Western Slope Derailment Dumps Crew, 4400 Gallons of Diesel Into Gunnison River

On a remote stretch of former Rio Grande rails in Mesa County, a Union Pacific train struck a rock slide and derailed, dumping the locomotives, the crew, the fuel and at least a few hoppers in the lower Gunnison River. Denver's 9News said the sheriff's office had to use a drone to locate the train owing to the remote location of the derailment. Tom Hesse of Colorado Public Radio reported of the snowy rescue of the crew by hi-rail truck. 

Animas River Over Tracks At Needleton

Weeks of tropical moisture rolled up into southwestern Colorado earlier this month, causing flooding of the San Juan River in Pagosa Springs and the Animas River along the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, severing the line temporarily at Needleton. The railroad ran trains as far as Cascade Canyon for a few days until the line could be restored, resuming full service to Silverton today hopefully to finish the 2025 summer season.⚒

Colorado Seals 25 Year-Deal With Union Pacific For Moffat Line

The State of Colorado has signed a lease with Union Pacific of the former Denver & Salt Lake main line in lieu of rent for the Moffat Tunnel between Tolland and Winter Park for 25 years. This follows a memorandum of understanding that was issued from Governor Polis' office on December 23rd last year.

High piles of snowmelt sit beside the railroad tracks at the Amtrak depot in Fraser, Colorado on April 10, 2025. The spring zephyrs have yet to warm this little icebox and melt all of winter's icy grip. Amtrak's train 5 the westbound California Zephyr awaits departure. Photo: Steve Walden

The contract allows for 3 daily trains executing roundtrips from Denver. Stations in Fraser and Granby would already use the Amtrak stations in place, and this operation should begin next year, according to Gov. Polis. There are plans for stations 

• Denver A
• Arvada
• Rollinsville 
• Fraser A
• Granby A
• Hot Sulphur Springs
• Kremmling
• Oak Creek
• Steamboat Springs Resort
• Steamboat Springs Downtown
• Hayden
• Craig

A - existing Amtrak service via California Zephyr

All stations for cities without existing Amtrak service will need to be built, and there is no exact timeline, or indeed any active contract for building these stations. Gov. Polis believes the trains will be in service next year. Hopefully, Colorado's "Mountain Rail," a restoration of local passenger rail transportation, is finally becoming a reality. 

At the risk of naming chickens before they're built, maybe we can name one of the three daily trains for the Rio Grande's Yampa Valley Mail? ⚒

All the news coverage by:

• Colorado Newsline (um, Colorado?)
• Colorado Sun (Steamboat focus)
• CBSNews Colorado (Denver)
• Colorado Public Radio (Denver)
• Sky-Hi News (Grand County)
• Craig Daily Press (Moffat County)
• Yampa Valley Bugle (Routt County)
• Trains 🔒paywall

Amtrak's Cal Z Helps Keep Travel For Travel's Sake

People magazine is not my first choice for railroad news, but something got my attention in this article. The traveler, from western Europe, writes, 

“Traveling by train is about fully accepting where you are — not counting down the time until you get ‘there.’ This feels very different from flying, where it’s all about getting to your destination as fast as possible. I’ve noticed that I don’t even check the time while being on this train,” she wrote. 

“People here seem more open to talking to strangers, exploring, playing cards and engaging in real human interaction instead of staring at a tiny screen," she says. "They may not realize it, but they are fully present in this moment. Not trying to kill time, because on these trains, it feels like time doesn’t exist.”

The place she wrote this insight, the article says, occurred between Denver and San Francisco. That train can only be number 5, the California Zephyr. I have ridden the portion between Denver and Glenwood Springs more than once and I can attest this is a beautiful experience worth every moment. 

Colorado Experience - The Ski Train

Colorado Experience, the Rocky Mountain PBS series is now in its 11th season, having run since 2013 on Public Broadcasting System stations in Denver, Colorado Springs / Pueblo, Steamboat Springs, Grand Junction, and Durango. It's 11th season is a promising addition to the series, but what most of the readers of CR would be interested to know about is the episode titled "The Ski Train," which premiered at the Colorado Railroad Museum on October 15th and broadcast throughout the state later the same week. The episode is viewable via YouTube below.

