Don,
Thank you for neatly pointing out the chronology. The preservation of the Santa Fe branch, in whole or in part makes no sense if it was part of the secret Manhattan Project. Usually, the simplist course of events is what happened, or pretty close to it.
The idea of a secret passenger operation for the Los Alamos workers just doesn't make any rational sense. Firstly, a train crew of at least three (even though normal union requirements would have been 4-5) compared to a bus with a crew of one - especially if you will need the bus for one leg of the trip anyway. Secondly you need to have a larger shop force to maintain the steam locomotive than the garage to maintain the bus. The war created a real manpower shortage, so anything this labor intensive without a logical reason such as enough passengers to warrant moving train loads of them at a time is hard to justify.
The shortage of photos and doucmentation of the abandonment is also not that unusual. The timing was probably one obvious reason the 'soon after abandonment' photos were never taken: gas and rubber rationing would suggest that one take limited recreational fuel and film and shoot exisiting railroads if you could. As for the lack of abandonment photos, note that we have little in the way of photographic documentation for the scrapping of the Lake City branch, the Valley Line south of Mears Jct, the Orient Branch, the Pagosa Springs branch, or the La Madera branch. So I don't see any big oddity here.
In short, I think this is a neat example of an urban legend, but I don't see any compelling evidence to give any credence to the story of a surviving remanat of the Santa Fe branch.
Thanks for reading.
Charlie Mutschler
-30-
ecret Chili Line, Where are Pro and Con Facts?
