Chama Yard, New Mexico — South Camera
Engine house, roundhouse and the old Durango main, in one frame
Chama Yard, New Mexico — South Camera
Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad — Chama yard, ex-Denver & Rio Grande Western San Juan Extension (3 ft narrow gauge) · Chama, New Mexico, United States
This operator has not granted Spotatrain permission to embed the feed, so we link to it instead.
Watch at Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RailroadStreamed by Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad
Stream hosted by Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. Spotatrain links to the original feed and does not rebroadcast.
The South Camera of the Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad sweeps the whole width of the Chama yard in New Mexico — engine house, the surviving Rio Grande roundhouse, the yard tracks, the main line the operator still labels "to Durango", the 1880s depot and the freight warehouse. Free live video on the Friends' own webcam page.
About this cam
If you only watch one of the three Chama cameras, this is the one that shows the shop. The Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad describe the South Camera's field of view, left to right, as "Engine House - Roundhouse - Yard - Main Line to Durango - Depot - Freight Warehouse" — the whole 3 ft narrow-gauge establishment in a single frame. The roundhouse in that list is a fragment. The railroad's line was "originally constructed in 1880 as part of the Rio Grande's narrow gauge San Juan Extension", and the Chama shop complex came with the 1970 rescue: Colorado and New Mexico paid "$547,120" for "Nine steam locomotives, over 130 freight and work cars, and the Chama yard and maintenance facility". Today's operating railroad is the "64-miles between Chama, NM, and Antonito, CO", a "National Historic Landmark Designation in 2012". The caption's "Main Line to Durango" is the Rio Grande's original westward direction, kept as yard vocabulary; no scheduled train leaves Chama that way now. Trains on camera go the other way, east, toward the "10,015 foot high Cumbres Pass". The three cameras are the Friends' own installation — "made possible by the support of FRIENDS of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad" — streamed through a Brownrice Internet HTML5 video player. The Friends publish no terms of use, so Spotatrain links to their page instead of embedding the feed.
What to watch for
Locomotive movements between the engine house and the train. The railroad's operating steam is 484, 487, 488, 489 and 463 — Baldwin-built 2-8-2s — and 483 sits on static display at the Chama station, so a stationary engine in this frame is not necessarily a dead one. Durango Railroad Historical Society's 315 shows up as a guest. Watch the engine house doors on the left: only two stalls remain usable, so engines come and go one at a time. The freight warehouse and depot on the right are where the train forms up before departure, and the depot doubles as the ticket office — "The Chama depot is open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. during the regular season." Switching in the middle of the frame is done with narrow-gauge stock: link-height couplers, short cars, tight radius curves you would never see on a Class I yard cam.
Best viewing times
The operator's own advice for the Chama cameras: "Look for deer at dusk and dawn each day. Tune in each morning for a spectacular Chama sunrise via the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad webcams." For railway movement, work the depot's published season hours — "The Chama depot is open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. during the regular season" — with the morning end being when locomotives are prepared for the day's departure.
Explore around Chama
3 places on Spotatrain within 25 km of Chama — 1 journey and 2 live cams.