Shadows and highlights: Going vertical at Cascade Creek. The early morning sun casts the distinctive shadow of a K-27 Mudhen on the nearby hillside, as she rumbles slowly across the 137 ft. high iron trestle over Cascade Creek with a heavy freight. Built back in 1889, this trestle is a deck-plate girder bridge with a total length of 408 ft. It replaced a wooden trestle that had been built 9 years earlier. No double-heading has ever been allowed over this bridge. It was not considered sturdy enough for two locomotives, so the D&RG adopted the practice of locating helper locomotives on long freights at mid-train and/or at the end of the train. This procedure separated the heavy engines, such that no two of them would ever be on the bridge at the same time, enabling trains to cross without stopping to cut off power.
