Quibbles noted. But the point is, the D&RG was losing money - badly - after its reorganization as the D&RGW in 1921, and the management approached the problem as one of reducing red ink by drastic measures, which included incorporating the motor carrier to replace expensive steam trains in 1927, and efforts to discontinue narrow gauge passenger trains. Car dispositions before 1952 trimmed the passenger fleet substantially, and left only the ten passenger cars, plus the former passenger cars in the MOW fleet on the property in 1960, plus two privately owned former business cars. The D&RGW wasn't going to short itself, so they took the passenger trucks from maintenance of way cars and the older coaches they retired in the early 1960s to build a second ten car train set for the Silverton service. Bodies might well be available for the C&TS to acquire, but they were going to be more costly to place in service than the P-boxes were.
The problem faced by the C&TS, like the Colorado Railroad Museum, or any museum or private collector after 1970 was two-fold: the cost of restoring coach bodies, plus the cost of obtaining appropriate passenger trucks for them was probably much greater than converting box cars to low budget coaches. My recollection is that the Colorado Railroad Museum had acquired several sets of CB&Q wood beam caboose trucks with the intent of using the pedestals and possibly some of the wooden parts to try to fabricate three foot gauge coach trucks. One of these is under one end of Uintah combine No. 50 in a photo I posted earlier. Eventually more accurate and operable replica D&RGW passenger trucks were built by the D&S, and more recently, by the Colorado Railroad Museum and the C&TS.
It would be interesting to know if the D&RGW considered buying new steel trucks for new passenger cars, as it is possible that American Steel Foundries still had patterns for the cast steel trucks supplied for six of the long baggage / RPOs rebuilt in the 1920s. But by cannibalizing the trucks off of cars that were not going to be used on the Silverton, the D&RGW came up with enough of the composite trucks and the cast steel trucks from the long baggage / RPOs to equip the second Silverton train set. There was probably no reason to spend more money than necessary, so why buy new cast steel trucks when enough appropriate trucks were available?
CVM
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