Mike,
"Something happened in the 20's that caused the Standard Gauge engines to be brought into the "Q" fold."
It certainly did although I'm not sure what. As I said I have copies of several letters from the files at the CHS library that discuss various applications to both narrow and broad gauge equipment. I will try to look into this more but at the moment I don't recall any specific motivation.
There wasn't an ongoing campaign to dispose of the broad gauge by the Company as there was for the narrow gauge. In fact, in the 30's the C&S was very much involved in the development of cooperative operations between it and several, of its competitors. Operations that we now take for granted as common. Therefore the C&S had no qualms about lettering their sg motive power for the Q. I do not mean to imply that this was a reason for the Q lettering as that occurred 8 - 10 years prior. But it may have already been a part of the scheme.
If I may take the liberty to qualify what you said about the ng being the pride of the old C&S; in my experience I've come to believe that there was a distinct seperation between the owner/management we know as the C&S and the South Park narrow gauge operation - the guys who operated and maintained the system. I call the one the "Company" (naturally) and the other the "Railroad" (railroad being the actual day to day operation) simply as an effort to be clear about trace attitudes I seem to detect from either.
The Company was either non partial to, or actually (covertly?), against the narrow gauge - difficult to tell for sure but there are distinct hints they wished to dispose of the ng almost as soon as the Q took over.
The Railroad was quite taken with the ng, I believe, with much pride! These were the men who "lived" it and I'm sure we all understand their sense of pride! I strongly believe the Railroad wanted the ng to continue. The Company saw the bottom line and it was either not black enough for them or just plain red. The Railroad was a means of livelyhood and a way of life. The Company was a "for profit" business. More over the Company, like most upwardly directed railroad business of the day was very much into BIG! There was a trend to emulate the biggest RR of all, the Pennsylvania, and little railroads like the South Park were perhaps viewed as a negative reflection on their image.
These are my rambling thoughts after years of study, contemplation and discussion and I do not report them as fact. But circumstances....?
The company resisted relettering the ng not because they wanted to maintain the South Park pride but because they didn't want anything to impede their disposal of it - as quickly as possible. Of course little things like increased revenue from Climax in the early '30's also gave them pause (but only pause) about ripping it up. Naturally the PUC and the ICC also had a big influence on their "progress".
I doubt the Railroad had much of a say in the matter at all. But as you've pointed out, they were the ones who sent out a few pieces of equipment dressed in their Sunday best - certainly as a matter of pride!
"History is a weird thing."
I've said this before; history (I mean the narration of events) is the cruel joke the living play on the dead. How much would our "history" change if the dead could come back and correct it?
The events we study and read and write about are NOT the accounts that we read and write about. They are the actual events and they are locked away permanently into the past where we cannot - nor ever will - be able to touch them. They are final and they are quite mysterious. What we read as history is someone’s account. Even first hand accounts have difficulty in being purely objective. We, as historians, try to be as honest and objective as we can but.... we are only human.
Yes, history is weird.
Derrell
Derrell
