Re: Diseasel Passenger Ops on the C&TS during 1975

There was a time when #19 may have saved the railroad -

IIRC, the C&TS was hauling a lot of people by the color season of 1975, but operations were expensive and profits were slim at best.  A low-cost alternative that more than paid for itself was running a short train behind #19 from Cumbres to Sublette & return.  Using a steam loco would have necessitated running all the way to Big Horn to turn the engine, or backing all the way from Sublette to Cumbres – neither one a viable alternative – plus the need for facilities at Cumbres to fuel and service a steam engine. Thus #19 provided a very worthwhile service at a critical time.  The following photos have been posted before, but rather than fight the NGDF's still-problematic search engine to find them, I'll just re-post them here.  I'm not sure of the exact date, but it's during the last week of September in 1975.

Here's #19 departing Cumbres with a full train of happy passengers:


. . . and stopping for water (NOT!!) at Sublette a couple of hours later before running around the train for the return trip:


I don't remember whether the caboose was switched to the opposite end of the train before heading back to Cumbres, and didn't get photos as I drove on east to Antonito to catch the next day's westbound regular train at the trestle where a horse-thief named Ferguson was duly hanged a few years previously (or so the legend says).

- El Abuelo Histœrico, Greengo y Curmudgeoño de los Locomoturas Viejos y Verdes,
aka Der Grossväterlich DünkelOlivGrünDampfKesselMantelLiebHabender