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.⚒

Registration Req'd: Special Event Oct 15th

The Ski Train is a coming episode of a special show. Having seen multiple episodes of the Rocky Mountain PBS show Colorado Experience, I know that the following event is going to be special. Tickets are free. However, this event requires registration by following the link below. The showing is early, early evening, but I'm not putting the time down because you must register in advance. 

Register for Special Screening at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado.⚒

PS: The event was well attended! Thanks to all who came!

The Future of Colorado's Front Range Ties To Passenger Rail

For over 25 years, I have heard rumblings of expanded passenger rail service happening for the state of Colorado in various forms. From relocating freight rail out east along with a new "superslab" highway that got filled with more lead than Soapy Smith, to the ill-fated Rocky Mountain Rail Authority's intention to route rail both north-south and east-west through the state and never drove one spike, let alone a train, they were all disappointments. 

This time, I have a bit more hope for Colorado's longsuffering citizens. We have real funding passed and in place. Additionally the builders are focusing on one, realistic route in the area most likely to need it most by then. From a brief conversation, Nancy Burke, representative for Front Range Passenger Rail, said, "We are expecting a portion of the passenger rail corridor for service along the Denver-Boulder-Longmont line to begin in 2030." 

My thoughts are that this might be optimistic, but it certainly could happen if they get moving. If they do turn a steel wheel on a steel rail, they'll do more for Colorado than any of their predecessors, at least since the Kite Route stopped. 

FRPRs 2-minute promotional video follows below.⚒

Eddie Carroll HO & HOn3 San Juan Mountain Model Railroad Layout Tour With Hyce

YouTube vlogger Hyce posted a tour he recently took of Eddie Carroll's layout in Texas. It's a large, mostly-complete HO and HOn3 layout. Large is not the word. Even for Texas, large is not the word. Where to begin, though? 

First, the scenery looks amazing! While nothing any human can do would come close to compare to the beauty of the original, Eddie and his friends have done satisfactory justice to the western San Juan narrow gauge railroads. The Denver & Rio Grande Western's Silverton line is there--including a dual gauge Durango yard, along with much of the Rio Grande Southern and the Silverton Railroad to Red Mountain. All of it is hand-made and dutifully maintained. 

The trackwork, the scenery, the background, the rolling stock, nearly everything is worth studying. Nonetheless, of particular note is the model of the Silverton Railroad's Corkscrew Gulch Turntable. The prototype, which is in the final stages of decomposition across the valley from the Million Dollar Highway between Ouray and Silverton, is the only instance in North America of a turntable installed for use on the main line of a railroad. 

As Hyce said, closing out the 40 minute video,

Eddie was  so kind to take us through and show off his layout, which was incredible. Not only is it gigantic and multi-level, everything about it is so artfully and artistically done. ... It's not just giant for the sake of being giant, it's also so detailed and exquisite in its very own way.

Almost as an afterthought, the lower portion of his layout is standard gauge HO, based on Eddie's favorite Pennsylvania lines. All of it's worth a look, not to envy so much as to certainly admire! Great job, Eddie Carroll and friends! ⚒

The Union Pacific - Southern Pacific Merger of 1996

-- Don Phillips Foreshadows a Near-fatal Error by Union Pacific --

No one who was watching the western railroad mergers of the 1990s can escape two incontrovertible facts.

First fact: BNSF could have kept the still-immensely popular Warbonnet paint scheme. The cost of finding a UV-resistant red and yellow would have paid for itself in public relations and railfan revenue in months if not days

Second fact: the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific merger, while seemingly necessary, nearly destroyed the combined railroad

The first fact remains most vexing for railfans. Conversely, the second fact was more acutely felt and certainly was the most vexing problem for people dependent on the industry.

circa 1995

The ingredients for the problem were evidential but not entirely foreseeable, as Don Phillips wrote about them almost a year before the merger. In Trains magazine dated November 1995, he forecast a pile of bodybags for San Francisco and Denver, among other places. He claimed that the time of the "mega-merger" was really a time of the mega-takeover and that we would have four or "perhaps only two" massive rail systems.

