Wait and see

I think about all we can do now is to wait and see. Railstar has veto power over any decrees that the CHS might make regarding safety, and I feel confident in their judgement. Similarly I would doubt that Ulrich would do a botch job just to keep some dingbat in Denver happy. If they can get #9 running by May they will have earned a tremendous amount of respect for doing a job no one thought could be done. But if they screw it up, they're pretty much out of business - and I think they know it.
True the brochure was a big blunder, and reflects poorly on both Railstar and the CHS, but on the other hand it seems extremely unlikely that the new GTLRR will have the capacity to accommodate anywhere near as many people as the GTLRR Inc. did so advertising is relatively unimportant at this point. The new GTLRR will probably run at whatever capacity they can manage, but will still take a big hit in total ridership - they simply will not have the phisical plant to do othewise - and it will take years for them to recover. If the drop in tourism is sufficiently large, Clear Creek County might be able to get the state involved but that will only be retroactively.
The CHS did an almost unimaginably stupid thing in letting Ashby and Co. go, but they did it and they will have to pay for their mistakes (or, more likely, make Railstar pay for them), but at this point that doesn't matter. The bridges are burned. If we, as railfans, want to see trains coninue to run on the Loop we will have to support Railstar, Ulrich, and even *choke* the CHS. That's simply the way it is.
Constructive criticism may help depending on whether anyone important reads it. Incessent bitching, rumor mongering and unbased speculation - especially that regarding how many people the new GTLRR will kill - simply turns this place into another Gote, or worse.
Don