Re: A Ticket to Howardsville re: leasing

I was thinking initially along the lines of the Casey Jones and a rebuilt Stover rail car. There are also the Model T possibilities. The Casey is like riding in a bucket of bolts and the visibility from the passenger compartment is very limited. The D&S installed the gas tank and that cuts down on forward visibility for the passengers other than the two front seats. It has an electrical generating problem that needs fixing, but it was running this past summer and fires up quite easily. In the picture Jeff posted of the Casey, there is an added towing bracket to the pilot and that's how the D&S moved the Casey around. I rode on it one time to several miles past Tacoma before the battery died, and one other time celebrating something I don't recall with Charlie Bradshaw as the featured guest. The key thing will be to get something operational as a starter, then we can explore other possibilities.

To the extent things like insurance, rules and regulations allow, my concept is for a "user friendly" operation where guest visits are welcomed without an onerous price tag. The goal of the society of building this is as an economic development tool. It was incorporated into the Master Plan for the town of Silverton and San Juan County under the heading of Heritage Tourism. The chairman of the county commissioners was most definite in his desire to see this railroad progress to the point of making county owned r-o-w available to Eureka--but that's a bit of a stretch right now.

One interesting thing at the recent public hearing was a statement the chairman made that the county has always been proactive in helping the narrow gauge, from the D&RGW to the D&S. He floored me by citing the fact that the county built the 12th track for the D&RGW back in 1955 as an example of the continuing relationship the county has with the narrow gauge. That was covered in AFE 4002 from June of 1955 where the town enabled the appropriate ordinances, and the county "to build the necessary roadbed and furnish labor to construct the extension including placing of ties and laying of rail and OTM at no expense to the Railroad Company but under Railroad supervision." The expense to the railroad was noted to be $757.00 and the county contributed $1,189.00 in labor. The whole thing, removing 100' of former mainline, shifting another 100' of mainline and the extension of 814' of track up 12th Street came to $2605.00. I'm still amazed that he was aware of this bit of historical trivia and brought it up in a public meeting.

The AFE 4002 was signed off on 7-12-55 by Wilson McCarthy, president. Also signing were Gus Aydelott the day before, and the chief engineer, John Ayer, Jr on 7-7-55. I have recently meet Ayer's son who told me that his father loved working for the D&RGW, and that most of the guys at the top had a soft spot for the narrow gauge lines even though officially they had to perform otherwise.

Fritz