I just got a call from a Greg Lonewolf of Espanola, who was a former police officer and he said the Chili line WAS operated into the end of 1942 and did serve the early workings of Los Alamos. He was working on some history of the area concerning a start in 1932 of moving out any Anglo or Spanish people from many towns in the area. By 1938 the push to move people was very intense. He said the Indian population did not travel and were left alone but Anglo and Spanish who knew the language were moved away, and he see that now as a way to ready the country for a secret project.
He said that he thinks the Government even pushed to get the railroad abandoned as part of the cover to hide the plans. Without a railroad, no big project would be suspected. He stressed how some roads were improves but others were kept in very poor crude condition. Only the Indian population was hired to work on the project. No one that spoke English was left in the area, and when the scientists came in, they did not go out anywhere except to a dude ranch, which was contained. It is now called the Ghost Ranch.
In his history project he interviewed many old timer and started coming up with conflicting data. The latest that he can speak of is that the Chili line ran as a secret operation into the end of 1942, and he thinks it was done from the north as very few people would have seen any of the trains, and these were people with little contact with the rest of the country. He was interested in this as well as his dad worked on the Chili line.
As to the prior posts, the one from Mr. Peterson was only a personal attack against me and said nothing of value. He might be careful or this list will hear why he hates me and about his kick in ass by the Apache Indians.
Regarding the Santa Fe newspaper article. That was all correct as written. It was the end of travel north of Santa Fe because common carrier service ended but that does not speak of any additional private train operation, by the military, contractors, or even the D&RGW. There is no pro or con here.
Now, we still do not have any firm dates of dismantling, pro or con, but we now have a local historian calling cross-country at his expense to confirm the pro of the Secret Operations. I now hope more local NM rail historians will look at this with more open mind and give it some firm data. All the useful microfilms are in Santa Fe. But from the above study, there was much secrecy happening here even before Pear Harbor.
