The Bakers purchased the Argo Gold Mine train through a railroad broker in North Carolina in 1998. The train was built in Bird City, Kansas, in 1991, to serve as a tourist attraction in downtown Idaho Springs, Colorado. In 1995 it was relocated to the site of the Argo Gold Mine National Historic Site in Idaho Springs. In 1998 the train was put up for sale because the land it was located on was declared a Superfund cleanup site due to the dangerous chemicals leaching out of the Argo Gold Mine. After the Bakers purchased the train, they hired a crew to tear up the track and ties. The equipment, along with the water tower now located near the cemetery, was shipped to Alturas by truck. It took Stephen six years to install the one mile of track that now meanders throughout the gardens on their ten acres.
The article below was written by our son, Joshua, in 2005, for the Grand Scales Quarterly magazine, a magazine dedicated to small scale railroading with readers in 18 countries around the world. Joshua’s wonderful article will give you a great summary of our railroad project.
