Re: Why is the Forum so Focused on D&RGW?

Yeah, I get if you saw the RG back before the 60s. That makes perfect sense to me.
And yeah, both ends of the old D&RGW are almost 100% steam all the time. Double whammy.
And original physical plant is in place.
Triple whammy.
I get that. I've been to Chama in 2012 and it took a few days to scoop my jaw up off the ground afterward. It clearly has appeal, but I continue to be stupefied at how interest in NG stuff, even among train fans, begins and ends between those square-shaped states in the middle. Man, there's so much more out there, some of it arguably more impressive. I recall reading that Bob Richardson was blown away by the Doe River Gorge on the ET&WNC. That track is still there, and far easier to get to than anything the D&RGW ever had.
It's just that the WP&Y is downright amazing for the scenery and the line itself, and I'd strongly argue it rivals anything in Colorado or New Mexico. Yet very few train fans ever get there. The reaction of the girl in the gift shop bore that out, that she rarely saw any true 'train fans' ride the line.
As for people I know here in WA state never having gone, it's just like someone living in Orlando never going to Disneyworld or Kennedy Space center. Heck, a solider under my command on active duty was born and raised just a few blocks from the Mall in WA DC and never once went there to see any of the museums. Ever.



Russo Loco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Another BIG reason, IMHO, is a lot of us senior
> fans - Old Curmudgeons like Ed Stabler, Ernie
> Robart, Haich O'Mannder, the
> JéBêWèX, Tom Gildersleeve and
> myself - actually saw the D&RGW when it was a
> busy, essentially main-line freight-hauling
> railroad but still running steam in the early and
> mid-sixties - the way the standard gauge railroads
> some of us saw as kids were hauling freight in the
> late forties and early fifties.  .

-Lee

Flickr photo set of my On30 layout