Ok, you don't like my other story, how 'bout this one.
We all know that in 1947 there were a rash of UFO sightings throughout the western US, including the discovery of some unusual debris on a ranch near Roswell. What isn't commonly known is that these UFOs constituted part of a search and rescue mission for a scout ship that had disappeared some 10 years earlier (the exact date remains classified).
The fate of that scout ship was that it was flying up a canyon west of Santa Fe where it crashed into a cliff. The debris were recovered by the US Army and taken to the closest available location, a small boy's school on a high mesa. The wreckage was stored there while a team of specialists was gathered to study the debris. This was to become Los Alamos.
The scout ship was unarmed except for a high powered laser. When fired, into the canyon wall it blasted a hole about 20 feet in diameter several dozen yards into the rock. The truely amazing thing though was that the walls of the hole were lined with about a foot of fused rock producing a remarkably sturdy structure. Since it was still peacetime, experiments were conducted with the laser studying the feasability of boring subway type tunnels and the laser was found to be ideally suited for this task.
The power source for that ship was a small reactor which was easily duplicated. The size of the reactor suggested it would fit nicely in a steam locomotive firebox so the scientists "borrowed" D&RGW #471, which was deadlined in Alamosa awaiting routine repairs and converted it to nuclear - atoms instead of coal. This experiment was an astonishing success, #471 produced steam at unpresidented rates, fit inside the tunels bored by the laser perfectly and produced no waste products other than steam.
However worries that the Germains might get wind of this new technology led the government to a massive coverup. First, additonal locomotives were needed, so the Army bought engine numbers 470,474,475,477,and 479 and created a paper trail showing these engines being sold to the White Pass and Yukon. Number 472 alone was sent north where it stood in for it's sister engines having undergone various midnight repaintings. The thing to note here is that nearly all the paperwork showing these engines in Skagway was forged. The engines never went north, but were instead converted to nuclear power for use in a massive intra-west subway system.
The utility of such a system can not be understated. Weapons for testing could be manufactured in Los Alamos then hauled in total secrecy and security to the Nevada test site.
Unfortunately however the laser wore out after a while, and no one was able to reverse engineer a fix for it. As a conseqence, no new tunels have been dug since around 1952 - at least with this technology.
So the Chili line actually still runs. Los Alamos to Nevada and points in between, with a branch out to Livermore. The venerable K's still haul freight and the occasional passenger through these secret tunels and all information - photos, ledgers, train orders, etc. - suggesting otherwise were forgeries.
As time wore on, people became more and more concerned about nuclear power, and the whole idea sort of faded away. Now days subway tunnels are dug, and trains are run in a more conventional manner. But somewhere out there - right now - a K-28 is shuffling through a tunnel of alien origin keeping the spirit, if not the actual roadbed, of the Chili Line alive.
Don
ecret Chili Line, STILL Need some Facts!
