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.⚒

Coal Fades From the Durango & Silverton

Over 142 years of coal-fired steaming is finally coming to an end in Durango. 

Let that sink in a moment. Your grandfather never knew a day without coal affecting his life. Whether he knew it or not, coal fired his morning whether he used an electric toaster or a gas-fired water heater. The coffee he drank was brought to his country by a steam ship or roasted by steam or brewed and somewhere in the loop, there was, as likely as not, coal. 

When I was a kid, my class and I toured the massive Coors Brewery in Golden, on the other side of Clear Creek from the Colorado Railroad Museum. In the bowels of the plant, generating the power for the entire complex, boiling mash, and heating the entire plant as well as the Colorado School of Mines! Inside the plant, massive boilers fired by natural gas and--you got it--coal surged with energy for all that light, heat and cold, to make the best beer in the world (micro brews notwithstanding), along with the best geological minds known to man. I might be a bit biased because my uncle Clifford graduated from there. Inside the furnace, a large, flaming tornado of coal whips around in the combustion chamber in a scene that is slightly terrifying even while it is contained inside by convective air currents and steel walls. The power plant continues to burn on even today, but with more flexibility.1

A coal fire inside a locomotive is no fire tornado but no less intense; a scene worthy of a medieval poetic vision of hell. Small mountains and valleys aglow in hundreds and thousands of shades of luminescent orange. Open the door used to feed the iron horse and a wall of heat rolls out and bathes the entire landing with radiant energy. Leave the door open too long and it threatens to set the denim and wool worn in the cab alight. Children, especially those fascinated by fire, visit the cab with their parents to get a peep of the firebox. Watch the warmth fill their cheeks and their eyes alight with that amazing flame that powered us out of the sticks.

For the men and women firing a locomotive with coal is part science and part art. The engineer may command the locomotive but the fireman is the power and heart of the locomotive. Fire it well and you arrive at the destination on time or early. Fire it worse and the speed suffers, the schedule falls behind, or it could be that you don't arrive at all. On mountain railroads like the Rio Grande and Colorado & Southern, along with their surviving remnants, coal firing meant a specific dynamic for the cab. 

It was said long ago, "The engineer sleeps on the uphill side, the fireman sleeps on the downhill," Little sleeping ever happened for either side of the cab, obviously. Nevertheless, when the train is going uphill, an engineer need only make sure the engine is not slipping. Meanwhile the fireman must shovel a great deal of coal to generate all the steam the engine is using, pulling against all the cars and gravity. He needs to make sure there's an even bed of coal burning and burning as evenly as possible, even while jostling and shaking its way up the grade. Downhill, conversely, the fireman rests more as the engine is mostly idle, only generating air pressure for the engineer. His job is to keep the entire train from gravity's clutches with the air brakes. An engineer who wasted steam and a fireman who wasted coal meant problems. 

The art of steaming is still alive and well because every steam railroad uses the same basic principles to drive a locomotive. The art of firing a locomotive is going the way of the manual transmission and handmade consumables, unfortunately. There are several reasons, and not just the obvious one.

The first and most obvious is that coal produces ash in the form of cinders. Not only must these cinders be cleaned out every day at a special location called the ash pit, but during combustion, small bits of still-burning coal in the process of becoming ash can be carried through the boiler tubes and out the stack with the smoke of the engine. The more the engine works, the more ash it produces. The harder the steam works, the more forceful the stack ejects the ash, carrying it further. On windy days and in dry conditions, this has become a serious risk to the railroad and, sadly, more than one wildfire has sprung from an ill-fated cinder that escaped and flew too far. This makes the railroad a risk to every family in the valley. Mitigation of removing combustible fuels and screens and water misting the stack have not been enough some years. In fact, the very scenery of San Juan National Forest the train travels through is put at risk of burning to ashes. And you thought the cinders hurt your eyes!

Another reason is the coating of ash that has drifted down over the Animas River valley. Some years, in downtown Durango it was palpable. Although the railroad has worked in recent decades to decrease the burden on surrounding businesses by using a wood-based alternative fuel to bunker the locomotives overnight.

This brings us to a hidden reason for switching from coal. Every night, the roundhouse and the engines idled in the yard must bunker each coal fire. The boiler of each engine to be used the next day needs to be kept warm with a fire that continues to burn through the night, tended overnight by staff. No bunker, and a crew would have to show up much earlier each morning and consequently run into service time limits. Instead, for more than 14 decades, a hostler tends each fire in the roundhouse as the engines doze with steam wisps and the quiet of a small downtown. 

