Re: Good looking reefer (pic)

Regarding the history of #55: When I took my first road trip to the Southwest in 1982 I had spoken to Bill Fleisher (bay area On3 modeler) and he had given me a run down of things to see on the narrow gauge. One of his offhand comments was there was a short reefer body at the Center Airport. When I took my road trip I saw and photographed the body. 9 months later I'm living in New Mexico and Earl and I rode the RG Zephyr (a story in and of itself) and then drove back down to Chama. On the way I mentioned the reefer body and Earl had never heard of it so we drove over to Center Airport and there it was. When we drove through La Jara we spotted the two tank car bodies that had been recently moved from some other location. As Earl said, this was before the internet and everything was word of mouth. On one of our other forays we found some narrow gauge passenger cars at a boy's camp (they're still there) and tried to find a NG baggage car that still eludes everyone. The San Luis Valley is vast and there are likely other gems sitting behind a farmer's barn just waiting for someone to drive down an obscure road and recognize it. I remember there was one farmer west of Alamosa who had nearly a dozen car bodies on his property both box cars and outfit cars. I haven't been back that way for over 20 years but I wouldn't be surprised if they were still there...