Hi, Dave et al -

Several years ago Jay Wimer and Roger Hogan established a fund to raise money for the
restoration of #483. IIRC, about ten years ago this money was used to remove the asbestos
from #483's boiler and from one of the K-37's (#492, I believe). IMHO, this was a good use of
the funds, as it helped arrest further deterioration of the boilers so that MAYBE, SOMEDAY,
one or both engines can be restored.

In 2003 or 2004, Roger Hogan arranged with The Friends to establish another separate account for the restoration of #483, and set up a penny-stamping machine to generate income for it.  I met Roger in 2004 and joined his effort by editing a screen-saver based on a few of my own photos of the last D&RGW freights in 1968 and many others from the 1960's generously provided by noted photographers Tom Gildersleeve, John West and Ernie Robart.*   Roger produced these screen savers for a couple of years, and sold them through The Friends and in his gift shop at The Hotel in Chama. Between the penny machine and the screen saver, a total of about $4,500 was raised.  Shortly before his resignation, Soni proposed using these funds to pay for a cosmetic restoration of #483 and one of the snowplows in order to set up a snow fighting display near the depot in Chama (see [ngdiscussion.net]).  SFAIK, nothing was ever done to implement this so, as of mid-2011, the money should still be available ...

- Russ


* In September 2004, on my first visit to Chama in several years, I noticed small locomotive number-plate pins for sale in the gift shop at The Hotel - but there was not one for #483 - long my favorite K-36 due to her role in the last few years of the D&RGW and first few years of the C&TS. The proprietor - Roger Hogan, whom I met for the first time that day - then told me about his own interest in restoring #483, and about the original fund. He also mentioned that he was saving the income from his penny machines in the depot and in The Hotel in order to eventually start another campaign to restore #483. I had about two dozen halfway decent photos of the last Rio Grande freights, and another two dozen or so of the beginnings of the C&TS, so I offered to let him use these to create a screen saver that could be sold to raise money for #483. Since he already had software to build screen savers, and a shrink-wrap machine, Roger agreed to produce the screen saver - provided that I assemble and edit the photos into a format acceptable to his software and of a uniform size.  (For my D&RGW shots, see [ngdiscussion.net], [ngdiscussion.net], [ngdiscussion.net], [ngdiscussion.net], and [ngdiscussion.net]; for a few from the early days of the C&TS, see [ngdiscussion.net], [ngdiscussion.net] and [ngdiscussion.net].)

Once I started working on the project the following winter it became obvious that my small collection of photos wasn't enough to justify creating and marketing a screen saver, so I contacted a fellow photographer - Tom Gildersleeve - whom I had met during my days with the American Freedom Train and whom I knew had numerous photos of the narrow gauge from the early and mid nineteen-sixties. Tom generously agreed to let us use several of his "out-takes" - near-duplicates of photos that had been used in the book 'Narrow Gauge - Then and Now' which he had co-authored with Nils Huxtable.   Tom also contacted his good friend John West on behalf of the 483 project, and arranged for several of his D&RGW narrow gauge photos to be included as well. (John contributed about 30 photos of the 83 on the Alamosa to Chama section of his Narrow Gauge Memories web site at [narrowgaugememories.com].)   Ernie Robart, whom I had met during my years of "foaming" the D&RGW in the mid-sixties, gave me permission to scan a few B&W photos from the book 'Rio Grande Narrow Gauge - The Final Years' which he and Joseph Hereford had written. My little project had snowballed; now I had too many photos rather than too few, so it was decided to divide 'Narrow Gauge Over Cumbres - The Transition Years' into two parts.  I edited and assembled Volume One: The Nineteen-Sixties in 2005, and Roger began producing and marketing it.  Volume Two: The Nineteen-Seventies, has been 90% completed since late 2006, but is still "under construction" pending receipt of a few more mid-seventies photos that have been promised.  (You can see a few of Ernie's pics at [ngdiscussion.net].)



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2012 06:16PM by Russo Loco.