While I am relieved to say the big four remain, his warning about the need for bodybags proved true. He wrote,

UP has the management talent and strength to simply wipe out SP management if it wants to (which it probably does).

The newly combined UP-SP organization functioned for hours and that was all it took for problems to surface. Yards began to fill as dwell time increased. As weeks and months wore on, it only got worse Trains sat for days in sidings outside hubs with customers screaming for their goods that were so overdue, proverbially the ⌛ hourglass was supplanted by the 🗓️ calendar.

The cause of these delays was hinted at by Phillips in that same editorial. He wrote:

It has always been one of railroading's mysteries as to why SP has remained railroading's weak sister despite serving some of the country's most lucrative territory -- California and the chemical coast of Texas and Louisiana.

Incidentally, Phillips also mentions that it was a real question of what would happen to the Western Pacific and Denver & Rio Grande Western routes. He added that BNSF would certainly want them either via trackage rights or outright acquisition. It may have turned out better for the Tennessee Pass if the latter had proved true. If only we could have seen a Conrail-like split out west!

In any event, I watched as it would take years for the UP merger takeover of SP to truly work out. In the simplest terms, it was a case of chemistry where Union Pacific's management crossed with Southern Pacific's infrastructure with explosive results.

More to the point, it was where a new owner took over old and different plant without truly understanding the differences of infrastructure. Like putting Windows on a Mac or Android on an iPhone, the system choked and failed to run. Worse, because the SP management was largely ushered out, there was no brain trust to help understand the how and why things were done before. Unfortunate, but it does hold value for those who want to learn their lessons from history and not necessarily from experience.

Colorado Railroad Museum Looks At the Rio Grande Southern and Galloping Goose No. 7

The folks at the beloved Colorado Railroad Museum have always worked to preserve the Centennial State's railroad history. While what that has looked like has changed quite a bit over the last 50 years or so, it's no different than the different ways society itself has changed over the years. It is especially gratifying to see the museum producing videos on YouTube that fuel the future interest in Colorado's unique narrow gauge history. ⚒

FeedRabbit Delivers Colorado Railroads To Your Email Inbox

Much as I appreciate Google, I am also painfully aware that the G is notorious for buying up services (like YouTube, Picasa or FeedBurner) and then choosing to alter functions or drop the service altogether. They have on occasion bought out the competition and then closed up shop, in the process denying a feature or service that the public might otherwise have enjoyed. It's expensive, but when you have the resources that Google has, it's not that big of a problem. 

The changes they made to FeedBurner were especially disruptive to this site because, while FeedBurner still works, it no longer has some key functionality that was very important to some of this site's readership. Specifically, FeedBurner was especially effective in distributing posts published here by email. In fact, when Google made the change, I pledged I would keep looking for a service to assist you, my readers. I am happy to report that I found such a service! 

As you can see, FeedRabbit delivered a recent post directly
to my inbox without any ads or issues. Pretty good for free!

Feedrabbit.com is perhaps the best and simplest means of working a subscription by e-mail service. Their site is very intuitive and easy to use, and best of all, its basic service is free! You are welcome to continue enjoying the site both by email or directly. And as ever, direct your feed reader or FeedRabbit to this RSS link: http://www.corailroads.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss You can still use FeedBurner as well, of course.⚒

Winter Park Express On Virtual Railfan

You never know where a friendly face might turn up! Check out Amtrak's Winter Park Express this morning as it passed the Virtual Railfan Camera: 

If you ever feel like looking in on the Moffat Route west of Denver as it climbs the Big Ten Curve, the folks at Virtual Railfan have you covered. More details on the camera and route are covered by Colorado Railfan.⚒