Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Amtrak's Cal Z Helps Keep Travel For Travel's Sake
Friday, October 18, 2024
Colorado Experience - The Ski Train
Like all television programs, its difficult for producers and editors to decide what parts are essential and what parts are niche interest or broadly appealing but only tangent to the subject covered. How are you going to convey the subject, and whose narrative are you going to use to tell the story? Sometimes practicality limits the voices involved, and sometimes politics--public or merely human polity--limits what you can say. If you claim to represent the public interest, how far do you run down certain trails before you decide you're going too far from the audience?
I had to ask myself these questions given my own perceptions and concerns about a very difficult time for Denver, for the Ski Train, and for me. As detailed in the episode, Denver's Ski Train, an institution started by Rio Grand from the the 1940s and earlier died a hard and painful death in 2009, when Ansco decided it could no longer continue the operations. That much is in the episode.
It was a difficult time for Denver because in 2009, it was in the throes of the Great Recession. On what is no doubt a related decision, Ansco determined it could no longer support The Ski Train, which admittedly had become more a labor of love by Denver philanthropist Phillip Anschutz. For me, 2009 had me 4 years into a disability determination case in which I had gone deep into debt trying to keep my family housed, heated, and fed while struggling to do any meaningful work in the face of my gradually increasing physical disability. Those times have thankfully passed for all involved with varying extents of recovery, yet some questions of the past still remain unanswered.
The disposition of the fleet was for the most part to one operator, the Algoma Central for use in their Agawa Canyon train tour near Sault Ste Marie, Ontario in Canada. The possibility of relaunching the Ski Train as it was had gone forever. There would only be the future attempts to launch a new service. Attempts, plural, which were not covered in the episode and which I won't detail here because indisputable facts are hard to come by.
Nonetheless, the current incarnation, known as the Amtrak Winter Park Express is not the first effort, but by far the most successful. No doubt much is owed to Amtrak Conductor Brad Swartzwelter, who is in the episode below. I have chatted with personally and I hope you get to meet someday. He is a rare breed and one I hope will continue to ride the rails throughout Colorado.
I am glad the tradition of a ski train, whatever the name, still survives. The goal has always been so people can still avoid the traffic snarls and treacherous roads on their way to ski one of the best large ski areas ever created. And these people get to see the wonders of the Moffat Tunnel Route, one that I personally think among the finest in the world. It remains a part of the Scenic Line of the World.⚒

Thursday, March 9, 2023
Thoughts On Don Phillips' Loss of Mobility
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Pagosa Springs in October is pretty, but can you live there? // Milan Suvajac |
There, in July's issue, sandwiched between an ad for Erie Lackawanna VHS cassettes and an ad for FastTrack, a video magazine subscription that predated vlogging by a mere 20 years, was a column that could have been written yesterday. Don Phillips, for all his east coast swagger, nailed down a plight. This plight is both near to my heart and yet so far from a possible solution that will likely never see a resolution to my satisfaction. It is the plight of everyone who lives in Colorado's rural counties and towns.
"What?" say the rural denizens of Colorado. "We're okay." Yeah? Hand me your drivers license. Still ok? No, and why not? Because your four wheels (or sometimes two) are your ticket to American freedom. If you handed over your precious Colorado drivers licenses, you would be cut off from work, from home, from your leisure activities and your grocery store, pharmacy and your doctor when you are sick. Any trip in America and especially Colorado nearly always begins with the private vehicles we own.
We own vehicles? Not all of us. But let's consider: Cars are the required luxury. The essential option. The one thing everyone is free to decline at the peril of losing everything. If you have made it past 60, you know that your insurance premiums are rising and will rise until you eventually cannot afford them or you voluntarily surrender your life on four wheels. You either die before you reach that age or you must surrender your freedom. Oh, that will never happen to you.
