October 11, 2006
FAI-ANC 3:35p – 4:37p ALASKA 737-400 N760AS Economy Class
ANC-SEA 6:09p -10:18p ALASKA 737-400 N784AS Economy Class
October 12, 2006
SEA-DEN 7:35a-11:08a ALASKA 737-700 N614AS Economy Class

Pictures from this trip can be found HERE


Nothing particularly special to report on any of these flights except the following:

Ship 784 is the original Disneyland plane – the one with Mickey Mouse on the tail.

My Exit Row Window was double assigned. Since possession is 9/10ths of the law and I was the second to arrive, I ended up with the middle seat.

The Northern Bite was a hot barbecued chicken and cheese sandwich. I thought it was pretty good once I’d removed the cheese.

I overheard that the First Class breakfast between Seattle and Denver was a sausage and egg muffin. Those cost a buck at McDonalds these days. How low can domestic First Class sink…

From DIA, the cheapest mid or full size rental car I could find for the next four days priced out at $188.00. Sorry, that’s not acceptable. Try again. This I did, ultimately finding an Advantage Rent A Car location in south suburban Denver that rented me a Hyundai Sonata with airport return for just $103.00. All I had to do was spend an hour getting there on a couple of city busses - a small imposition given the substantial savings I enjoyed. I spent the next three days in Colorado visiting friends and family in Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction and Greeley. Ah… the good life…


October 15, 2006
Cañon City, Colorado
The Royal Gorge Train
First Class Super Dome seating

After a snowy day on Saturday, I awoke Sunday morning to mostly sunny skies with temperatures projected in the 70s. What a fine day indeed to head down to Cañon City for a train ride through the Colorado’s fabulous Royal Gorge.

When I was younger, I mapped out every single rail line ever built in Colorado. I cannot imagine a state with a more colorful railroad history than Colorado. On just about every one of those routes I traced I found myself wondering what it must have been like to have ridden those trains through incredible mountain scenery to places like Telluride, Lake City, Leadville or Craig. As a child I remember a visit to the suspension bridge over the Royal Gorge and watching as a train passed by over 1000 feet beneath us. Suspension bridges are cool but I wanted to be on that train! Unfortunately, passenger rail service through the Royal Gorge ended in 1967, a bit before I had the means and the freedom to have taken advantage of it.

I should note here that the Royal Gorge is the name given the spectacular chasm carved out over the past three million years by the Arkansas River. Also known as The Grand Canyon of the Arkansas, the Royal Gorge’s history as a rail route includes a war between competing railroads as well as being the most dramatic portion of the original transcontinental rail route through the Rocky Mountains. The history is fascinating…

In the 1860s, miners began to head into Colorado’s upper Arkansas valley in search of lead and silver. Interestingly, this area was not known for its gold deposits. By the late 1870s, the large number of successful claims in the Leadville district attracted the attention of the Denver & Rio Grande and the Santa Fe railroads. After all, there was a lot of money to be made from “mining the miners” by supplying them and their towns with food, equipment and other supplies. Both railroads had already established operations in the lower Arkansas valley and both wasted little time in making plans to build tracks to Leadville. Unfortunately, given the lay of the land the only reasonable access to the Leadville area was via the narrow, thousand foot deep Arkansas River canyon just west of Cañon City.

Ordinarily it would not be a problem for two competing railroads to occupy the same river valley or canyon but at its narrowest point the Royal Gorge is only about thirty feet wide. This width combined with sheer granite walls on both sides of the river made the prospect of building a railroad through the canyon a seriously daunting task. Two railroads would be sheer folly! The result was a race to build tracks through the gorge.

Unfortunately, what might have started out as spirited competition quickly devolved into legal bickering and injunctions followed shortly thereafter by armed confrontations between the rival track crews. Over the next two years, trains were commandeered, depots and engine houses were put under siege, bullets flew and people died in what came to be known as the Royal Gorge Railroad War. A treaty was eventually signed granting track rights to the Rio Grande on condition that it reimburse the Santa Fe 1.8 million dollars to cover the cost of what it had already built in the gorge. Once that was settled, construction resumed in earnest and the tracks reached Leadville a couple of years later.

As for its transcontinental heritage, train travel through the Royal Gorge was part of the original route between Denver and Salt Lake City. Leaving Denver, trains rolled south to Colorado Springs and Pueblo before heading west through the Royal Gorge, over Marshall Pass, then through Gunnison, Montrose, and Grand Junction before passing into Utah and on to Salt Lake. Later, the main line was routed via Leadville and tracks were laid over Tennessee Pass through Glenwood Springs and into Grand Junction. I’ve driven through all of these areas many times over and I assure you there are few places any prettier through which to travel by train.

