Re: ( Durango, Trout Lake & ) To-Hell-You-Ride

When last in Telluride, immediately after the 2005 Railfest, I was told that there was a small group working on a proposal to rebuild about 4 miles of the RGS to connect "downtown" to a parking lot out west near the highway junction, in order to reduce the number of cars coming into town.

A similar plan was proposed by a naive young curmudgeon-in-training in 1972, who persuaded Robert Keller of Scenic Railways to drive up from Chama and make a presentation to about 50 enthusiastic residents - many of them "old-timers". John Tutt, formerly of Colorado Springs, arranged to have the three-foot gauge Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Train donated to Telluride for use as one of the shuttles; a rebuilt Goose #4 would have been another. The town has an easement along most - if not all - of the right-of-way from hiway 142 into town, as there is a sewer line and possibly some other public service lines along it, so "N-I-M-B-Ys" aren't the problem there that they would undoubtedly be in Rockwood. The biggest problem, then as now, was funding. Other than the Zoo train, which - along with a considerable amount of 40# or 50# rail - was stored in a local warehouse for a couple of years, nothing tangible came of the idea.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2009 09:32AM by Russo Loco.