Re: The Azotea stock car

Jerry,
I remember the car scrapping in Alamosa as well. When we were working on the C&TS, we would drive up to Alamosa at the end of the day to stay at my grandmother's house. She would feed and put up several of us at the time. On the way back and forth, we would drive by the area at Estrella, where they would haul narrow gauge freight cars out, place them in the field and burn them for their scrap metal. I would imagine that hundreds of cars met their end there. One time we stopped and walked over into the field to see some cars about to be burned and the burned remains of others. A rather brusque "gentleman" brandishing a pistol ran us off, telling us never to return or we would be charged with theft and sent to jail. At the time, we were all elated to see that the C&TS had recently been saved. However, it was still sickening to watch these other cars destroyed. By the way, after the wholesale destruction of the narrow gauge freight car fleet, we would see all sorts of standard gauge cars being scrapped at Estrella as well.