Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec - FriendsOfCumbresToltec.org

From John Cole:

Thanks to Dan Pyzel for his leads, contacts, and persistence, the Friends have made a deal with the Crowther family to bring a genuine Gramps tank car body back to the CATS. Our team finished sandblasting, primed, and painted the Ashby Gramps tanker last summer and Chris Trunk and his team has just gotten started on that one, now we have another Gramps car coming on the property at the end of the month. Looks like Chris and company got some work to do....

When all of the tank cars are finished we will have 10 oil tank cars, (6 narrow frame UTLX cars that came home from the White Pass), and 4 frameless cars, (3 Gramps cars, and 1 UTLX car). In addition to the 10 the railroad has 2 narrow frame water cars with the domes cut off for use as canteens for both the rotaries, and for visiting small engines like the 315, and the 168.

That is great news!! n That car has been coveted for a while and it's great to see that it is coming home.

Thanks for posting my photos Jason, it appears you can see my fingertip in the first one. Oh well, at least you can see our new baby that should be on the railroad by session B this May. Dan has been working on getting this car for years, and it is hard to believe it finally is happening.

If you look closely at the 7th photo showing when the car had its bearings and heater serviced, you will notice it was serviced in El Segundo Calif. That is less than 2 miles from where I work and that would have been when it was a standard gauge car before it was converted to narrow gauge. Small world...

Great score, the CATS and Friends must hold some sort of record for restored freight cars, is there a list of all the cars that have been restored and are available for trips?
I can imagine this will be a long term resto, it looks pretty good but how complete is it, re brake rigging, reservoirs etc, and are there enough bogies available.
Were they tank bogies that the friends had a drive for to get more brasses??

Wayne from OZ

Edit - OK, this appears to be just the tank shell with no attached operational bits, but my question still stands. WRH

Hi Wayne, as you can see from the photos, all we are getting is the tank. Trucks, wheels, brakes, couplers, draft gear are going to have to be found. We have a pair of Bettendorf trucks under one of the water cars that are correct, but we will have to assemble a pair of UTLX arch bar trucks to replace them.

Yes, the wheel brasses drive a couple of years ago would be the same 4 1/4" X 8" brasses that all of the tank cars take, either narrow frame or frameless cars.

I imagine the Friends would to work with C&TS on a budget and priorities to plan work well ahead in advance, but what happens when a sort of project such as this Gramps tank comes along?
Does it just get dumped in the dirt (figuratively speaking) till another day and another round of meetings/budgets etc or will it jump the queue if it is deemed more worthy than other projects.
I would imagine it will be on a s..l..o..w burner with those keen on it or ultimately responsible slowly working away sourcing the hardware etc that will be needed.
How much say do C&TS management have have on what the Friends can or should restore, would they say that 8 tank cars are enough, don't do any more?

Wayne from Oz.

Wayne, when it arrives in Antonito sometime at the end of the month, the first thing the crane in going to do is to set the car on some trucks so it will be on the railroad. They won't be the permanent trucks for the car, but it is a WHOLE lot easier changing trucks than it is to get a crane to set it on later. I have talked to Chris and he is planning to work on finding or re-creating the missing parts he will need to finish BOTH cars. If your making something, the first part is the most expensive, the rest of them are copies, so the costs go down. I called Roger Hogan and he is planning to video the entire moving event if possible.

I have talked to John Bush and the railroad is behind getting ALL of them operational as it will open up LOTS of charter possibilities for the railroad. Now all it takes is time, manpower (work), and MONEY. Want to help?