Others have never driven a car, but most of us don't know them, couldn't relate to them, or actually ignore them. These are the people who know bus schedules, rely on programs and family members to care enough to meet their transportation needs. But try living near Springfield, Craig, Sterling, or Cortez without a license to
As we found out in 2020, being stuck at home is no fun. Telecommuting, even if you have great internet service, has its limitations. Even the American workplace, for good or for ill, is beginning to require attendance from their employees again. In fact, it's hardly a secret that most of rural America has been languishing since the 1950s. Even in periods of massive growth, such as the teens, multiple Colorado counties have experienced double-digit loss percentages. Why? I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that losing the local train has something to do with it.
The local train? Local train, as in not intercity, not hub-and-spoke, not long-distance. I won't re-say what Mr. Phillips skillfully wrote nearly 30 years ago now, but let me say that I sincerely believe he is right in this case. Please click or tap to view the article.
So, what do we do? Do we just click our tongues and click our mouses (or swipe or scroll) on to the next story? Or do we start thinking about the idea of making things local again? Do we make a point of shopping locally if we can. Heck, what about just trying to remember our neighbors' faces and names? What about remembering the checkout person at the store, or the cleaning person emptying the trash for us? Connecting locally can change everything, especially our living patterns.
I don't have an easy, ready-made solution in the offing for the small town shrink-down, but it all starts with a mindset. Just because it isn't "our problem" doesn't mean it's not worth our time and effort to fix. It needs our attention before the price of groceries goes any higher. Or did you think these problems weren't linked to yours? ⚒
* The collection is now obsolete, superseded by a deluxe subscription to the magazine, which allows online access to the entire back catalog of the magazine including the last 12+ years.

Sunday, October 17, 2021
A Non-Travel Vlogger Takes Amtrak's Southwest Chief
- What's with the holes in the tines of US plugs?
- Are extension cords more dangerous than we've been led to believe? Hint: yes! 🔌
- Are LED stop lights really that much better than incandescent? 🚦
- Why is High the first setting on most fans?
- Was VHS actually superior to Beta? Oooh, he's meddling in an old format war! 📼
Alec took a cross-country trip on Amtrak this past August and, being an Amtrak newbie, he splurged and bought a roomette ticket. He admits he's not a railfan or a travel blogger, so it's not like he has all sorts of tips and tricks. You can get those elsewhere, one might hope, anyway. His route was from Chicagoland to sunny San Diego by way of LA and the Southwest Chief.
En route, Alec posed some very interesting thoughts and--this is why I watch him folks!--he nailed one of the main reasons why long distance rail has struggled in America. Nevermind that passenger rail was usurped by an independence-minded but vastly inefficient technology like rubber tires-on-asphalt. Nevermind that Amtrak was never supposed to make money--he got that right too, however. He said essentially that while the cost of a sleeper ticket is mostly out of the range of most Americans, additionally, working people in the USA are too time-poor to be able to splurge 3-5 days on travel. If you want to make a trip to the east or west coast from Colorado, you book it through DIA and not DUS not because "getting there is not half the fun!" but because your damnable HR policy only gives you one weeks vacation the first three years, if you're lucky! That's not right, and we all know it.
The USA is not in an emergency. We are not even trying to beat the Russians to the moon--we're just trying to get there sometime soon. We're not even trying to keep someone else from subjugating the world, like we did in WW2. We are working ourselves to the bone and why? Our kids need us. Our families need us. Our lives need us. We last added a day to the weekend over a century ago and productivity soared! Doing that again isn't a terrible idea. Certainly adding some more time off would help.
I'm not saying we overturn society. I'm not advocating a shift to communism. I'm saying we need to give our employees time to live a life worthy of the effort of living. The rest of the world gives their employees a much more sane consideration. It's time we do too. Until we do, reasonable rail travel will continue to be a luxury and worse, society will continue to slide downhill. No, I am very serious.⚒
Further Reading:
- CNBC - How Far Behind America Is In Paid Time Off (2018)
- Workest - How Much is Average PTO in the U.S.? (2021)
- US Bureau of Labor and Statistics - Employer Costs for Employee Compensation by Region (2021)

Thursday, October 10, 2019
POTD - Electric Wig Wag Lights A Lonely Crossing Under A Distant Moon
You've driven hours on miles and miles of lonely two-lane highway to reach a lonely, seemingly forgotten county road crossing on the open plain of eastern Colorado. The wind stirs and a bite in the air tells you that you are not so far from another winter's chill. You smell the hint of agriculture, and it seems a feed lot must not be too far away. But the air also carries a bit of juniper from Devil's Canyon from the north and west.
