Right on, Rod -
I have been coming to the D&RGW since 1960 and C&TS since 1970 to ride and photograph.
I missed a lot of the eighties and nineties due to working to support a family, have been around
most years since 2004, but missed 2011 and last year and may miss this year primarily due to
health issues. Anything significantly new or unique that I haven’t already experienced to some
degree will be a big factor in getting me to come back, so I'm looking forward to the tank cars
hopefully being available in 2015, along with The Friends demonstrating the derrick and the pile
driver. Coordinating a visit to the D&S during the same trip is also big factor.
Like you, I have little interest in railfan activities/ trips that are not using historically lettered equipment ... so adding vinyl lettering for “D&RGW” or “Rio Grande” on the locomotives is a nit in the total scheme of any trip, IMHO. But having seen the early years of the C&TS, I do think it would be fun to re-create the 'Toltec Rattler' of 1972, or at least a train consisting entirely of the old "rider boxcars", with the engines lettered using Ernie Robart's 1970 stencils (or vinyl re-creations thereof). The C&TS has been here for well over 40 years, and has developed a history of its own.
Another event that could be interesting is a comparison of track maintenance then and now. Run a train one day with D&RGW #463 and two or three drop-bottom gons dumping ballast for the crews to spread the old-fashioned way, and the next day run #489 (or - gasp! - #19) with two or three of the EBT hoppers and using the modern tampers to level and align the track. Of course, IMHO, the hoppers should be painted MOW gray with large flying
C&TS logos - except that one of them should have a C&TS "Rock Tunnel Route" herald and be lettered '
JBWX'
...
-
Rússo
p.s. to John West - Have you ever considered sponsoring the restoration of one of the UTLX tank cars so that it too could be lettered '
JBWX'?