Rod,
As best I can recall, then Executive Director Richard Gomez was hoping to match the $180,000 grant from the CO Historical Society with a request from the NM legislature. There may have been some monies he was hoping to somehow credit from the EDA track work grant. I think your numbers are fairly accurate.
However, the $70,000 you referenced was not a GRANT from the Friends but rather a purchase of services contract WITH the Friends for various activities such as historical research and field surveys/assessments of extant structures. This contract proposal included a substantial amount of pro bono field work to be performed by a team of trained Friends volunteers that I'd asked Projects Committee Chair Bob Tully to assemble.
I remember that Bob responded immediately with his usual stellar job and had his team prepared to deploy in November and December that year before the snow pack got too deep in the higher elevations. UNit Design Studio of Denver was the lead agency. It started out as a reasonably tight planning proposal with a fairly rapid timetable. I was pretty confident we could pull it off. The master plan's primary importance was that it could potentially open the door to significant Colorado gaming funds through CHS for preservation projects.
At some point the proposed master plan costs somehow grew to over $500,000 and ultimately collasped of its own weight along with mission creep. I was disappointed that the scope was not better contained. There was also substantial redundancy between the proposed master plan process and the Commission's strategic plan six months later.
Often it seemed, the complex governance of the C&TS conspired against the INTEGRATED long range planning that many heritage railroads take for granted. BTW, it's been four years since the $180,000 CHS grant to create a master plan was awarded to the C&TS.
Brian