You feel it before you see it. A slight hum in the rails and then a flash of a beam cuts through the night. Within moments, the bell and the light activate at the crossing, though it's just you it warns as it wags almost lazily back and forth in time with the bell. A second or two later, the Southwest Chief is upon the crossing. A blast of wind and a whiff of diesel, a blur of streaking lights, chrome and steel wheels, it flies over the rails!
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Photo of the Day: Jadon H. |

Tuesday, October 8, 2019
POTD - Early Fall Evening Paints The Southwest Chief With Subtle Hues
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Photo of the Day: Jadon H. |

Tuesday, March 7, 2017
POTD - Winter Travel
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Photo of the Day: Steve Brown (click the photo to view a larger, unmarked original) |

Sunday, January 24, 2016
POTD - Denver Union Station Lit Up By Broncos Spirit, Civic Pride
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Photo of the Day: Joel Hinkhouse |
It does have something to do with the AFC Championship in Denver at 1 PM, and the sweet spot where civic pride and railroads meet. In Denver's case, that intersects at 17th and Wynkoop Streets, where Denver Union Station has been lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. It's a showcase to be sure with the passenger shed roof framing the beaux arts design of the station. Night shots are always tricky, but photographer Joel Hinkhouse seems to have found the balance, especially his managing to catch a reflection off an Amtrak CZ roof, making POTD 2 for 2 in that department.
Only one thing left to say: Go Broncos!◊

Tuesday, October 27, 2015
POTD - Amtrak's California Zephyr Descends Ruby Canyon Along the Colorado River
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Photo of the Day: Peter Lewis |
Peter Lewis makes his second appearance on Photo of the Day with this entry that has already garnered some attention. Gaining RailPictures.net's trifecta of awards (Screeners Choice, Photo of the Week and People's Choice) is no easy task! I especially enjoy the mirage-like effect of the sky blue reflected off the roofs of the Silverliners! But what seals this choice for Photo of the Day, however, is Mr. Lewis' own notes on the photograph. He says:
Amtrak's westbound California Zephyr negotiates the confines of Ruby Canyon as it nears the Utah border on a captivating August afternoon in the breathtaking American west. When I walked up to the edge and took in the scene for the first time, I was simply in awe. This experience and those like it are one of the biggest reasons I enjoy this hobby. The remoteness and natural beauty of this area is simply incredible, especially for an easterner like me. [emphasis added]

Friday, October 23, 2015
POTD - Amtrak's California Zephyr Descends From the Divide To Downtown Denver
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Photo of the Day: Peter Lewis |

Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Grand Junction To Host Amtrak Train Day This Saturday
They call it the Amtrak Exhibit Train Tour and its already made a stop in Denver last weekend. Sharp-eyed photographers might still get a chance to catch it in transit along the former Rio Grande railroad's Moffat Tunnel Route between Denver and Grand Junction sometime this week, assuming they need a couple of days to set up. Keep your eyes peeled and your lens caps in your pockets! Comment with a link to photos of your experience or send them to me, if you'd like.
Looks like a fun day this Saturday October 10, 2015, in Grand Junction!◊
Friday, April 10, 2015
Last Minute Nudge Needed for Southwest Chief
ColoRail, the Colorado Rail Passenger Association, has requested the readers of Colorado Railroads help support a last minute effort to help preserve funding in Colorado's annual budget for rehabilitating the Southwest Chief. As many of you already know, Amtrak had been forced to look at re-routing the train mid route after BNSF reduced maintenance on its present route.
Now, with ColoRail, local communities, concerned citizens, more than one politician, and a TIGER on board, Amtrak says it will not re-route the train. Most importantly, this allows projects that had been put on hold in communities all along the line when they announced the possible re-route. This includes projects like La Junta's multimodal transportation hub. However, if Colorado is not able to come to the table with it's share, we may end up right back where we started.
