D&RGW train number 319 pulled out of Delta, Colorado at 7:25 p.m. on April 26, 1937, bound northwest for Grand Junction. The consist was modest by the standards of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad: coal-powered steam engine #777, a T-29 class 4-6-0 Ten-wheeler built by Brooks Locomotive Works in 1908, followed by a combination mail and baggage car, an additional baggage car, one coach, and a Pullman sleeping car. At the throttle sat engineer Charles D. Freeman, a D&RGW veteran since 1903. Feeding the firebox was Fred S. Perkins, who had served the railroad since 1898 -- nearly four decades on the line. The train tracked alongside the Gunnison River at a steady 25 to 30 miles per hour through the Colorado evening, covering the familiar route the crew had worked just that morning in the opposite direction.

Roughly 35 minutes out of Delta, about 17.1 miles along the line, the tracks crossed Wells Gulch near Dominguez Canyon on a wooden trestle -- bridge 389.60. Sometime during the twelve hours since train 319's morning westbound crossing, fire had consumed the trestle. The rails hung unsupported over the gulch, invisible against the darkness of an April night. By 8:00 p.m., with no warning signals, no flagmen, and no indication whatsoever that anything had changed, Freeman drove engine #777 onto rails that led into empty air. There was no time to apply the brakes. The locomotive and its consist derailed as they crossed the south end of Wells Gulch, plunging into the gap where the trestle had stood hours before.

Fireman Fred S. Perkins was killed instantly in the wreck. Engineer Charles D. Freeman survived the initial crash but suffered extensive burns from the escaping steam of the ruptured boiler. He was transported to St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction, where he died the following day. Seven others aboard the train were injured -- five passengers, the railway clerk, and the express manager -- but none seriously. The official investigation that followed could not determine what had started the fire that destroyed the trestle. Two possible theories were mentioned in the inquiry, but no evidence supported either one. The Interstate Commerce Commission ruled the crash an accident caused by the burned-out bridge. No recommendations were issued. Engine #777, the Brooks-built Ten-wheeler that had served the D&RGW for nearly three decades, was scrapped in October 1938.

The site of the crash lies along the Gunnison River near Dominguez Canyon, a stretch of western Colorado where red rock walls rise above the water and the old Denver and Rio Grande Western right-of-way traces a path through some of the state's most rugged terrain. The railroad once threaded this landscape to connect the mining towns of the San Juan Mountains with the broader network at Grand Junction. Today, Dominguez Canyon is a federally designated wilderness area, and the railroad grade has largely returned to the desert. The trestle at Wells Gulch is long gone. What remains is the record of two veteran railroaders -- Freeman with 34 years on the line, Perkins with 39 -- who drove into darkness on a route they knew by heart, trusting a bridge that no longer existed.