with old lead-based paint, Smith said, and he chose a red paint, called Emerald, and black for the trim to replace it.
The paint is guaranteed to last 30 years, Smith said. Smith both sprayed and hand-painted. The gold color on the cars was originally gold leaf. “We matched the existing color exactly so as not to lose the look, thanks to Dennis Quinn of the Pioneer Inn,” Smith said.
Smith also is proud of the paint job and sign on the office area, and the painting of a train robbery is always popular.
Smith said he also painted the rock shop in town and converted it to turquoise. A lady told him that when a school bus passed by the rock shop, all the children cheered.
Jimmy Keith, a Nederland realtor, was the man behind the delivery and restoration of the Train Cars, according to a Mountain-Ear article by Pam North. Originally from Massachusetts, his interest in railroad cars stemmed from the family business, Keith Car Works, from the mid-1800s to 1903 building wagons and railroad cars. He moved to Left Hand Canyon below Ward in 1971 and bought an old caboose in Denver.
Keith then became a railroad car broker and built up a coast-to-coast business. He came across two railroad cars that he envisioned moving to the corner of what is now the Caribou Shopping Center. He received permission from the Town to continue the project.
The Pullman Coach was built for the Colorado and Southern Railroad and ran exclusively for them as car number 544 until its retirement, according to Train Car history. Constructed in 1905, it was one of the last plush wooden coaches and served as a chair car. Although it started out with a wooden undercarriage, it was outfitted with a steel one in 1922.
Its last official ride was the Denver to Louisville route in 1970, when it was retired. For a while the car sat near Highway 36 as part of a larger property. Keith had spotted it sitting on an island in a pond near the Boulder Turnpike and it was moved to Nederland.
The Circus Car was originally built and used as a railway post office car as car number 27 in 1872 by the Union Pacific Railroad and traveled on the Union Pacific Denver and Gulf Railroad. It is one of the standard gauge cars from that time, and was never reconfigured with steel. Sells-Floto acquired the car to replace one which was accidently burned up during a repainting stop in the Colorado and Southern Railroad Denver Shop.
This car then became Car Number Two of a set of three advanced advertising cars for the circus, which would arrive in towns a few days before the circus, covered with signs promoting Sells-Floto. Much of this car remains original.
The caboose was built in 1910 for the Colorado & Southern Railroad, originally car number 242. It is among the last cabooses to feature an all wooden curved ceiling — the end of an era, as later models had flat ceilings.
It was involved in an accident in Larkspur, Colorado, in 1920, and rebuilt in 1921. Then this accident prone caboose, while sitting in Rice Yard, became a victim of the devastating South Platte Flood of 1965, when much of Littleton and Denver were submerged in rushing water. It was retired shortly thereafter.
Scott Smith knew what he was talking about when he said this was a project he couldn’t pass up.
(Originally published in the August 8, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)
