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Until about 1967, passenger trains were no novelty in Salida, but since then, they've been about as common as passenger pigeons.
Several years ago, the counties along the D&RGW's
old Royal Gorge-Tennessee Pass mainline -- Frémont,
Chaffee, Lake, Eagle -- tried to talk the railroad into
operating occasional passenger excursions along what was
once promoted as the Scenic Line of the World.
Toward the end of this wasted exercise, the railroad said the trackage and roadbed from Cañon City to Dotsero Junction were maintained only to freight standards, and it would violate all manner of safety laws if passengers were carried along that corridor.
Given that, it was something of a shock Tuesday morning to see a westbound passenger train coming up the canyon and rattling through Salida. Three leased Amtrak locomotives pulled 23 passenger cars of varying color and conformation, ranging from staid green business cars to shiny silver Vistadomes.
According to the local newspaper, this was a special excursion from Pueblo to Sacramento, organized by the American Association of Private Railroad Cars -- people who buy and restore their own railroad passenger cars.
As hobbies go, that can't be cheap, but it makes you wonder. Does the Southern Pacific Octopus maintain the tracks better now that it has swallowed the Rio Grande? Or did the Rio Grande mislead us a few years ago? Or do regulations matter if you've got enough money to buy your own railroad car?
At any rate, it was quite a sight on a gorgeous fall morning, and I'm glad the train didn't stop in Salida, or I might have succumbed to the temptation to sneak aboard, and I'd be writing this from a cell in Helper, Utah.
To move upward, for the past couple years, the Air National Guard has proposed using the Wet Mountain and San Luis valleys as a training zone for aerial combat, with jet fighters zooming about at low altitudes and high speeds.
Going through the usual pretenses, the Air Force has held hearings in the affected areas. Few if any residents of these valleys have indicated any willingness to sacrifice their peace and quiet on the altar of national defense, and the hearings have been crowded -- 405 in Westcliffe (pop. 324), 152 in Moffat (pop. 105) -- and quite emotional.
This disturbs the Air Force, which has requested people to stick to factual matters during the hearings.
Do note that this is the same Air Force which got lots of money and planes when opportunistic politicians appealed to emotions, rather than facts, and warned us that America would be conquered by the godless Reds unless some pork-barrel bomber got built or unless there was a vast expansion of some base in the district of an influential congressman.
What factual, dry, statistical basis is there for opposing jet roar and sonic booms over a relatively unpopulated area?
Give people credit for trying. The noises scare cattle, so they won't put on as much weight, and thus ranchers suffer at market time. Practice dogfights frighten the wildlife away, so not as many hunters will come, and they're an important part of the economy. Second-home sales are a major factor in that area, and who wants to buy a serene vacation cabin if it, in effect, sits under a runway? Vibrations will crack windows and damage historic structures, and could start avalanches in the Sangre de Cristo wilderness. Flares could ignite brush and forest fires.
But you can tell people are stretching to find reasons sufficiently unemotional for the Air Force. The real argument is more like this:
You pay certain economic and social prices for living in
an isolated backwater. In return, you get to enjoy some
scenery and serenity. It's a choice you make because that's
how you want to live. But the United States has other
plans, and how you want to live
is not in those
plans when your own country invades.
If this area, long neglected by the real world, must be hauled into the mainstream of American society, why can't they do it with trains we can ride, rather than jets that we can't?
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