Any route through the Rocky Mountains is going to be a gorgeous ride but I often wish I’d been born fifty years earlier so that I could have enjoyed travel by train along some of those bygone routes. Today, I get to experience a small but spectacular piece of Colorado’s rail history.

During the off season (October through May) the Royal Gorge Route Railroad operates on weekends only. There is a midday departure at 12:30pm and an evening dinner train at 6:00pm. I opted for the 12:30 departure since I had to be back in Denver in time for the 6:15pm kickoff of the Broncos – Raiders game. No true Bronco fan would ever miss a game against the Oakland Raiders. But enough football talk. Let’s head on out to the train.

I arrived at the Santa Fe depot in Cañon City at 11:45. By now the day was totally cloudless and the temperature felt like it was substantially warmer than 70. Although boarding wouldn’t begin until 12:15, I noticed that lines for both Coach and First Class passengers were already beginning to form.

Four different types of tickets were available for the midday departure. The least expensive entitled one to a simple Coach seat. Next up was First Class, though the seating was basic wooden chairs around tables in a parlor car with a bar at one end. For just a few dollars more, you could have a seat upstairs in the super dome, under the glass. Seating was buffet style, i.e. comfortable padded bench seats facing each other with a table in between. The primary benefit of dome seating is not comfort but rather the ability to see not only out to the side but also above and forward of the train. This is especially appreciated when traveling through mountainous country or in a canyon like the Royal Gorge. The most expensive tickets entitled you to dome seating along with a “gourmet” lunch in the attractively refurbished “William Jackson Palmer” dining car.

I had purchased a seat in one of the 1950s era super dome cars. What’s interesting is that prior to their service in Colorado, these dome cars were owned and operated by Holland America Westours who operated them between Anchorage, Denali Park and Fairbanks. I may have even ridden on one of these cars while up in Alaska. These older domes were much nicer than the newly manufactured dome cars Holland America Westours currently operates in Alaska. It would be good to get reacquainted with these old cars.

Although the scenery is the primary attraction of a trip on this train, to any true railfan the old equipment and especially locomotive power would rank a very close second. Of particular interest to me was the ex-Canadian National Railway F-7 diesel locomotive positioned at the rear of the train. The F-7 was the most popular of a number of passenger and freight diesels produced by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division in the 1940s and 50s. Their rounded noses and streamlined design likely make F-Units the most recognized diesel locomotive in North American history. Their silhouette is still the standard for the popular media to indicate anything to do with train travel. Of all the F-Units, the F-7 was the most popular (over 2,300 were built) and they served on railroads throughout the United States and Canada through the 1970s. Some Canadian examples operated well into the 1990s.

Aesthetically speaking, the F-7 is what a passenger train engine should look like. Today’s more modern engines are certainly more powerful and efficient but don’t hold a candle to the F-Units when it comes to appearance.

The rest of the train was made up of predominantly ex-Canadian National/ViaRail equipment that included two coaches, a café lounge car, a parlor/bar car, two diners, two open air observation cars and the three domes. Leading us out of Cañon City were a relatively pedestrian set of SD-9 and GP-7 locomotives. The entire consist was painted in Rio Grande’s classic ochre, black and gray livery with the exception of the dome cars which still retained their Holland America colors though not titles. The reason why the F-7 was positioned at the rear was because the train travels through the Gorge to Parkdale and back, reversing direction but not the train. The F-7 would lead us back to Cañon City.

There was no indication that I had an assigned seat, so I assumed that I’d be sharing a table with three other people. Upon boarding however, I was surprised to find that an entire table had been reserved for me. Each table was set with napkins, plasticware and menus. The menu offered a decent selection of hot sandwiches, burgers and appetizers, very affordably priced. I wasn’t all that hungry however, so when the server stopped by to take orders, I settled for an ice cold Guinness (Only $3.50!) and ended up chatting with some visitors from Germany. The four of them were on a month long journey around the Western US and were quite excited to be riding upstairs in the big dome. Cars like this were never seen in Europe, they said.

At 12:29pm, the traditional call of “All Aboard” was made and the engineer gave a couple of toots from his horn. One minute later the engines powered up and we slowly glided away from the old depot. About two minutes into the trip we were treated to some commentary as we passed the old Colorado Territorial Penitentiary built in 1868. It was later known as Big Mac when it became the primary maximum security prison for the state. It now serves as a medium security facility. I found it interesting that the prison was located right in the heart of downtown Cañon City. Also interesting is the role that prisons play in the economy of Cañon City. Fremont County is home to not one but fourteen prisons, including the latest Federal Maximum Security Penitentiary at Florence, Colorado.

