Elvas Tower: D&RGW Silverton Branch V2.0 Activity Guide - Elvas Tower

This guide is an aid to generating realistic activities for the D&RGW Silverton Branch in the time-frame of 1930's and 1940's.

There's a fellow named Jimmy Blouch that posts on the Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum. His posts provide historical daily activities all over the Alamosa Division. Here's a typical recent post.
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I had watched Jimmy's posts for several years, but the light bulb didn't come on until Herb Kelsey pointed out how valuable they were in coming up with realistic activities.

What I've done is to go through the posts and extract just the parts that have arrivals and departures featuring Durango. The main business on the branch is Trains No. 461 and Train No. 462 from Durango to Silverton and return, but I have included Durango arrivals and departures to cover Alamosa, Chama, Farmington, et cetera so that those trains can be simulated coming into and out of Durango also.

All but two of the months of the year are represented in the guide. This is an example taken from a typical Jimmy Blouch post (division action on April 22, 1941).

Silverton 8:20 AM partly cloudy, calm, 2” new snow, 28” old snow

Silverton branch Train No. 461 and Train No. 462 with engine 375
Conductor Fry
Engineer Katschthaler

Depart Durango 9:15 AM with 2 loads 7 empties
1 merchandise Silverton
6 empty box
Combine 210
Caboose
Hermosa to Silverton 50 minutes lost on running time account falling rocks and heavy snow
Arrive Silverton 1:30 PM with 2 loads 7 empties, 20 minutes eat, 10 minutes turning, 30 minutes switching, 1 hour account ice and snow on tail of wye
Depart Silverton 3:30 PM with 5 loads 5 empties
4 ore Eilers
3 empty gons
1 empty refrigerator
Combine 210
Caboose
Arrive Durango 7:00 PM with 5 loads 5 empties

To help you translate some the entries. Eilers is a destination, and that's the proprietor of the American Smelting and Refining Company, Durango Plant.

Fairly recently, Moe Smith uploaded to Trainsim.com some maps for version 2: "silverton_v2_maps.zip"
I noticed that a couple of industries in Durango were missing, so he gave me a replacement that I've included in the attachment...

regards,
charlie