We had the same issues back in the 90's with not only the rider got, but the outfit cars. We didn't have the luxury of a stealth box car back then. On the ill-fated abbreviated trips I did in May 1993, we eliminated the rider outfit cars the final afternoon. Some left early, so we packed everyone into the rider gondola and 0503. I think we had about 20 folks for that last deal. We did a runby on the west side of the Lobato fill, and 488 stalled and had to make another run at it. We also set a fire which was put out by a C&TS employee up along the highway. We did some switching at Lobato including meeting a fake helper returning to Chama. Then we swapped engines and did a westbound with 487. All this was made nicer since there was a reflecting pond on the west side of the Lobato siding in lovely late afternoon lighting. We were low enough at track level where stuff in the rider got could not be seen. It was a good set of runbys on our shortened track due to the soft roadbed near the state line.
Since Trains Magazine is doing this, they should take that huge stash of my years of advertising money, and simply make a pure freight and have a secondary train of coaches with another engine. Thus an escort train. Then you don't mess with the look of the freight with a rider gon at all. I know that adds probably 30% to the price, but its a way to go for best results. If the passenger train looks decent then some runbys could be done with both trains, one after the other. However one drawback is at that time of year the RR will be using 2-3 engines for regular trains.
Here is a suggestion. Use 315 as the escort train. That frees up power for the C&TS regular trains. Use the stealth box, outfit cars and caboose, so that it too looks pretty good for runbys. If 315 cannot pull everything up to Cumbres stage them ahead of time. Then everyone chases to Cumbres, parks there, and the two trains head to Antonito. More cost, but double the fun. Also big fans( to make wind, not break it) might be required to produce the Russ Sperry shot of the brakeman on the box car top!!!
Greg
PS. Lets also depict the FIRST eastbound of 1968 from Chama----I shot that one on June 5th.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2018 01:55PM by Greg Scholl.