I guess it is time for me to set the record straight. A few months ago, I wrote a post observing the 44th anniversary of my first trip to Chama.
44 years
I carefully chose my words to be accurate, but some of you misinterpreted them, and I made no effort to correct you. I apologize.
Here is a new account, re-written to avoid any misunderstanding.
In the summer of 1971 I had a summer internship at Los Alamos. As a resident of Indiana, and a student at Cornell (in New York), I was not sure I would ever be in the Southwest again; as a poor grad student(*), I wanted to make best use of my money, so I carefully planned outings for each weekend so I could see and do as much as possible while minimizing the cost. On roughly June 30th, the local newspaper had an article about a new tourist attraction in the area; I redid my schedule and drove up to Chama the next Saturday. I wasn't surprised to encounter a mob scene; from the newspaper article, I thought this was the inaugural run of this new thing (from comments here I now believe it was the second weekend of revenue operations). I eventually found a place to park my car, and waded into the mob asking for the ticket office; several people told me that tickets had been sold out for some time now, so I wandered around taking a few pictures (with that film which turned out to be worse than mediocre), and then chased the train as far as I could. Eventually, the tracks and road separated, so I drove to Antonito. Someone there told me that the train wasn't coming that far (in discussions at the Goat, Bob Keller thought they were turning at Big Horn), so I went back home ... and redoing my schedule for a time when I could get tickets just wasn't going to happen.
I keep careful records of my pictures, but I managed to miscopy the town as "Chalma". I eventually earned two Master's degrees (but not PhD), and got married, all while remaining a resident of Indiana. In 1989, we made our first trip to the SouthWest - to see my brother who was living in Tucson. My wife, who tended to do the "big picture" part of planning a trip, could find the DSNG and the Georgetown Loop, but nothing in "Chalma" (this is one of the reasons I talk so much about marketing), so I thought CATS had died an untimely death. Finally, in late 1999, while looking for railroad memorabilia on eBay, I found a series of auctions by a North Carolina resident named Wimer, who was trying to raise money to help CATS get through the winter while the Commission decided what to do about the situation resulting when they terminated their agreement with some guy named Bartholomew; this is when I reconnected with CATS and became virtual friends with Jay.
(*) "poor" was probably redundant. One of my colleagues used high precision scales at the lab to weigh a package of chicken, and then he weighed the garbage remaining, to determine how much meat he had consumed He also weighed a hamburger before and after cooking it, because he wanted an accurate comparison of price-per-pound for chicken and (fatty) hamburger.
I could crop this "classic" fence/loco/water-tower view at LosPinos to remove the other photographers, but to me they are the ones who make this "special"; no one has ever asked me "why are you taking a picture of this train?", but on several occasions, when my brother and I have been shooting together, we've been asked "What is so special that two are you are both taking pictures of this train?"
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2015 01:01PM by Randall Hess.