Re: "What if" - RGS tourist operations.

As much as I would have loved to have seen some of the mainline portion of the RGS preserved I think the financials would have doomed any such venture. The reality was it was just too costly to maintain all the bridges and ROW (look at the current cost to replace the Lobato trestle to make my point). I seriously doubt additional freight or other measures would have prolonged the inevitable end as much as it pains me to admit it.

So my “what if” (with the benefit of almost 60 years hindsight) would have been to preserve the RGS Ridgway yard and much of its extant equipment circa 1952/53 as I described to start this thread...and then operate on the Ouray Branch which was abandoned in early 1953. My reasoning would be that this shorter (10 mile) branch would have been less $ to maintain, was connected to Ridgway yard, and was available at this point in time. Further, given the short attention span of today’s tourist an approx. 1 hour or so trip would have been easier to sell and maintain. Obviously not what the RGS had to offer but perhaps something smaller in scale that could persevere with a goose and limited steam operations in the summer months.

Rod