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Writer's pictureSeth Johnson

A fresh start for a great brand

Updated: Sep 6, 2019

My dad and I have made trips to Colorado and New Mexico in three of the last five years to explore narrow-gauge country. It's beautiful territory even without the ties to C&S, D&RGW, and RGS history—the railroad remnants are a pretty awesome cherry on top.


This photo of my son Max sizing up a rocky slope is a good analogy for how we feel as we prepare to bring Crystal River Products back into production. We're excited... the view is great... but it's going to be a bit of a climb.

Boy looks up hillside from railroad grade
Seth's son Max walks the abandoned RGS right-of-way between Vance Junction and Windy Point

The good news is that we're off to a great start. Tom Fitzgerald, who founded Crystal River 20 years ago and designed the line of kits we're going to call the "Classic Collection," has been super gracious and patient with us. The plans he's designed are so thoughtfully crafted that we won't need to revise them at all: only figure out how to port them to modern design software so we can format them for our laser (a Glowforge Pro, if you're curious; pretty neat gadget).


So far, we've prepped a workspace, installed the laser, started what will be a long, gradual process of porting plans from Tom's Old Faithful design software to a tool that'll run on more modern hardware, and started to build up a stockpile of raw material. We think we'll be ready to start selling our first re-issued Classic, the Coal Shed, by the end of September.


Want to help us decide which kits we should re-issue next? We suspect we'll be able to dust off one kit each month or so, and we'll soon post a survey on our home page where you can tell us what you'd like to see sooner than later. Looking forward to your feedback!


Seth

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