Re: 483 fund raiser information - Old Farts/Foamites, Parts, etc.

Please see my post from earlier this morning regarding the "Fossil Foamites" / self-proclaimed curmudgeons.

The details are that during a visit to Chama in 2004, an attempt to purchase a (non-existant) 483 lapel pin from Roger led to a conversation re an earlier attempt to raise funds for the restoration of #483, and my agreement to provide Roger with some photos so he could build a screen saver to be sold as a fundraiser. Tom Gildersleeve very generously agreed to augment my small collection with several of his excellent photos, and helped arrange for his friend John West to do likewise. Ernie Robart gave permission to scan several photos from his book to round out the coverage of the last D&RGW trains in 1968, and Roger Callender of the Rocky Mountain RR Club also contributed a few photos of the very last revenue freight on August 29 of that year. I spent a couple of months worth of evenings in the spring and summer of 2005 retouching a total of 83 photos and sizing them to a uniform 1200 x 1600 dpi, and returned to Chama in August of 2005 to help Roger assemble the screen saver. We sold one to a visiting railfan within about 10 minutes of Roger burning the first CD ...

(It has turned out that 1200 x 1600 dpi used for Volume-1, the 1960's, although excellent from a quality-of-photo perspective, has resulted in files that are too large for some people. Volume-2, the 1970's, will be produced at a lower resolution, or possibly a choice of medium and high res on the same CD, and Volume-1 will then be re-done at a lower resolution - or choice of two - as well.)

Sometime last week there was a post on another thread which described the current condition of #483 - problems with the rear tube sheet but NOT the crownsheet - and a rough estimate of what will be needed to restore her to service. Apparently some of the parts from #483 went along with #482 when the latter locomotive was sold to the D&SNG a few years ago.

Our goal is NOT to raise the entire amount needed to restore #483, but to raise enough money to reduce C&TS's out-of-pocket costs sufficiently to make #483 the logical first choice for the next engine to be rebuilt.