I suggest a new term....."Soft Core". As opposed to the Hard Core charters.
Soft core trips can be anything less than the really expensive ones where details and lighting are worth hundreds of dollars extra!
I have always thought there is a market for more Soft Core trips, and they can be just as fun. Here are a few of my suggestions
(1) Special charter train with regular passenger cars that features about 10 photo stops for the day. This could be a way to photograph the regular train, but its a slight premium. Maybe 50-75% more than the regular passenger train for costs. One day could be Antonito to Osier and back, and another day could be Chama to Osier and back. So a one-day trip, or a 2 day charter. Logistics would have to worked out as to how many passengers per charter, and base photo locations on number of riders.
(2) Afternoon Photo Special: Depart Antonito around 2 pm, and make use of the afternoon lighting between Big Horn and Cumbres. Depends on the time of year where the light would fade. Not worried about westbound down the grade from Cumbres.
(3) Mixed train to Cumbres: Freight cars up front and enough room to house 50 people in various coaches or rider gons. A pure consist without coaches is also possible with the box car and other freight type equipment. Make a morning run and afternoon run, doing a few runbys on each trip. On the afternoon run, you switch at Cumbres, and back the train down to Los Pinos Tank, doing runbys there and Tanglefoot curve, and return everything to Chama.
(4) 2 train soft core trip. I engine (Maybe 315 or 168 for variety), on a short freight or historic passenger train. A second train with maybe K-36 that has a mixed train for riders. Am thinking 100 people on this train. This keeps the freight or at least one train pure looking, while the other is not 100% authentic, but who cares, not a hard core trip anyway. Some runbys might mean 2 groups in tight spots like Rock Tunnel for instance.
On some of these you could sell spouse tickets for them to ride along, but won't get off to be in the way of others, except where possible, like Los Pinos Meadows, etc.
I think the possibilities are really endless, and not going to waste your time with any more ideas. Heck the C&TS could even run some stuff on their own and offer as special trains. Some stuff has to be tried to see if it would be successful. Of course they could say "If it ain't broke why fix it"!!
Greg (Throwing ideas against the wall and......) Scholl
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