Vest Day reports that his survey crew helped pick up the pieces of the bodies the next morning and put them into nail kegs. Mr. Meyer, the locomotive engineer on the construction crew, claimed the Indians would stop work on almost any pretext but especially to chase ground hogs. Mears decided to put a stop to such foolishness and hired 25 white kids and supplied them with rifles to kill the animals. It didn’t help much because when they were out of the way the Indians could find plenty of other excuses to dawdle. Mr. Arthur Ridgway stated that when he came to the S. N. in October of 1904 work was still going on under the supervision of Marshall B. Smith, Mears’s son-in-law, with Navajo labor. Operation of the line began the next Spring after the snow went off. In 1905 Mr. Ridgway surveyed and built a branch from Howardsville up Cunningham Gulch to the Green Mountain and Old Hundred mines, which added 1.3 miles of railroad to the system. The S. N. must have been in financial straits at this time for Mears had to raise money in New York to pay interest on the bonds. This railroad went north from Silverton as did the other two. The termini of the S. R. and S. N. were not much more than six air miles apart with the S. G. & N. in between. Animas Forks is at the foot of Mineral Point. One may ride out on the top of Mineral Point, as this writer has done and see the waters divide, the Uncompahgre going to the north and the Animas to the south. Mears never got the courage to build a railroad up there as first projected nor on to Lake City. During the year ending June 30, 1905 the railroad carried 31,433 passengers and 43,349 tons of freight. The Manual or Guide lists for 1905, two engines, for 1909, three and for 1911, two. One or two passenger cars, one or two baggage and several freight cars were claimed. It should be remembered that equipment was interchanged between these little lines and was also borrowed from the D. & R. G. The S. N. used or acquired S. R. Engines 100 and 1. Then it bought an old one from the D. & R. G, which it numbered 2, but it was of such little good it was soon scrapped. Mears bought the 3 new in 1904 and the 4 new in 1906, both Baldwins of the 76 class. In 1910 the S. N. leased and in 1915 bought the S. G. & N. and got its engines, the 32, 33 and 34. Numbers 100, 32 and 33 were scrapped between 1909 and 1912 but 1 was still in use in 1916 for it is shown in the picture of the zinc train that was running at that time. All four of those just noted sat for a number of years in the boneyard at Silverton. Numbers 3 and 4 were used on the snow bucking because 34 was too large for the plow.