The entrance to the Royal Gorge is no more than a couple of miles from Cañon City. The terrain very quickly changes from the mellow hills around Cañon City to mountains to the sheer rock walls of the canyon. It was a gorgeous autumn day and as nice as the scenery was from the glass topped dome car, I knew I’d enjoy it more from the open air observation car.

If the weather is good, the open-air observation car is really the place to be. It is open to all passengers and because of this I would suggest that for daytime departures, unless you really like dome cars, buy a coach ticket on this train. You’ll probably be spending the majority of the two-hour roundtrip outside anyway as the scenery practically calls out to you to come out and get a better view.

About halfway into trip, we got our first view of the famous suspension bridge that spans the gorge. The bridge sits 1,053 feet above the river and not surprisingly is the highest suspension bridge in the world. Built in 1929, the bridge took only six months to construct. It spans 880 feet but is only 18 feet wide. Over 1000 planks make up the wooden walkway. I found it interesting that the bridge was never intended for transportation purposes. It was always intended as a tourism attraction. Kodak stock probably went up a point the day this bridge was completed!

The Arkansas River was our constant companion throughout the twelve-mile journey to Parkdale. At times, the river was no more than a few feet away. One such place in particular is where the gorge is at its narrowest – only thirty feet wide. Because the granite walls drop so steeply into the river on both sides of the gorge, the tracks run over a 175 foot plate girder that is suspended over the river via a series of A-frame girders that span the river and are anchored to the rock walls on either side. The Santa Fe built this “bridge” in 1879 and although it’s been strengthened over the years, the main structure has served as the only way through this section of the gorge for the past 126 years.

When there was regular passenger train service through the gorge, it was traditional for trains to stop down by the A-frame bridge and allow passengers off to check out the scenery. Years ago I heard a great story about this stop. A Rio Grande dining car steward who had worked for the railroad for over thirty years told it to me. Colorado Rainbow Trout, however it was prepared, was always one of the favorite dishes of passengers riding the Rio Grande. One day, the commissary had been unable to stock the train with adequate supplies of trout and so the kitchen only had about a dozen to work with. It was decided that an announcement would be made advising passengers that due to a shortage, no trout had been stocked and so would not be available for that evening’s meals. After the thirty-minute stop in the Royal Gorge, another announcement was made advising passengers that a limited amount of trout dinners was now available. The reason for this was that some dedicated members of the kitchen and dining room staff had used the break time in the Royal Gorge to make the perilous hike upstream and catch some trout for that night’s dinner. Needless to say, the passengers were as thrilled as they were impressed with the dedication and fishing ability of the Rio Grande staff.

Visitors to the suspension bridge can actually take a cog railway that runs at a 45-degree angle down to the hanging bridge. It’s called the Royal Gorge Incline and is recognized as the world's steepest railway. I don’t remember doing this when we visited years ago. Guess I’ll have to make a return visit someday…

Soon after leaving the gorge on its western side, we arrived at Parkdale. I saw a single house with some out buildings and a bridge where US 50 crossed over the Arkansas River. Other than that, there was nothing more to Parkdale. The engineers climbed down from the SD-9 locomotive that had pulled us into Parkdale and walked down the length of the train to the very end where the F-7 awaited for the return journey. One hour later we pulled into Cañon City right on time, bringing to a close one of the more dramatic rail journeys I’ve ever taken.

Here’s a link to a video of the trip I found on the internet:

ROYAL GORGE VIDEO

As I was driving back up to Denver, I took a moment to reflect on my travels of late. Three weeks ago I was driving between Page, Arizona and Green River, Utah. Two weeks ago I was riding the train between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Montreal. One week ago I was enjoying an unseasonably warm autumn day in Fairbanks. Six days from now I’ll be riding Amtrak’s Coast Starlight into Santa Barbara, CA. Eleven days from now I’ll be riding yet another train through Mexico’s Copper Canyon. Ah, the life…

Okay, that's all for this installment. In the next week I'll be heading northwest, then way south. The upcoming report includes First Class on Amtrak's Coast Starlight, Business Class on the Pacific Surfliner, First Class on Mexico's Copper Canyon train and flights aboard Mexican carriers Aviacsa and Azteca. Thanks for reading!