The Buck Stops With the CHS!!

Scattered among all the many recent postings on this board about the Georgetown Loop have been some thoughts that the CHS isn’t 100% to blame for the tragic mess we now see in what was formerly one of the country’s premier heritage railroad operations.
From what we’ve seen posted on this board for several years regarding the former operators (GTLR), their team members, the thousands of very-pleased passengers, many local merchants, and the CHS bureaucrats (CHS, I would submit that there’s no question that, indeed, 100% of the blame rests solely with the CHSB. The buck stops with them regardless of what unexpected problems have surfaced that some want to think would excuse them from total culpability.
The reason they’re 100% at fault is very simple. They own the railroad. Period.
Ownership necessarily implies total responsibility for absolutely everything that is done with any property. Of course any owner can, in turn, hire others to carry out various functions regarding the property, but that does not absolve the owner from total oversight and liability concerning the fulfillment of those functions no matter who’s supposed to do them. Neither does it absolve them from responsibility for recognizing and supporting the expertise and integrity of any such hires when such expertise and integrity are dramatically demonstrated, especially over a long period of time with commendable consistency and reliability and without any provable evidence of impropriety.
One comment on this board was that the CHSB had a “laudable” intent in their conduct that eventually resulted in the loss of the GTLR team. I cannot agree! A laudable intent would have been shown in their recognizing and celebrating the remarkable thirty years of GTLR’s outstanding management and labors in building up and operating the Georgetown Loop Railroad, and cooperating with them in drawing up a contract renewal honoring that history. Instead, they insisted on presenting GTLR with legal stipulations which GTLR, in all of its 30-year-demonstration of management, knew were unacceptable for their future survival and the survival of the railroad itself. GTLR knew infinitely more than the CHSB about the resounding success of the railroad and the everyday nuts-and-bolts required to keep it that way. The monumental failing of the CHSB was in rejecting that expertise in favor of their own concepts borne out of their ignorance and their refusal to recognize that ignorance. Instead of desiring to be advocates, CHSB acted as adversaries. Personal, desktop opinions and malice trumped honest, proven reliability.
That, I submit to you, is the bottom-line evaluation of this monstrous mess, and no amount of political waffling can concoct any excuse for less than 100% blame that must rest on the CHSB whether they recognize it (much less, admit it) or not. Some have urged that we forget this war of the words, let bygones be bygones, and get on with supporting the railroad. That’s a nice, fuzzy sentiment, but it is irresponsible as long as the failings I’ve described above continue to characterize the real owners of the railroad and their dismal lack of accountability. We need to hold the feet of the CHSB to the fire, so to speak - - not out of our own malice, but simply as a commitment to what we know to be the truth of how things really are, and how this has and will dramatically affect the people of Colorado, the employees of the railroad, and the entire tourist railroad industry. We need no stronger demonstration of this truth than what we’re now seeing, and we must not let spinmeisters convince us to believe otherwise!