So what's happened? Last night, Colorado's House of Representatives included the $1.5M needed in their budget for the year. Last week, the state Senate, by a vote of 17-18, failed to pass the request. What happens when the two bills don't match up? The 6 members of Joint Budget Committee meet in the next week to reconcile the differences between bills. If they go with the house version, Colorado makes it to the table with BNSF, Amtrak, Kansas and twelve SE Colorado communities that have all ponied up the funds to get back on track. If not, it puts a cloud of doubt over the whole process.
Jim Souby, President of ColoRail says they've already seen the impressive work of members and friends of the group. "Legislators have commented about how impressed they are by the number of calls and emails they have received." But now? "It's crunch time!"
Three key legislators on the Joint Budget Committee control the fate of the Southwest Chief. It's important for us to use today and the weekend to push as best we can for the Southwest Chief. "Can you help us with calls and emails today? I wouldn't be asking if this wasn't important," Souby explains.
Please take a moment today and contact the following legislators via email and phone. Leave a message if necessary. The key legislators are:
- Senator Kevin Grantham, District 2, 303-866-4877
kevin.grantham.senate@state.co.us
web site contact form facebook - Representative Millie Hamner, Dillon, 303-866-2952
millie.hamner.house@state.co.us
web site contact form facebook - Representative Dave Young, Greeley, 303-866-2929
dave.young.house@state.co.us
web site contact facebook
Represent with courtesy and respect. Personalize your message, but make sure to say that you want their support for funding the Southwest Chief in the state budget.
Here are a few other points that you can make to the legislators
- Explain how we need to support rural Colorado.
- You support saving the Southwest Chief. Why do you support the Chief?
- We're asking for $1.5 Million total in the budget this year. $1 Million as a local match to join Kansas, BNSF Railway, & Amtrak towards another Federal grant. The other half million will go towards studying the feasibility of connecting Pueblo and Walsenburg to the route
- Local communities - in fact 12 - in Southeastern Colorado have already stepped up and paid a share. And, we were successful once receiving a Federal matching grant. ColoRail put in $1,000. If our small communities and advocates can step up, why can't Colorado?
- Amtrak, the BNSF Railway, and Kansas have already spent millions on this project. Kansas put in $3 Million last year and plans on doing it again. Now it's Colorado's turn to show our support. We'll leverage all of our state and local dollars towards another Federal transportation grant and multiply our investment.
Thank you for your help saving passenger rail in Colorado!◊
Monday, October 13, 2014
POTD - Snowy Rails in Middle Park Wash the CZ in Wintry Wonder
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Photo of the Day: Steve Brown (sjb4photos), Amtrak in the snow - Colorado |
Monday, September 15, 2014
POTD: A Classic Reborn and Lit With Elegance
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After millions of passengers, Union Station was due for an overhaul and RTD needed some way to tie FasTracks into one neat bow. Look no further than the Beaux Arts classic Denver Union Station. Photo of the Day: Christopher May |
A great place for ColoRail to have a party! They are, after all, the ones who inherited Save Our Station.◊
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Colorado Railfan: First Look at Union Station
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The new waiting room fuses much of its past elegance with modern touches. The chandeliers are a big improvement over the unbelievably ugly Carter-era fluorescents. Photo: Kevin Morgan, ColoradoRailfan.com |
The DUSPA project's main effort was to enhance the station with the goal of tying all of the FasTracks projects to one central transportation nexus. Once FasTracks wraps up, it should allow a person to ride from any Light Rail or commuter rail (like from DIA) to any other point on RTD's rail or express bus service using the station as a hub. The connections are made between the train platforms, the light rail platform further out from the station and the underground bus terminal.
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Union Station survives intact (more or less) with 6 train platforms, light rail and bus terminal, ready to connect another century of passengers, near and far. Photo: Kevin Morgan, ColoradoRailfan.com |
Now that the remodel of Denver Union Station is complete, one could wonder at the possibilities of intercity transit along the Front Range and possibly the I-70 corridor. Doing so could level out some of Denver's pricey real estate and extend the effective range of any working family within 20 miles of I-25 while reducing the impact on traveler and environment. Surely, Union Station is now up to the challenge.
