Re: Silver Plume depot

Ken,
The Depot at Stout, Colorado was also supposed to be the same as Sunset and Silver Plume. An interesting thing about the Silver Plume depot is that the original drawings at the CHS show the depot as a mirror image of the depot that was built.
It was not an uncommon occurance, especially for a big Railroad (remember, at that time the GSL&P and CC were part of the Union Pacific Railway) to have standard plans. This enabled the storekeeper to keep "kit" (for lack of a better word) depots on hand. When a depot was needed, the kit was sent out and B&B assembled them as needed. I refer you to the similarities between the Boulder, Colorado depot (as built) and the Sidney, Nebraska depot (as built). You can also see depot standardization on the South Park in the Fort Logan, Dome Rock and Kenosha depots; Buffalo and Bailey's; Alpine (Fisher), St. Elmo, Hancock, and Pitkin (although Pitkin was larger). Along the class 1's there were many examples of standard plans. Heck, even the C&S had a standard plan depot that was used mainly on their broad gauge lines. A D&RG example is the depots at Antonito and Nathrop (I'm sure that there are others, but I'm not that familiar with D&RG common standards).
This gave the railroads their "family" resemblance that extended way beyond just paint color. It was actually a way to keep costs down and make sure that everything went together smoothly.
Rick Steele