ribuck wrote:It's Colorado. Does that help anyone to name the railroad, the forest, the mountain range, the place with the monumental rocks, or the nearby town?
This has been a tough one but I think I have it now (hopefully!). Without the Colorado clue had no chance.
I only honed in after getting lucky matching the loco colour scheme in the second photo to the Leadville, Colorado & Southern Railroad. According to an article I found it operates from Leadville "
on a route that rises over 1,000 feet from the Arkansas River Valley, travels through Freemont Pass and provides for views of Colorado's two largest mountain peaks, Mt. Massive and Mt. Elbert".
They offer locomotive cab (and caboose) rides although no mention anywhere on the internet that you can ride any loco anywhere outside, though obviously it's possible.
Ironically I've done a couple of train trips in Colorado myself, up Pikes Peak on the cog railway, and we took the
California Zephyr overnight from Denver to San Francisco through the Rockies. Both were spectacular.