Chasing and riding the first two public trips on C&TS (1971)

This is what happens when you first acquire a slide/negative scanner: one starts looking at slides that haven't seen the light of day for decades - in this case nearly five decades. In taking a quick glance at one of my dad's old slide files, I came across a set of slides taken on July 3 and 4, 1971 that document the first two public excursions operated by the newly established C&TS. Fifty years ago crews and volunteers were working 7 days a week to get the C&TS up and running for passenger service. A dozen box cars were being converted into rider cars, and 484 was being readied for it's ICC inspection. By the second half of June 484 had been approved by the ICC and had made a test run to Cresco with some cars. On June 26, 484 made an inaugural run from Chama to Antonito with 150 passengers for the Railroad Club of New Mexico. The next day a VIP special was operated from Antonito back to Chama.

The first public trips were scheduled for the 3-day 4th of July weekend. The C&TS offered tickets for a Chama-Big Horn-Chama round trip on Saturday, July 3; a Chama-Antonito one-way with bus return on Sunday; and an Antonito-Cumbres-Antonito trip on Monday.

I ended up buying 6 tickets for the Chama-Antonito trip, seeing a golden opportunity for a family reunion here. My parents and 15 year old brother JR drove from Alamogordo to Chama; my girl friend Helen was just finishing her internship at The Purdue University Medical Center in Indianapolis and rode the "James Whitcomb Riley" to Chicago and the " Denver Zephyr/California Zephyr" to Denver. I flew from Pasco to Denver, Union Pacific's "City of Portland/City of Kansas City" having expired on AMTRAK day, May 1. My brother Wolf left UC Boulder and picked up Helen and me in his tan VW Beetle for the trip to Chama.

On Saturday we chased the first public C&TS run from Chama to the Los Pinos valley in the morning and the return run in the afternoon. My dad took slides, mostly of our motley crew, and I took Super 8 movies of the train (today I watched the movies, probably for the first time in 49 years - now I am going to send them off for digitizing - running them thru my projector again is not an option).

Chama on July 3, 1967. 484 is being prepped next to the engine house





Here the first public C&TS run is approaching the first road crossing. Note the riders on the pilot. I assume that they are there to watch for rocks in the Narrows, as they were not there later on the run. However, later on the run my movies did catch scenes of crew members or volunteers walking the boxcar roof tops of the moving train.



Those same people seem to have sneaked in front of my dad's camera again as the train was approaching Coxo (this did NOT happen in front of my movie camera)



(to be continued)