I just flipped through a couple of the earlier issues of the CRA and that is the case, few citations, quotes from Beebe & Clegg, lots of conjecture. I don't want to put down all of the CRRM Publications, because for the past couple of decades they have been turning out great books (I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming one on Golden), but, much like most that was written in the early days of rail preservation, a lot of the history is sub-par and were more Railfanning books. I will give credit to Robert Athearn though, his Rebel of the Rockies actually takes a look at the whole history of the railroad (including the mythological Utah which lots of Rio Grande railfan publications tend to ignore), and there are others like almost everything published by Sundance and Pruett that maintain good quality.