D&S

I was one who did not ride the D&S and was negative on them resulting from a less than memorable trip in 1972 (D&RGW days). 1999 Railfest got me to try again - I rode Goose #5, Eureka, and the Alamosa parlor car to Silverton.
Their tone was alot different from 1972. I appologized on this board at the time.
The last weekend in April, I rode their eastern sister, the Great Smoky Mountain RR. A similar openness to the riders was in North Carolina as there was in Colorado. In fact a chartered caboose thet was on the GSMRR painted and lettered D&RGW!!
The only bad part of the weekend was that it was the Harley Davidson meet weekend there - estimates of 5000 motorcycles and 8000 bikers were crawling all over the mountains and I could not get into Cherokee, NC to visit the indian village.
D&S is a for-profit operation and keeps historical accuracy secondary. It does not mean they ignore history, but the Ridgeway "beartrap" spark arresters were never historically accurate for the D&RGW although they are for the Colorado & Southern. I liked them because they were novel and it was another way to see history. The Galloping Goose traversing either the C&TS or the D&S (except at the D&S depot) is not historically correct either.
The C&TS is more a living museum. As with the D&S, it serves a market but is slightly different from the D&S. Next time out, I'll be riding both.
As for the comment earlier in this thread about C&TS leanings, I've seen alot on the SV group and a much lessor amount on the EBT (how about you EBT guys writting in?) and recently (past year or so), WP&Y has been getting more attention.
If you want info on two obscure narrow gauge railroads that standard gauged in the early part of the 1900's, check out my web site for a lot of info on the Gainesville, Jefferson and Southern RR which had a used class 56 (ex-D&RG) steamer at one time and on the Roswell Railroad (ridden by Teddy Roosevelt to and from his wedding).