Denver and Rio Grande (film)

Denver and Rio Grande is a western film, directed by Byron Haskin and released by Paramount Pictures in 1952. The film is a dramatization of the building of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, which was chartered in 1870. It was filmed in the summer of 1951 on location on actual DampRG track now the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad N near Durango, Colorado.

In the late 1870s, chief engineer Gil Harkness J. Carrol Naish N and construction foreman Jim Vesser Edmond OBrien N are surveying a new route for the DampRG through the Royal Gorge in Colorado. Vesser learns that a crew from the competing Caon City amp San Juan Railroad is also in the gorge and confronts former friend Bob Nelson and his unscrupulous boss, McCabe Sterling Hayden. McCabe shoots Nelson in the back during a fight but he and crony Johnny Buff Lyle Bettger blame Vesser, who thinks he accidentally shot Nelson while stunned from a blow. Linda Prescott Kasey Rogers, the secretary of DampRG president General William J. Palmer Dean Jagger, N believes Vesser to be a cowardly killer. An injunction stops work by the DampRG in the gorge and Vesser suggests they run the CCampSJ men out on a pole. Linda, who is actually Nelsons sister and is spying for McCabe after being told by him that Vesser murdered her brother, angrily accuses him of acting above the law.Vesser talks Harkness into defying the injunction. When he enters the camp saloon to bring the men back to work, one of McCabes agitators sparks a brawl over not being paid. Palmer obtains payroll money in Denver, but the train returning him to the construction camp is robbed by three men, who shoot Palmers accountant. Vesser returns to the saloon, sees two men gambling with a lot of cash when everyone else is broke and accuses them of robbing the payroll. They try to flee towards the CCampSJ camp and a gunfight ensues. Vesser kills one and wounds the other, who Palmer identifies as one of the robbers but says that the unknown third robber is the man who murdered his accountant. Vesser confronts Linda, revealing that he saw her riding in the direction of McCabes camp, but she dismisses his insinuations. ........

Source: Wikipedia