C&TS Passenger Cars *LINK*

In looking at the Comprehensive Plan for the C&TS, there is an indication that two new passenger cars per year are needed for the next five years. When additional locomotives become available and the schedule is expanded, this need is rather obvious.
I have a few ideas and I can only see two negatives in my thoughts, lack of money and the fact that sometimes I don’t know what I am talking about. But here they are anyway:
- Hamilton Manufacturing of Burlington, WA, owned by the same person who owns Hamilton Construction in Skagway, has built two groups of eight passenger cars for the WP&Y as well railcars for other railroads. The WP&Y won’t give the cost saying that that is between them and the manufacturer. I guess that is their right but it would be interesting to know.
- Team Mfg., formerly Thiessen Mfg. in Langley BC built the roller bearing trucks (again no cost available). Kim has indicated that they don’t want roller bearing trucks on the C&TS, they want friction. Except for the fact that someone told me that roller bearing would be less expensive to maintain (and I’m not even positive about that), I really don’t understand what difference it makes.
- If these new coaches have a little different appearance than what is wanted on the C&TS, I’m sure that that could be taken care of.
- All the new WP&Y coaches have bathrooms and heaters which would be great on the C&TS. Wouldn’t it be great for Santa to come into heated cars on the Christmas trains. Also, with heated cars, maybe it would be possible to begin and end the season a little earlier and later. Maybe two weeks to a month on either end. I think it would be cool (no pun meant) to ride the train with some snow on the graound outside and I’ll bet the merchants in Chama and Antonito would not turn down extra revenue that might come in during an extended season.