A wealth of railfan history exists in the archives of the Rocky Mountain Rail Report, the newsletter of the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club started in 1939. Here is some miscellaneous South Park Line/C&S-related news from the 1969 editions.
Note: No C&Sng-related information was found in the 1968 editions.
1969
April
(Colorado Central Narrow Gauge Railroad starts its second, though first full, season)
 |
| A trestle on the Central City switchback |
Colorado Central Narrow Gauge Railroad that began operations late in 1968 has over 1 mile of track on the old C&S roadbed at Central City using an 2-8-0 brought up from El Salvador. More track will be placed this season, including plans for a high trestle.
October
(Club Day at Central City)
 |
| 1973 photo-by Jim Pallow |
Rocky Mountain Railroad Club Day on the the Colorado Central Narrow Gauge Railroad. On Sunday, October 19, 1969, the Colorado Central Narrow Gauge Railroad at Central City will be in opera¬tion for members of the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club. Send in $2.00 to the Club at Post Office Box 2391 and receive by return mail a Colorado Central Railroad Pass which will entitle you to ride the railroad as often as you wish between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 P.M. on October 19 only. Kids five and under ride free. All others must have one of the $2.00 passes. Photo runbys will be made at various times during the day for the benefit of photographers and recorders. Your officers would appreciate having a good turnout at this event. Come along and bring a friend.
December
(Why can't the Club reprint more copies of Poor's DSP&P book?!!!)
Denver, South Park & Pacific. Twenty years ago this month, the publication, of Mac Poor's monumental history, Denver, South Park & Pacific, established the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club as one of the foremost publishers of railroad histories. In 1955, the club brought out Morris Cafky's Rails Around Gold Hill, followed by the Pictorial Supplement to Denver, South Park & Pacific in 1959. Our latest publishing venture, again authored by Morris Cafky, was the renowned Colorado Midland. All four publications have been financial successes and each has become a collector's item in spite of larger and larger printings of each successive volume.
In the ensuing years many requests have been received from persons wanting the club to reprint the original South Park book. For various reasons the club has deemed such a reprint impractical. Because of this, the club has been subjected to much criticism. The anniversary of the book’s publication seems like an excellent occasion to inform our members of the circumstances under which this first publication was accomplished. Back in 1947, many months were spent in search of a publisher for Mac Poor's manuscript after the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society had turned it down because it was too large a work for them to handle. We too were turned down by many publishers because of its size and in desperation our directors and officers voted to attempt the job on our own without the aid of a publisher and the services of Lou Doughty and his World Press were engaged. A deal was made with Mr. Doughty in which he agreed to print up a two-color brochure for about $500 announcing the book for sale on a pre-publication basis, and should this sales program fail he would accept half the loss and we would owe him $250. After a few months we had taken in around $6,000.00 which was about $3,000.00 short of what was required to print, bind, package and mail 1,000 copies.
Although they had no idea of where the required money was to come from should we fail, the four club officers and five of the six directors signed a contract for the printing, and the great project was launched.
The World Press was a relatively small company and was unable to tie up the considerable weight of type metal required for setting the very extensive text. Thus the type set for earlier sections of the book was melted down after pages had been run, to provide type metal for the later sections of the book. Because of this one fact, the club had to decide well in advance how many copies to have run without knowing the book would be a great success. Also because of this, we were unable to print any additional copies when the book did sell out in the fall of 1950. This may sound like a “shoestring” operation, and that is exactly what it was. We were not in the publishing business then, and we are not in it today.
With each successive publication, the club increased the quantity of books printed, without decreasing the quality. There was much wrangling among the directors and officers before we were able to arrive at a figure of 2,750 copies of Rails Around Gold Hill, with some members stating publicly that the club would never sell that many. The 4,000 copies of the Pictorial Supplement to Denver, South Park & Pacific was considered a very bold venture at the time. By the time Colorado Midland came along the directors and officers dared to gamble on 6,000 copies and this book was in stock and available for the very reasonable price of $14.00 for approximately three years. It should be pointed out that the cost of such a venture is in the neighborhood of $70,000, which is a great deal of money and responsibility for a group of amateur publishers to be confronted with.
One of our recent club presidents was most anxious to reprint the original South Park book using the photo copy offset process, thinking that such a reprinting would take the heat off the club. Samples had previously been obtained using this process and the quality of the reprint came nowhere near that of the original. On a cost-per-page figure added to present day binding costs, the club would have to pay from $20 to $22 per copy. It was decided at a board meeting that our reputation as an organization that issues only quality railroad histories would be lost and that once the buying public saw what they were paying $25 to $27 for, the club would end up with a large number of low quality books (we would have to print around 5,000 to obtain this price), a damaged reputation and a big printing bill.
None of the people involved in the original printing have any books they are holding for later sale at a price even higher than those quoted today (around $400). The club is not interested in what the price goes to since there are no books to sell. Those involved in the original publication are admittedly proud that the book was such a success. We only wish that at the time the club had been sufficiently affluent to have printed 5,000 copies. As it was, we were extremely fortunate in being able to put out 1,000.
R. H. Kindig
E. J. Haley
Editors
No comments:
Post a Comment