Santa Fe Southern shut down

robertjohndavis · **Joined:** Mon Aug 23, 2004 8:10 am **Posts:** 2499

I feel compelled to tell a tale from 1977 when dining in the restaurant that was then housed in the Santa Fe depot. Our food come out slowly, and there was much commotion. Apparently the chef had chopped off the tip of a finger and was looking for it in the meals served.

Memorable, to say the least.

Even then my young mind wondered why there wasn't a tourist railroad in Santa Fe... seemed in a child's mind the old Chili Line would have been the optimal choice.

Rob

PS: Why was a nine year old thinking about tourist railroads more than a missing finger tip?When you grew up writing letters to guys like Ross Rowland and Don Hallock, and reading yourself to sleep at night with H. Pincus' "High Iron" photo books, there's no telling what the mind would do. ;-)

Mike Swanson · **Posted:** Wed Mar 06, 2013 11:01 pm

junior:

You're right except for why SFS was evicted. I don't know all of the specific details, but I do know that none of the agencies which operate the RailRunner nor NMDOT (which owns the SFS ROW) had any interest in the depot itself, except for rebuilding the station platform (especially since all RailRunner tickets are sold either aboard the trains or online), nor did they want SFS out of the depot; it was the City of Santa Fe alone that wanted to evict SFS in favor of the "visitor center" that now occupies the depot building.

Mike Swanson · **Posted:** Wed Mar 06, 2013 11:20 pm

superheater wrote:

"It’s an excursion business without a steam engine,” he says. “You lose money on that. You can’t make money without a steam engine, and we have no facilities for that. Traditionally we were able to support the excursion business with other activities, but bit by bit the freight’s gone, some asset transactions we could use to fund the deficits have gone, so at the end of the day we could not fund operations.”

So you can't make money without a steam engine, huh? They ought to try making money with a steam engine.

Of course this might come as a surprise to the Napa Valley Wine Train, Tioga Central, etc.

No kidding. Most of the folks riding the train when I did didn't really care much about what was pulling (or pushing) it; lack of ridership and lack of freight traffic was the real problem, and having a steam locomotive would've only hurt their bottom line instead of helping. Of course, having Watco take over may not have helped much, either (although getting rid of that POS GP16 was a good idea!).

junior · **Posted:** Thu Mar 07, 2013 1:14 am

Mike Swanson wrote:

junior:

You're right except for why SFS was evicted. I don't know all of the specific details, but I do know that none of the agencies which operate the RailRunner nor NMDOT (which owns the SFS ROW) had any interest in the depot itself, except for rebuilding the station platform (especially since all RailRunner tickets are sold either aboard the trains or online), nor did they want SFS out of the depot; it was the City of Santa Fe alone that wanted to evict SFS in favor of the "visitor center" that now occupies the depot building.

From my post: "The SFS was in a good position prior to the City evicting them from the station and wanting them to totally vacate the City in favor of the Railrunner..."

I never said that the agencies actually evicted them nor did I give a reason to the City's eviction of the Station building itself, but was stating that the City favored the RailRunner using the grounds in general and entering the City over the SFS.

Just the lack of visual support from your community/host City can easily explain a near 75% drop in ridership in just under 5 years. They went from 23,000 riders in 2007 to 6,500 in 2012, per FRA reports.

Of course, the purchase of the controlling interests in the Railroad from private investors (like one time owner; Michael Gross) by STI Global, could explain the drop off in revenue sources, if they're not interested in generating revenue to begin with.