All Apologies...

You're right, to all I apologize no offense was intended. The history is not quite "extremely slanted" as may be thought. Maybe slightly slanted. I am not %100 sure of all of this but believe it to be close . Here goes... The Rio Grande tried fairly hard to turn business away on most branches of the narrow gauge in an around this time period, (I suppose to show them as losing propositions?) The folks at CF&I in Pueblo were told that they would be better off shipping their coal out by truck instead of by railroad. CF&I fought tooth and nail about this and demanded that it be done by rail as per their tariff set up. I believe that around 1952/53 they finally gave up and closed the mine down (blew it up).
I've read that Bob Richardson tried to ship all(or most) of the narrow gauge equipment he was collecting from Durango over to Alamosa and was told to ship it all by truck. How many other undocumented cases/situations were there of folks told the exact same thing?
(Maybe to show loss so as to rid themselves of the narrow gauge altogether?)
I am not arguing about the efficiency of diesel versus steam, (that makes perfect sense, the upgrade for effeciency) but rather the fact that there was no real effort to make a profit with what was there by any means. There wasn't (hardly) any advertising for passenger/tourist type traffic on ANY of their lines (a little bit on the Silverton of course(40's), but no Black Canyon or Marshall Pass or Crested Butte or Cumbres or Chile Line) until they found out later that they were bound to the Silverton line whether they liked it or not. Then significant monies were spent to advertise (READ: if we're stuck lets atleast try to make it work).
I am not trying to sound like a know it all, this is just what I have read here and in books. I am very open to learning from every body here, it is very interesting as well as exciting. If any of this is way off please do tell me, like I said, I want to learn and you guys are all great contributors.