Other Side of the Tracks

.....The D&RGW "Chili Line"* departs Santa Fe, heading for parts north-ward, including Taos Junction, circa 1930s.** The last train left Santa Fe in the late 30s, and all the track in the right-of-way was torn up by the 50s.
.....What remains of the valiant engines which toiled the narrow-gauge grades and curves to negotiate New Mexico's formidable mountains, valleys, and plateaux and bring commerce to a hungry land, from the late 19th Century, is a stretch of about 100 miles between Chama, NM and Antonito, CO, now called the "Cumbres & Toltec Line" (58 mi.) and the line from Durango, CO to Silverton, CO, up the Animas Canyon (about 40 mi.).
.....The trestle pictured here was emblematic of "the tracks" of which there was an "other" side. My father drove a "hack" in Santa when he was a teen-ager, in the 30s. He recounted to me almost 50 years ago, when too I was driving a "hack" in Santa, that in his day, Santa Fe's small" red-light district was located under and a little to the west of the railroad trestle in the foto, which spanned the Santa Fe river near the intersection of what is now Guadalupe St. and the Alameda.
.....Cabbies delivered their 'johns' to the ladies' cribs, directly under the shadow of the Santuario de Guadalupe, along Agua Fria and Alto Streets, south of the tracks. The 'girls' would tip the drivers for delivering their "johns" to the door, but not directly. Drivers wore numbered buttons on their caps which identified them. The "girls" would send tips to the dispatcher (at La Fonda garage), who would distribute them (after taking a cut) according to the drivers' button number.
.....If there were a red-light district in Santa, when I was hackin', in the early 70s,  I didn't know--and nobody ever asked me--where it was. Pop never said whether any of them tipped "in kind."

* Corrected, thanks to Milton Coombs.
** Corrected, thanks to George Pomonis.