RGS Employee Database 

The Ridgway Railroad Museum has established a database for Rio Grande Southern Railroad and D&RG narrow gauge employees. The project, originally managed by Bonnie Koch, the Museum's Educational Coordinator, is ongoing and added to on a continuing basis as new information becomes available.

At its inception many members of the RGS workforce had been Denver and Rio Grande employees who moved to the new operation. Additionally, the RGS Railroad was under receivership much of its existence. Thus, some of the workforce in the database is shown as D&RG employees or both RGS and D&RG.

The database is arranged into these topics: Last name of employee; First name; Middle Initial; Railroad Identification; Position on the Railroad; Pay Rate; Location if possible, (some employees operated out of several locations); Earliest Date of employment found; Latest Date of employment found; Comments.

The Comment column identifies both primary and secondary sources of information. Primary sources are information archived at the Ridgway Railroad Museum. These include items such as telegrams, paychecks, shop time cards, and signed forms. Secondary sources are employees identified in published materials such as books and newspaper articles about the railroad.

In 2018, Judy Bunyard input new data provided by Llew Davis’s research of the W. D. Lee correspondence and the F. White papers. She also added data from some 1904-1906 pay stubs and from approximately 1200 rail pass stubs (all from 1913).  These stubs had been obtained by Don Paulson and donated to the museum archives.  There are now 4876 names in the employee database on 387 pages of information.

Information from this database may not be reproduced in any form for commercial purposes without the written permission of the Ridgway Railroad Museum. Questions, corrections or additions may be sent to the Ridgway Railroad Museum, Box 588, Ridgway, Colorado 81432.