Re: C&TS Shop

When I wrote my post on March 19 about the C&TS shop program, I did not intend to criticize or insult any of the shop personnel currently employed on the C&TS, and I apologize to any and all of the guys in the shop who may have taken my message in that way.
I know exactly what it takes to overhaul a K36 (and a K28 and a K37 and a K27). I have been there in those exact same trenches in which you now toil. Only when I was there, the floors were dirt.
I absolutely guarantee you that money, in sufficient quantitiy, will solve all the locomotive maintenance/repair problems in Chama. For example, you say it takes two weeks to machine a piston rod. Okay. Now suppose you have a large, well-lit machine shop with six lathes and six skilled machinists, and six pieces of stock, you could make six piston rods in two weeks. If the shop had an overhead bridge crane, you wouldn't have to muster half the shop crew to help the machinist take the rod out of the lathe each time he wanted to try the taper fit in the crosshead. Better yet, if you had a CNC lathe, one skilled machinist could make 6 rods in one week. If you had your own in-house plating shop, you could have them chrome-plated right there. Likewise, if you had a heat-treating oven, you could do all your own heat-treating without having to send your stuff out. Money can buy all these things.
With sufficient money, your stock racks would be filled with 4140 steel tubular bushing stock in all sizes, hex stock, bar stock, flat bar, steel plate, brass hex stock and bar stock in all sizes. Shelves would be sagging under the weight of spun-cast 660 bronze bushing stock for rod bearings. Stainless steel injector nozzles would be lined up like soldiers on the shelf, waiting to be called to active duty. Wabco air pump parts would fill bins, brand new 6ET brake system component gaskets would be stacked in neat piles...etc., etc.
If you had enough money to pay all your people a good, living wage, year-round, and could offer job security, they would be happy to stay, even after their rail fan fervor wore off (if it ever does).
The point of my earlier message was that it takes an incredible amount of money to support the kind of operation everybody wants to see on the C&TS. In fact, way more money than the current passenger revenue and state funding and federal grants can provide. Bottom line--it's not going to happen, so keep doing what you're doing, that is, doing the best you can with what you have to work with. By the way, I'm not so sure I would hold Alamosa as the gold standard of locomotive repair. Perhaps 75 years ago it was OK, but by the 1960's it was pretty bad. The reason? Money, or more precisely, the lack thereof.