Well I think everyone did get a ton of good images, but oh what might have been, eh!!!
As you may recall Saturday was to be two Cumbres turns, one with rear pusher, and the other with a mid-train helper. Sunday was to be a one-way trip to Antonito.
What I never told everyone was that I had a big surprise lined up on Sunday's trip.
After the Cumbres turns an engine and freight cars were deadheading to Antonito. Then on the Sunday trip, there was to be a freight meet at Sublette. Then I was going to have the helper from the morning train, follow us to Sublette as another surprise.
At Sublette you would have had the option of (A) continuing to Antonito on a shorter freight than what we started with, or
(b) Returning to Chama with the WB freight. The helper from Chama was to go ahead and turn at Big Horn, and catch-up to us around Osier, thus making a mid-train helper(including a few of the cars from Chama that morning), from Osier to Cumbres.
(b1) All this was going to take a lot of time, and a half-day crew was scheduled to take over the train at Los Pinos so we had time to finish runbys before the sun went down, and still make it back to Chama well after dark.
Alas the unstable track at Stateline curve did in all those plans. Essentially I was throwing extra ticket sales money back into steam operations when the money allowed.
As it turned out Sunday was the best day of the two dispite the short length of trackage. At least the trains all looked good, and authentic!
Steamingly,
Greg