For months, the mechanical staff have labored to switch the insides of each Mikado from coal to oil. Rather than working a bed of fire, a fireman simply works the atomizer and heat to bring the fuel to life in the firebox. The oil is kept warm, lest it get too thick to form the mist, but otherwise requires no skill and no magic to coax rock to burn. Last Mikado to change is engine 481 which will undergo conversion this spring. From the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad blog, 

... The D&SNG’s last active coal burning locomotive, number 481, will see its final winter as a coal burning engine before undergoing a conversion to burn oil later in 2024. “A few years ago I always thought we would want to keep a coal burner,” said Randy Babcock, AHR Chief Mechanical Officer “the reality is that it just doesn’t make business sense to maintain a locomotive that we only intend to use a quarter of the year.” [archive]

Much as I would love for the only continuous, all Colorado narrow gauge heritage railroad to continue to burn the same fuel they've always used from Hesperus,2 the railroad has to live in harmony with everyone else in their valley. Two towns and two counties rely more than a little on this enterprise that prospers every summer and winter with a great amount of tourism, the majority from outside the region. 

The change has already been very apparent on engines emerging from Durango each day the past summer and fall, with engine stacks free of cinder screens or water halos and, my sister will be happy to note, children will have to go somewhere else to get a cinder in their eye!3 I will miss the smell of coal smoke, but its a small price to pay for the health and wellbeing of a living, breathing steam engine program showing everyone what nineteenth century tech can do for people in the 2020s. 

As of February, seats for early summer season are readily available. Come May, that will absolutely change. We're all counting on it! ⚒

Footnotes

1 - Colorado Energy Nations Boiler 5 Upgrade Project at Powermag.com and at archive.org

2 - King II mine - Global Energy Monitor wiki

3 - When I asked my sister if she remembered her trip 45 years later, she said that her eyes still hurt. Bless her heart!

New Plans Hinted At the Colorado Railroad Museum

Denver's Channel 4 (KCNC, nee KOA, currently branding itself as CBS Colorado) checked in at the Colorado Railroad Museum this past weekend and the museum is hinting at big plans. 

Doug Tagsold's Model Railroad of the Colorado & Southern Faithful to the Original

Model railroads are not featured here often for the simple reason that they're an imitation of the prototype, a re-creation that has license to include or exclude what the creator wills. That's their right and their creation reflects their devotion to the aspects they wish to create. Yet once in a while comes a layout so noteworthy and consistent with what one can see in the historic record that they have to be held up with pride and recognized as an authentic representation of the railroad and its environs. 

Such is the case with the above video, Colorado & Southern Denver to Silver Plume Freight. Doug Tagsold's Clear Creek District layout tour showcases his representation of the old Colorado Central line from South Denver through all the points of interest one can reasonably recount to the far famed loop above Georgetown and finally Silver Plume. While the pacing can be slow, it follows all the steps necessary to ready a steam engine for the trip. Soon enough, you're on your way. 

Everything feels and looks accurate, considering the historic photos available from the books and libraries. If I wanted to show a friend what the Georgetown Loop trip would have looked like a century ago, this would be about as close as I could come without time travel. 

Well done, sir! ⚒

The Route of the Rio Grande Southern

Once in a while, I come across a resource or an item so well-done, I can't help but share it. RGSrr.com is an old school site in terms of its layout and design, but one I'm very glad to count on. It has been going for years and has very handy details on the underdog narrow gauge railroad. Their work retracing route is at the end of this article.

If you have never been to see the remnants of the Rio Grande Southern, make every effort to see it sooner than later! The RGS has been abandoned for 70 years now and despite all efforts of fans and whole organizations, the San Juan mountains persist in reclaiming what Otto Mears and his partners built. Winters in Colorado are serious, but the San Juans get the most snow. The canyons are deeper, locking the snows deep late into spring and yes, even summer. One Fourth of July weekend, I was not surprised so much as impressed to find a snow and ice dam still straddling the Uncompahgre River above Ouray. Winter arrives early, stays late and works hard to break rock, timber and whatever else is in its way.

The Rio Grande Southern is not well known to many even in its home state of Colorado. By all rights, it shouldn't have existed. Born November 5, 1889, less than 3 years 8 months before the Silver Panic of 1893, it was barely off and running before it fell into receivership and out of the hands of its founder, the Pathfinder of the San Juan. It went where its namesake, the Denver & Rio Grande Western, had not dared to climb, beyond Ridgway to Telluride, Ophir, Rico, down to Dolores and Mancos and east into Durango, connecting two very distant points of the Rio Grande narrow gauge empire. 

How the little narrow gauge persisted for another 60 years is a story recounted in many books, but the miracle was thankfully preserved not just in text but on film, even into the last days of dismantling by faithful friends of the railroad that connected most of the western San Juans. The spindly-legged trestles and light, narrow gauge rails made riders quail and even refuse to travel the return trip. It was built to get ore from the mines to the mills in Durango and Denver and it did, barely. 

In this cropped view taken from the Denver Public Library, it's easy to see how the Ophir Loop used trestle and curve, cut and fill to shoehorn a railroad through the deep canyons, climbing the San Juans of Colorado
Photo: Thomas McKee

Below, we find RGSrr.com's Route of the Rio Grande Southern. It shows with remarkable clarity, exactly where the railroad ran, how it worked with valleys and loops completed by curved trestles, fighting for every foot of altitude! It has a key that shows which trestles went where and which there are pictures for. It is an incredible resource for the narrow gauge modeler and railroad historian! ⚒