Herb,
Not disagreeing with you but here is what it looked like from here .During the late 1930s the RGS took advantage of low-interest loans available to industries that were in dire straits financially but were considered necessary to the commerce of a district . These loans were obtained from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation .The RFC loans were in some cases taken over by the Defense Supplies Corporation ,whose job was to finance peripheral contributors to the war effort .The Manhattan Project was a big client in this intragovernmental financing . Of course the orchestratator of all this financial choreography was the Department of War or simply "War" as it was known in pre-beltway Washington D.C. Did they "requisition" the RGS ? It doen't look like it .However ,they stencilled their ownership on almost all equipment ,and certainly made sure the vanadium ores were expedited to the smelter in Durango . Through all this time Cass Harrington remained the appointed reciever ,not the Department of War . It may be noted that the W.P,& Y.R. was not "requisitioned" ,despite its crucial contribution to the hasty building of the Al-Can Highway . The aforementioned requisitioning of the Silverton Brance was simply to salvage scrap metals . Since much of the paperwork on the Manhattan project ,perhaps the biggest of all government undertakings, is still classified ,it may remain a mystery of just how much control the government had .A curious note...When the railroad was liquidated in 1952-53 ,the Defense Supplies Corporation was not a creditior .Was the loan "forgotten" when the DSC was dissolved at war's end ? I sure doubt it was paid back .
