I’m looking for any maps and drawings of the major stops along the DRG&W Railroad. I’m looking for any buildings, yard maps and industries that were served by the railroad circa earily 1900s. Locations include: Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Walensburg, Alamosa, Antonito, Durango, Silverton, Ridgeway, Montrose, Delta, Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs, Detsero & Bond. If anyone has any info on these locations, please let me know.
Here are the track alignment sheets for most of the Rio Grande network. http://www.drgw.net/info/TrackCharts. Granted many of these alignment sheets are for much later in time than you specified but in many areas the track didn’t change too much.
You might want to check out a website called historicaerials.com. This site should allow you to search the D&RGW route using both aerial photo surveys as well as USGS topographical maps. I was quite suprised to find topographical maps from 1899 that included the tracks of my modeling focus: the Santa Ana & Newport Railroad in Southern California. Equally surprising was aerial photo surveys from the 1920’s! I was able to look up maps and aerial photos from the 1950’s era I’m modeling to verify what I had modeled correctly and what I needed to fix.
Some of the aerial photos are a little grainy but I was able to identify specific buildings. As some of these buildings are still standing, I used Google Maps Street View for a better look.
Early 1900s is vauge. If you mean pre-WWI it might help if you search for Denver and Rio Grande (D&RG) or Rio Grande Western (RGW), as the D&RGW did not become an entity until 1921.
As the others have said the D&RGW Historical Society has many maps, I think the entire system. Just don’t know the date. I purchased the three maps of Pueblo from them some years back.
Back in grad school as a geology student, we had a library upstairs with tons of USGS topography maps includint 7.5 and 15 minuite quadrangles. I was able to follow the entire line from Denver to SLC and they were photo revised. There was a surprising amount of detail on them, including RR track configurations, buildings, roads etc.