Any employee or volunteer at a tourist railroad will get a sense of an overwhelming amount of work to be done after a short period of time. Some tourist railroads are gifted with amazing scenery like those in Colorado, while others may just have a mile or so in the woods, but the draw for all of us to work at these places is to see historic equipment operate.
The scenery at Cass is really great once you get up past Whitaker, you can look back down the valley that you are climbing from, and see the next train way down below shoving up the grade behind you. The railroad has to be one of the most nostalgic places in the country, and you can't compare it to the Durango & Silverton when it comes to that. The company town is still nearly complete on one side of the river, and the ruins of the lumber company which had been destroyed by arson are still left intact and undisturbed. When it comes to the locomotives, I myself am not a big fan of geared engines, but if you enjoy steam you are missing a great opportunity. The crews have great pride in the locomotives and the machinery is kept meticulous and well used to do what they were built to do, and if you are polite, you may easily get a cab ride.
Plus, they aren't afraid to play the whistle and instill a little magic into railroading again.
I feel a lot of people who post on this board find it easy to find fault with the D&S for this or that and tote the C&TS on a parade of yard access and lack of development to Chama. I find both railroads fantastic, but a lot of times it seems the D&S doesn't get a lot of credibility among railfans that it deserves. Obviously this isn't actually important to the company, but I know for a fact that the crew at the D&S is extremely proud of the equipment and right of way they get the privilege to operate everyday just as it was intended. The most complete, native collection of passenger equipment operates everyday on track is was built to run on, and pulled by locomotives which were built for that railroad... granted the Rio Grande didn't operate K-36's past Rockwood, but if traffic had warranted, the company likely would have found a way to do so. Locomotives running roundtrip to Silverton are probably the most beat to death operating steam engines in the country, and even though the grade percentage isn't 4%, the drawbar can't tell the difference between Cumbres Pass or Mike Nichols dragging twelve cars out of Needleton. The crews are trained in traditional roles; you won't find a loudspeaker narrating any part of the trip... the shop crew works late hours all year to tighten up running gear, replace a hot brass or change hot grease cakes with hot water dripping on their face... the track crew replaces ties and tamps and trims trees by hand... They all work very hard to make sure the trains operate the next day, on time, and in the same manner it has just about always been done. Sure there are a lot of things that have changed in town and even with the company itself, but the majority of the scenery hasn't changed except with the seasons.
If a magazine can publish an article voicing an opinion, it doesn't make sense to me to try and discredit the outcome by downplaying a small token given to a company that has a product we all want to see continue and grow. Just look at some pictures of a photo freight or a hikers vacation photo of the train climbing into Elk Park to see why it might have gotten a top spot, and not fret over why some other railroads didn't make the list. Obviously a lot of those mentioned are due credit, but bringing it up after a couple of others get a little recognition is not the way to go about it.
