Not meaning to hijack your thread, but in answer to your question about why the D&RGW could draw as many people:
Post WW II motor tourism was huge. Lots of people with new cars, gasoline was cheap, lots of people had 2 week vacations and drove to places. The D&RGW's Silverton branch was close to a well publicized national tourist attraction - Mesa Verde, and that could also be on the route to visit the Grand Canyon on the way to / from southern California. As noted elsewhere in this thread - most of the people riding the WP&Y are cruise ship passengers, not rail fans. The same applied to the Silverton. And still does.
Also worth noting - after 1950 the number of relatively accessible narrow gauge railroads catering to tourists was pretty well reduced to the D&RGW. The WP&Y was accessible via ship at Skagway, or the rather arduous Alaska Highway at Whitehorse, and a determined family might ride it, but it was not easily reached en route to most of the tourist destinations in the lower 48.
April, 1956. East Broad Top abandoned. EBT had run occasional fan trips after WWII, but chose not to enter the tourist business.
April, 1960. SP narrow gauge in Owens Valley abandoned.
Timing, and location, and probably the movies all helped.
Around the World in 80 Days was partially filmed on the D&RGW narrow gauge. As were several westerns of the 1950s -
Night Passage, starring Jimmy Stewart may have been the best known and most successful of them.
By the 1980s, the Silverton was a well established tourist attraction near another well established attraction - Mesa Verde, and they were more or less on the way to the Grand Canyon.
When I rode it in 1972, the WP&Y was still very much a freight hauler, but construction crews were working on a highway connection from the Alaska Highway to Skagway, and I wondered if the railroad would be competitive with trucks. What hurt was closure in 1982 of the large mine which generated a lot of the freight. Closure in the early 1980s looked certain and permanent. But after a brief dormancy, someone had the idea of running the train up to White Pass for the cruise ships which were starting to call at Skagway. It paid off. Handsomely. The WP&Y is the busiest narrow gauge in North America. Most of the passengers are riding for the scenery and the experience - much as they do for the D&S.
CVM
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