What's it all about?
Since 2008, there are been some changes.
First a little history: starting in 2005, there was an annual get together of modelers that would meet at Tony Kassin’s Best Western hotel in Santa Fe for some workshops, swap meet, and layouts (the New Mexico Narrow Gauge Modular group would always bring up their modules for display at Tony’s Hotel and Richard Dorman was always there).
In 2007 Tony, Bob Hayden and a few others went to the Narrow Gauge Along the Border in Southern California.
At the California gathering there was some interest expressed in coming to New Mexico and seeing some of the layouts that we have in the state.
Thus, expanding what Tony was originally doing with his one day event to three days, Narrow Gauge Along the Chili Line was born.
Tony was the driving force in this undertaking and was mainly responsible for getting it going and lining things up.
It was also decided that the event would rotate around from the Western coast area to New Mexico with the Narrow Gauge Along the Chili Line happening every three years.
So what has changed? First, Tony got a job offer in South Dakota in the winter of 2008 and had to move. Second the National Narrow Gauge convention is scheduled to happen in 2009 in Colorado Springs, which is only less than a day’s drive (about 5 hours) from Santa Fe. Because of the convention, we were getting requests to do another Chili Line tour to happen sometime around the convention. It has been decided to have a one day tour starting at Santa Fe, going to Antonito, Colorado and returning to Santa Fe by the end of the day. We will only be doing the tour, we will not be doing any layout tours or workshops at this time (if things go well, we will in 2011).