About a year ago the Friends prepared a report for the benefit of the new Commissioners that, among other things, described what the C&TS has done to satisfy the federal standards and guidelines that govern a National Historic Site such as the C&TS. I don't know how well this will copy over to the NGDF, but below are some pertinent sections of that report which may prove helpful.
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"Since the railroad is a National Historic Site, any discussion of what to do with the railroad’s historic assets has to take place within the context of the PRESERVATION and REHABILITATION standards and guidelines specified in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties (i.e., “SIS”). This is the statutory title of the body of federal standards and guidelines that govern work done on historic properties of the railroad. Commissioners can access the full SIS at a National Park Service web site www.nps.gov/history/hps/tps/standguide. The NPS’s introduction to the SIS can be found at Appendix C at the end of this report. In addition, Appendix A of this report reproduces a short article prepared in 1995 that summarized the historic preservation concepts and terms of use as these were applied to railroad properties at the time.
A. Established C&TSRR Policies and Practices.
From the late 1980’s onward the Commission and the Friends have had a rigorous set of policies and procedures in place ensuring that work done on the railroad’s historic properties satisfies the guidelines in the SIS. Three basic mechanisms ensure compliance:
• Review and Prior Approval by SHPO. All proposed projects, whether originated by the Friends, the Commission, or other entities are submitted in written form to the Commission in advance and thence are forwarded to the appropriate State Historical Preservation Office (SHPO) for review, modification if necessary, and prior approval before any work commences.
• Instruction in SIS Guidelines. Historic PRESERVATION and REHABILITATION projects are conducted in accordance with the SIS guidelines. Friends volunteers involved in work projects on historic properties are instructed in the pertinent SIS guidelines, all team leaders are trained in their application, and an abbreviated version is distributed to volunteers at work sessions. Please see Appendix B for a copy of the instructions issued by the Friends.
• SHPO Inspections. Periodically, a SHPO representative performs on-site inspections of projects. Since both Colorado and New Mexico own equal undivided interests under the interstate compact, the SHPO’s of the two states decide between themselves how to carry out this function.
In the early years of the C&TSRR the bulk of the work on the railroad’s historic properties involved PRESERVATION – simply stabilizing and saving buildings, structures, and rolling stock. However, since the late 1980’s there has been an evolving increase in the scope and depth of REHABILITATION projects, including examples of ADAPTIVE USE (e.g., the plans to have the Osier and Cumbres Section Houses eventually function as rental units). The railroad also features several RECONSTRUCTIONS, including much of the Cumbres Snow Shed and essentially all of the water tanks. As defined in summary form in the NPS’s Introduction to the SIS standards (see Appendix C):
“The Standards for the first treatment, PRESERVATION, require retention of the greatest amount of historic fabric, along with the building's historic form, features, and detailing as they have evolved over time. The REHABILITATION Standards acknowledge the need to alter or add to a historic building to meet continuing or new uses while retaining the building's historic character. The RESTORATION Standards allow for the depiction of a building at a particular time in its history by preserving materials from the period of significance and removing materials from other periods. The RECONSTRUCTION Standards establish a limited framework for re-creating a vanished or non-surviving building with new materials, primarily for interpretive purposes.”
To get a sense of the scope of the railroad’s historic properties, according to the National Register of Historic Places nomination, the railroad has 28 buildings and 28 structures at 14 sites and 10 steam locomotives and 132 pieces of rolling stock that are considered “contributing resources.” By definition these are the historic properties subject to the SIS standards. Virtually all of these are subject to some degree of on-going PRESERVATION and REHABILITATION and to the review process described earlier. Furthermore, the process of preparing written submissions and documenting progress on projects has resulted in considerable sets of archives at the Commission office and the Friends library."
