I'd hate to put a clinker into this erratic discussion, but the 493 was brought to Silverton in the first place to be part of the Silverton "Rail Yard Museum." This all arose from a Durango-Silverton Rail advisory Committee meeting with the D&S, Al Harper and Jim Jackson presiding, and I was present. The D&S had to get rid of all the cars along Narrow Gauge Ave. in Durango so they could sell the land under the sidings to the City of Durango for parking--so, what to do with all this equipment, which at the time was supposedly part of the collateral for the sources of funding with Bradshaw and the Bank of America. This idea was seized on and to the credit of the D&S, panel track appeared in Silverton, a somewhat representative collection of freight and work cars appeared and then the 493. Subsequent to that, we had the 2002 forest fire, the D&S had to scramble to regain its financial strength after that disaster (and I was involved with Region 9 to provide bridge financing to get the D&S through that summer), and the Rail Yard museum was left to survive on its own. Silverton helped the D&S solve a problem of what to do with unwanted equipment and it in turn served as an attraction to visitors to the town and depot.
I would think that for PR reasons if for nothing else, especially with the D&S heavily engaged with the Grand Imperial Hotel, that some sort of celebratory announcement that the star attraction of our local rail museum was being pressed back into operating condition would have been forthcoming. Instead, it appeared to be a stealth operation, cloaked in secrecy. The fact that it was taking place, with personnel from the CRRM present in town, working on the equipment (and I finally did determine their IDs), eating in our restaurants, and otherwise being pretty visible, would indicate that there was an agreement in place. Are the parties involved afraid that it will all fall apart between Silverton and Durango, or maybe with the engine enroute to Golden? The original poster, Kyle, all of a sudden stopped posting--do I sense the heavy hand being applied to Kyle? Will we ever hear from him again or has he been squashed, and I don't have the foggiest idea who he is. It is obvious that the only spokesperson for the D&S is Yvonne, and I won't speculate any further on that. We have had a strong visitation from the Harpers in Silverton during the Grand Imperial construction--son Jim is here most days, I saw Al just yesterday in town, his wife Carol has been working on various aspects of the hotel, Surely in all of this, a phone call to the newspapers (Silverton Standard and Durango Herald) for a heads up on what was happening would have gone a long way towards making this an exciting, positive event rather than the murky one it has turned out to be. I think our community, if no one else, deserved even a sentence or two from an official source.