Be sure to check out the rest of Kevin's photos from the day, including a primarily-EMD powered manifest at Plain harkening back to the days of the Rio Grande!◊
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Santa Fe, All the Way 1: The Race To Uncle Dick Wooten's Ranch
The Race to Uncle Dick Wooten's Ranch
by Steve Walden, EditorIn the old west, possession really was nine-tenths of the law.
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William Strong, AT&SF |
Palmer's original plan for reaching El Paso and eventually Mexico City actually went through the Santa Fe's namesake city, reaching the San Luis Valley by La Veta Pass and then south along the Rio Grande, through Santa Fe along the river all the way to the border town of El Paso, on the western tip of Texas. Yet, as the Rio Grande progressed southward through Colorado Springs and Pueblo, and finally to Walsenburg and La Veta, the appeal of Raton Pass, sitting just south of the Colorado-New Mexico border, was in vital competition with the call of the San Juan mountains in southwest Colorado and the mining revenue that the Rio Grande could lay hold of exclusively. The merchants of old Santa Fe were anxious for a railroad to make their goods accessible by a means far more efficient than the mountain route of the Santa Fe Trail that had served the city since the 1820s.
The Santa Fe Trail was a torturous affair, a crossing of the desert southwest, roamed by settlers, bandits, trappers, miners, explorers and bands of Native American warriors. Worst of all, Raton Pass--the highest point--was an axle-breaking collection of hairpin turns and conestoga-crushing overhangs. In 1865, the same year that saw both the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the westward migration of thousands of veterans and their families,an enterprising man named Richens Lacy "Uncle Dick" Wooton gathered a troop of Mexican laborers and commenced building a toll road over Raton Pass that greatly eased the travel for passengers and commerce. Over 5,000 wagons used his road in 1866, and one three month period saw Wooton collect $9,164. In terms of purchasing power, that would equate roughly to $127,000 today, a tidy sum for any entrepreneur to gross in a quarter, and a very compelling reason for the Santa Fe Railway to close in on its goal, Santa Fe, New Mexico territory.
His visit to Palmer only a recent memory, Strong had the authorization from Nickerson on February 26, 1878, to move the railroad forward. He immediately contacted A.A. Robinson, his chief engineer, with orders to get some men and lay claim to Raton Pass. Robert Athearn, in his chronicle of the Rio Grande, Rebel of the Rockies, describes what happened:
Robinson promptly boarded a Rio Grande train at Pueblo and headed for El Moro, where, late at night, he got a horse and pushed on to the home of "Uncle Dick" Wooton near the Pass. James A. McMurtrie, chief engineer for the Rio Grande, was on the same train and carried the same instructions, but unlike Robinson, he stayed overnight at El Moro, unaware of the urgency of the situation. When on the morning of February 29, McMurtrie and his men arrived at the scene of his proposed endeavors, he was greeted by Robinson and a group of transients pressed into service, all busily engaged in what they said was railroad building. The little "armies"...about equal in strength, eyed each other for a while, and after some exchange of threats, the Rio Grande men moved and began work on an alternative but much less desirable crossing at Chicken Creek. McMurtrie had lost the game by about thirty minutes. To clinch it's title to the ground, the Atchison Company asked for, and received, an injunction prohibiting its rival from interfering with construction.While the date of February 29th is suspect (1878 was not a leap year), the railway purchased the pass crossing from Wooton nonetheless that year. Joseph J. Gallager, Cultural Geographer and author of the Urbana Group's report to the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places, wrote a fitting conclusion about the Santa Fe on the Santa Fe Trail.
... Since the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad had won the race for the right of way through Raton Pass, it was their trains that were to Thunder into Las Vegas (New Mexico) on July 4, 1879, and eventually into Santa Fe on February 9, 1880. Soon after this date, wagon use of the trail as a means of long distance transportation of goods and individuals proved inefficient, thus closing this chapter in history of the Santa Fe Trail.All was not completely settled, however. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad was over-committed and would soon become the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway under financial restructuring. It would proceed from New Mexico on to the Pacific coast, though not altogether unchallenged by the Rio Grande and other railroads with which it was destined to come in conflict. The race to Raton had set the stage for the Royal Gorge War, one of the most famous civil conflicts in Colorado.
