Yep! Them's The Buses! Scenic had a cool 1965 Ford Station Wagon painted the same colors. And..... so was Diesel #19. It seemed to be the "Internal Combustion Paint Scheme".
The old schedules allowed for the passengers to get off every hour or so to stretch their legs. Something that I thought was a great idea. It kept the passenger from getting terminally bored rattling around in those old boxcars.
In the old straight-through format, eastbound trains stopped at Cumbres for water, pulled to the crossing and let everyone off for a stretch. Then they stopped for lunch at Osier, Stopped briefly for water at Sublette, then made another stop to let everyone off at Big Horn. The same was done westbound. But once the trains got too long, the westbound stopped for water at Los Pinos, then pulled across the road at Cumbres to let everyone off. The engine would be down over the old highway overpass.
With the 2-train format, the Big Horn stop was dropped and a combination water and rest stop was made at Sublette. I liked the afternoon stops at Sublette. It was a nice break for the engine crew.
When we started running vans for the through passengers we had to rethink things. The afternoon van couldn't leave Antonito until it arrived from Chama. That was making for a long wait for the passengers in Antonito (1 hr +). So, the train only stopped at Cumbres westbound long enough to get water and do an air test. That cut 15 minutes out of the wait. But there was always a long wait in Antonito for the ride back.
There also surfaced a timing problem in making the round trip in the morning. In order to get the passengers from Antonito to Chama in time for the 10am train, the van had to leave Chama at 730am, resulting in the passengers from Chama, having to wait in Antonito for the train, and getting back to Chama before 10am was a problem. To deal with that, the Chama train was set back to 1030.
When the new dining hall was built and the passenger loadings increased we found the need to stagger the train arrivals at Osier, as invariably both trains would show up within 5 minutes of each other. The Chama train had the greatest loadings, so it was decided to get its passengers through the line and fed first. Eliminating the "rest stop" did that nicely. Also, by dropping the afternoon rest stop at Cumbres, the train got to Chama 15 minutes earlier, the van left 15 minutes earlier, cutting the dreaded Antonito wait. Later it was thought that most people didn't need a morning break a Sublette, and the rest stop there was eliminated. That left the afternoon stop at Sublette, which I liked. It cut the wait in Antonito down to only 15 minutes or so (just enough time for me to cut the engine off, run it around the loop, tie it up, run to the restroom to clean off the top layer of grunge, to allow me to show my "happy face" to gang I had to drive home.
Somehow, somewhere, that changed. The Antonito merchants complained that none of the Chama passengers got to graze through their gift shops before they went home. So we dropped the afternoon stop. Now, notice the Chama merchants didn't complain about the Antonito-bound passengers not having time to cruise through their shirt-shops...... I won't comment any more about that......
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2017 10:42AM by Earl.
