I believe the train you are referring to is picking up debris and doing general clean-up on the Tenn Pass line, for EPA reasons. Not much hope of the line reopening soon from what I hear.
Les Jarrett and I did a nice 5-day stint on the line after doing the C&TS in May 1997 and have a pretty decent video called "Tennessee Pass & The Royal Gorge Route" 10 unit coal train was pretty impressive as was other freight traffic.
Back to Narrow Gauge...Another factor on the Antonito to Cumbres side of the line was having water tanks servicable. Earl Knoob told me about this when I was getting info for "Rio Grande Steam Freights" in 1992. The John Craft trips that year had lower tonage ratings since Lava tank was out of service. We did three runbys on the last day(west of Antonito, MP 289, and Whiplash Curve), and John told we later we were nearly dry in the tenders of the 497 and 484 when we reached Sublette. As I remember the 497 watered immediately, then backed up and we did a runby at Sublette, then 484(The Mid-train helper) took water. That was some train, and it even included several(6 if I remember correctly) loaded cars of ballast(thats right ballast)in the wooden dump gons. The following May several of these were dumped at State line curve during the Snow clearing expedition along the mushy roadbed!
So, when was Lava tank taken out of service. I know the tank burned during C&TS times, but did it work before that okay, and did D&RGW trains regularly use this tank out of Antonito in the mid-late 60's? More to ponder on this interesting topic. I hope Mr Comee is soaking this up??!!
Steamingly,
Greg Scholl
