Both my parents grew up in Alamosa. My late father related how they were visiting my maternal grandparents in Alamosa for Thanksgiving the fall of 1951. My grandfather did not work for the railroad but they were close friends with many of the train crews. For Thanksgiving dinner, they were joined by a D&RGW engineer—I don’t remember his name—maybe Joe Dalla(?)or J. Lira(?). After dinner, the engineer and my grandfather retreated to a corner and began reminiscing and lamenting among themselves how it just didn’t snow any more like it used to— that these “young folks” had no idea of how bad the snow used to be.
Well, soon after Thanksgiving my parents drove home to Georgia, where they were living at the time. Just the next month, they were reading in the newspapers about the narrow gauge locomotive “missing“ on Cumbres Pass in the snow. Of course, it was 491, and the engineer was the same engineer who had been lamenting the lack of real snow, as in the “old days“.
Bill M.