Re: Look at what I saw today (4-13-17)

Mountain View has been running the RR's buses since the early-1990's. It's a great deal for them. Being based in Tucson, most of their business was for the winter time "snowbird" tourist trade. For most of the summer their buses sat idle. The C&TS gig was a way to keep their fleet on the road and their driver's employed in the summer.

Around 1990 a Tucson based railfan/bus driver named Roger Brower approached me about running the C&TS bus transportation. At that time we were leasing 24 passenger airport shuttle busses to handle the passengers and using our train and engine crews to drive. I asked Roger for a proposal. I ran the numbers as to how much bus rental, fuel, insurance, maintenance administrative costs (I had to handle all the DOT crapola for bus operation). Roger's proposal was a couple of thousand over what we were spending. I went to manager Joe Vigil and presented Roger's plan along with my figures. I told Joe I would gladly pay the difference out of my pocket to not have to deal with running a bus company. I mentioned that our costs did not include what I referred to as the "Bull Sh*t Factor" - the pain in the rear of having to do it. He laughed and agreed. Roger got the contract. Roger was a driver for Mountain View in the winter time. As business grew we started to use MV buses in addition to Roger's old Eagle bus which began to see more and more time in the shop as climbing the hill 4 times a day showed how really old it was. Eventually, Roger dropped out and the contract went to MV Tours.

Roger's old Eagle coach sat in an equipment yard south of Chama for a couple of years. It was eventually sold to some country music star who turned into his tour bus.