NOTE: I posted this message in error in the "473 at Lobato" string of messages on this Forum so I am reposting it here. Sorry for the confusion!
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Jimmy, I looked at all those posts under the topic "473 at Lobato" as you suggested. Quit a discussion but very little about the train being an excursion. Many Forum posters thought it was just the westbound San Juan and that maybe the K-28 had needed a helper at some point.
Nolan personally told me that the cars which his excursion required were "coupled into the San Juan" from Alamosa to Durango.
An 8x10 B&W photo in my 34 photo collection almost matches the "473 at Lobato" photo which started that discussion and which was posted on March 24 by Brian Jansky. The person who took Brian's photo was standing in a field to the left of the tracks. Dan Howe, who took the photo in my collection, was standing on the right edge of the tracks. The train was moving slowly when both photos were taken. In Brian's photo, only the engine had cleared the bridge. In Howe's photo, the first baggage car behind the engine also had just cleared the bridge. Clearly, this was a photo runby.
The Dan Howe photos in my collection start in Antonito (none between Alamosa and Antonito). Seven of his photos were taken between Antonito and Lobato, not counting the two taken in Antonito. All were taken from windows on both sides of the fifth coach back in the train and just in front of the Silver Vista. The windows were near the rear end of that fifth coach.
In none of the photos from Antonito to Lobato is there any trace of a helper engine, including the two taken in Antonito (one is a 3/4 front view of 473 taking water at the tank. The second is a 3/4 view of 473 and train pulled ahead from the tank an stopped on the dual gauge track along the west side of the station platform with the still used dual gauge remnant of the start of the Chili Line visible along the east side of the station platform. Passengers are on the platform ).
The seven intermediate photos show two photo runbys. The first is above a canyon to the left of the train where the train is stopped and many photographers are on the ground with cameras. Photographer Dan Howe was standing on a hillside to the right rear of the train and the Silver Vista is in the foreground with the engine barely visible in the distance. Even though I have ridden C&TS many times, starting in 1974, I cannot precisely place the location. Howe's notation says it is "west of Sublette".
The second photo runby is at Toltec Tunnel with the 473 just emerging from the tunnel. Apparently, Howe was standing on an outcropping to the right of the monument there.
Here are some interesting things which Nolan told me about the excursion and its passengers:
Famed Disney animator Ward Kimball (responsible for giving shapes to Disney's Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, etc.) was a passenger. He brought with him his musician friends who created a Dixieland style band and they played a lot during the excursion. That band later became known as the Firehouse Five Plus Two and produced many 33 1/3 vinyl record albums under that name. I still have a few of them from my 1955-1959 college days.
Ward Kimball also photographed the excursion passengers as a group (including Nolan Black and his wife) while the excursion was on the Rio Grande Southern. This was at the site north of Dolores where the RGS golden spike ceremony allegedly occurred. Ward's photo appears in Josie More Crum's 1961 history book about the RGS.
The single side door baggage car which was part of Nolan's train was equipped with a semi-portable electric generator which powered a lot of movie cameras and sound recorders . Nolan was not sure about the recorders; from my own experience, they may not have been anything more than "wire recorders" which pre-dated tape recorders. Nolan's main point to me was that the semi-potable generator also provided power for the lights in the excursion cars which meant that the excursion train, during the two days it was on the RGS, was the only passenger train in RGS history to ever have electric lights.
That's enough for now!
Best regards, Hart Corbett
