Mike,
It was absolutely tongue in cheek, although I obviously got your juices flowing nonetheless. A well ballasted railroad is far more attractive than one where you can't see the track for the weeds. A weed covered right of way generally results from lack of good maintenance. I haven't been following the tender lettering issue you mention, but the main thing I miss is that they are lettered "Cumbres & Toltec" instead of "Rio Grande."
If you want to get into authenticity issues, the passenger cars would top the list for obvious reasons, but they are a necessary evil if the railroad is to fulfill its mission and survive as an operating museum. Back in the nineties I rode a couple of photo freights where every attempt was made to restore it to a 1960's appearance, and the two obvious problems were the spark arresters on the engines and the fact that they ran with headlights on during the day. In both cases I believe it reflected changing rules that were in place by the 1990s and not in place in the 1960s. As far as I am concerned, the engines would have been outfitted exactly the same if the Rio Grande was still operating the railroad with those engines. The Rio Grande actually did use those spark arresters on the K-36 class for a time, but they never apparently caught on. It is well not to lose sight of the fact that evolving conditions and regulations will change things no matter what.
The pictures that Kevin shot are generally quite superior to what was shot on that railroad during the Rio Grande era, especially that glint shot taken just before sunset of the train going away. That shot, in particular, was absolutely wonderful and really unique. It would have been a near impossibility for anything like that to have been shot during the Rio Grande era given the inaccessibility of most of the line, the light traffic, the limitations of camera and film at that time, and even the fact that most photographers were not even shooting in color. The one thing the old stuff had, however, was the historical authenticity of depicting a railroad going about its daily business of doing what it was built to do. Anything shot today can be nothing more than an attempt to duplicate that, and will never have the same historical value. Today you can get high quality pictures of a historical replication. Back in the day you got low quality pictures of the real deal. It's a tradeoff.
Anyhow, getting back to signals and CTC, I would be delighted if the C&TS was doing the kind of business that made such improvements a necessity.
Tom
