Once the standards are set, ( it was witten above that "all the CTSRR has to do is live up to them), do you think for a moment that a federal beurocrat will think twice before shutting her down for "safety" sake ( or their job, more likely). Nobody wants an "unsafe" RR, but as soon as their are two different standards for two differnet RR's you've started down a very slippery slope. Oh, yeah, they'll tell you its for the public good ( and granted it is) , and they'll tell you that they want the standards to be for "your RR", but as soon as there is a problem that will cost a RR $$$$$$$, the fight will be on. So lets imagine the WP&Y having a "higher" standard than the C&TS - then one day a mudd slide causes a mountain to shift on Cumbres. If I'm the buerocrat - why not hold you to the higher standard? I mean, that WILL BE the final outcome, because your federal government will not have the man power or resources to repond to a hundred different "narrow gauge" standards. What to do? Well, how about condense the standards and make one big standard. Thats right - now your boilers are under federal watch and regulations, ( consticting and smothering), right of way and operations are controlled buy a "forest manager" ( gasping for air ), and now your maintenance schedule, track layout , repairs, and operational standrds are controlled by another federal burocracy ( your dead, slowly but still dead). I'm not suggesting that anybody at any meeting this last week, wants anything close to a "dead RR", but they are just a bunch of small cogs in the big government machine, when they move to another department, or retire, or whatever, the standards that will have come out of this process will live forever ( and the new guy will make sure your RR lives up to it). Chickens beware, no matter how nice they are, FOX'S EAT CHICKENS. Keep them out of the hen house because federal laws, regulations, specifications, standards, or what ever you want to call them, bring with them the power of the government to "do something " to you if you break your own rule. Mark my words, at some point in the future, if this thought prevails, this board will be filled, for another entire summer, with people wondering what hit them, when a federal beurocrat causes the C&TS to not run trains again. BRACING FOR IMPACT..........
Rodger