While on the topic of names, the Railway portion of the name Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway picked up in said restructuring has outlasted the "AT&" of the AT&SF to BNSF Railway as its direct descendant. BNSF became the west's largest rail ..way or railroad in 1995 when Burlington Northern Railroad and AT&SF merged to become Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and then simply BNSF. It remains the owner of the rails of the original route over Raton Pass, which Amtrak finds to be intolerable under current maintenance standards. Amtrak has dropped more than enough hints that it plans to move its Southwest Chief away from its traditional route if maintenance standards aren't improved to keep travel times down. BNSF is not willing to increase maintenance on what it sees as a former main line, no longer a major contributor to its bottom line. The Colorado Rail Passenger Association has been driving hard to preserve the Southwest Chief on its original route. Consider joining ColoRail and adding your voice to preserve a vital link to Colorado and nearly 200 years of western history.◊
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Steam Generator Cars Legacy Lives On In UP Yellow
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Union Pacific's EMD E9 #949 idles at Denver's North Yard with the Howard Fogg, a steam generator car in from Cheyenne for repair to the car's wheels. Photo: John Hill, contributing photographer |
About Howard Fogg, the Painter
Named for the renowned railroad painter in 1996 after he passed away on October 1st of that year. Fogg issued numerous paintings of locomotives at the end of steam and the heyday of cowl-bodied diesels. This was during a period when American railroading was arguably the most colorful and diverse.Examples of Fogg's paintings can be found illustrating many published works, including some editions of the definitive Rio Grande book, Rebel of the Rockies by Robert Athearn, as well as his own books. His works come on calendars, playing cards, porcelain platters and even things you can hang on your wall with frames. Most recently, Richard and Janet Fogg have published Fogg In the Cockpit, a book and a blog about Richard's father. Colorado railroads and narrow gauge were a favorite theme among Fogg's many paintings.
Legacy of Steam Power Survives To See a Big Boy
Given today's wireless and electronic gadgetry, it is a bit ironic that the power cars are indispensable for present passenger special operations using equipment made to run when steam was not just an option, it was the only way to power the cars in your train. Eventually, however, the standard for car power changed when Amtrak took new Amfleet and Superliner cars that relied on HEP, or Head End Power, based on the ready supply of electricity from today's diesel-electrics. Yet nothing seemed capable of killing off the last vestige of steam from the surviving vintage passenger cars like those of Union Pacific.presently underway, which Kevin Morgan has confirmed is in Las Vegas, NV on April 30th.◊
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Train Star: Amtrak is moving back to Union Station soon!
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
POTD: History Running Late
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Photo: Mike Danneman |
Popping in and out of sunlight, the California Zephyr makes it's way through Rocky in the early evening along the Front Range. Nothing would be amiss if this were train 6, the eastbound heading for Denver. Unfortunately, this is train 5, the westbound heading up to Granby and Glenwood Springs at 6:40 PM on June 25, 2011. Amtrak Phase III heritage unit #145 rides point as it scrounges the rails for spare minutes to make up a schedule that is 10 hours late, according to photographer Mike Danneman, who has taken POTD for both yesterday and today. Amtrak #145 is one of five units painted in a special heritage paint scheme celebrating Amtrak and its history of 40 years from 1971 to 2011. History, at least today, is running late.◊
Monday, January 28, 2013
POTD - A Marred Subject Shown In a Positive Light
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Christopher May's capture of an Amtrak locomotive at the temporary Amhut station in Denver captures a beautiful lighting of the slightly marred Amtrak logo. Awesome work, Chris! |
When Amtrak rebranded itself from the pointless arrow to the current logo, I could imagine a lot of folks trying to understand the cryptic three stripes. The creative use of negative space is a little symbolic of the way Amtrak has survived for 40+ years now. People keep trying to kill it, only to find their actions could create a gap in the country's transportation network that would be untenable. ◊