Re: Chili Line rail piled up at Antonito

DakotaRed Wrote:
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> A pair of newspaper clippings:
>
> -------------------------------------------
>
> Stacked beside the tracks of the 200-mile
> Alamosa-Antonito Durango narrow gauge line, on
> which busy little locomotives pull heavy loads of
> rock, coal and minerals, are 16,825 tons of rails
> and vast salvage piles of ties and bridge timbers
> taken up from the 125-mile Chili line to Santa Fe,
> N. M., abandoned last September.
>
> Following the Chili line abandonment, negotiations
> were started for shipping the track and equipment
> to China.
>
> Military events blocked the negotiations. Now much
> of the pulled up track will go to steel mills as
> scrap and some will be used as replacement
> material for remaining narrow gauge lines.
>
> Antonio was the junction point of the Chili and
> Durango lines from 1881 until last year.
>
>
>
> Amarillo Daily News, July 18, 1942
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
>
>
> Chili Line Cars
> Go Traveling;
> Hawaii and Mexico
>
> Eleven narrow gauge flat cars,
> four refrigerator cars and two oil
> tankers ased on the Chili line bet-
> tween Alamosa and Santa Fe before
> the line was abandoned have been
> sold by the Denver and Rio Grande
> Western Railway.. company to the
> government for service at the naval
> supply depot in Pearl harbor, it was
> learned here today.
>
> They were reconditioned in the
> Alamosa, Colo., car shops, painted a
> gay yellow and sent to San Fran-
> cisco on standard gauge flat cars.
>
> Engines 384 and 385, familiar
> sights in the Chile line yards here,
> were sold to the Mexican govern-
> ment.
>
> Santa Fe New Mexican, Feb 25, 1942
>
> -------------------------------------------

I might point out that the D&RGW RR did not have "familiar engines 384 and 385"on their roster.

Jimmy