Re: What if?

"I wonder what it would be like if the Cumbres and Toltec start carring freight?"

Well, first of all there would have to be freight to move. Since freight traffic between Chama and Antonito is kind of a non-existent commodity (and would be much cheaper if hauled by truck) it is kinda a non-issue. Which may well be why the Grande abandoned the line in the first place.

But then there are a couple of scheduled freight trains this fall... did you buy a ticket? The nice thing about these is they run at YOUR convenience, and not when the railroad needs them to run. Back in the day, most trains ran at night, which makes it kinda hard to photograph them. And of course the expense of transferring freight from narrow gauge cars to standard gauge cars today would be prohibitively expensive.

"I wonder what it would be like if the Cumbres and Toltec carries livestock across the line one time?"

Well, there would have to be livestock to haul in the first place, and secondly there would have to be enough cars to haul it, and thirdly it would have to do so cheaper and more efficiently than trucks can.

But the C&TS has run livestock photo trains in the past... almost as good as a livestock train, and no smell!


"I wonder what it be like if the Cumbres and Toltec had all of there locomotives running?"

Probably not too much different than it is right now. Granted a couple more locomotives would allow things like triple-headers up Cumbres (which I saw in the mid 90's) but other than that it wouldn't be much different. Of course, that assumes that there was enough money to rebuild and maintain more locomotives, as well as enough talented machinists to rebuild and maintain them. And of course that would mean enough crews to run them...

Yeah, it would be nice, but I for one an glad we've got what we've got.

Bill