# DRG&W Corridor Ski Train Options



## neroden (Nov 15, 2015)

jis said:


> Actually, trying to run the Zephyr on the Moffat Line considerably screwed up convenient schedules at the Wasatch front. (SLC), and there is no easy way to fix it.


I've repeatedly proposed a set of "Ski Trains" running from Denver to Grand Junction, preferably multiple times per day.
Then you can reroute the California Zephyr on the Wyoming route, make it faster, get more riders from Colorado, improve the SLC schedule.

I think it's OK to lose service to Green River and Helper, which have approximately no passengers.

Approximately nobody rides from the ski areas to Utah either. Those coming from the West Coast can change trains in Denver.



> Of course, I am expecting Neroden to pipe in right about now to point out that all these proposals are completely hopeless, financially speaking,





> Specially the parts being discussed west of Denver.


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## Anderson (Nov 16, 2015)

Well, you can suffice it to say that I live in hope in terms of funding sources.

On the Pioneer front, I believe the politics are a bit more complicated. Crapo, for example, was fighting hard for the Pioneer; I think it is fair to say that at some point an elected official whose district/state is being "blown off" for service (and there's been a standing allegation that Amtrak sandbagged the Pioneer study) is at least not unjustified in saying "Well, there's no chance we'll get service back in the next 20-30 years" and dropping the issue. Regrettable but true.

One thing which would help the Pioneer east of SLC is FrontRunner. I think if you could arrange an agreement to run a connecting FrontRunner train from Ogden to Provo after the Pioneer passes through (which may already be the case most of the time, but include a guaranteed connection and a lot of people will relax) that would help things a lot. Going off of one of the 1995 timetables (Zephyr was daily; Pioneer and Desert Wind were each 3x weekly), the runtime CHI-OGD was about 11:20 while CHI-SLC on the Zephyr was about 14:30. The three-hour difference is pretty vital...and FWIW, it's part of why the San Francisco Zephyr and Rio Grande Zephyr had *ahem* interesting connection practices back in the 70s [1]. Rio Grande was able to make the times work so-so...but only because for all intents and purposes their operation was "internal" (that is to say, their first concern wasn't operating the train for good times at DEN and SLC _and_ at CHI/EMY).

If you want to raise the Ski Train prospect, a state-supported train DEN-GJT (I presume that GJT would be the best place to turn the service) connecting with a second CHI-DEN train (cross-platform transfer would be fine on this) seems like a worthwhile prospect. Rio Grande was bleeding money west of GJT (I think they were averaging a handful of pax there) but east of there you had a decent spot of business. It's really a question of DEN-GJT (roughly 8:00) vs. DEN-GSC (5:40); the former would require two sets while the latter _might_ be doable with a single set depending on timing. I'd prefer the former for both operational reasons (there's a major yard at GJT) as well as covering more ground...but I can at least see an argument for the latter even if it seems doomed to be a "cheap" way of handling things while making a hash of timings into/out of Denver (you're looking at a 13:00 r/t at a bare minimum...probably more like 14:00, especially if you add any stops to the state train...and isn't there more than just the one resort on the route?). How you punch this together depends on a lot...but I do think it would work quite well (the Ski Train would attract a _ton_ of local-ish traffic...Amtrak complains about having to "lock out" local traffic along that route in peak seasons...as well as a good pile of thru traffic if bags are automatically transferred and you can work with the resorts).

[1] The WB San Francisco Zephyr connected to the Rio Grande Zephyr in Denver on a nailbiter 15-minute connection per the summer '71 timetable; the EB San Francisco Zephyr connected to the Rio Grande Zephyr on a two-hour connection at SLC...the connection being 0400-0600. Even then, the DEN-SLC trip was 14:00 each way. The EB Rio Grande Zephyr did not connect at Denver (it arrived at 2100 and the SFZ had left three hours earlier) nor did the WB Rio Grande Zephyr connect at SLC/OGD (the SFZ had left over an hour earlier).


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## neroden (Nov 18, 2015)

Anderson said:


> If you want to raise the Ski Train prospect, a state-supported train DEN-GJT (I presume that GJT would be the best place to turn the service) connecting with a second CHI-DEN train (cross-platform transfer would be fine on this) seems like a worthwhile prospect. Rio Grande was bleeding money west of GJT (I think they were averaging a handful of pax there) but east of there you had a decent spot of business. It's really a question of DEN-GJT (roughly 8:00) vs. DEN-GSC (5:40); the former would require two sets while the latter _might_ be doable with a single set depending on timing. I'd prefer the former for both operational reasons (there's a major yard at GJT) as well as covering more ground...but I can at least see an argument for the latter even if it seems doomed to be a "cheap" way of handling things while making a hash of timings into/out of Denver (you're looking at a 13:00 r/t at a bare minimum...probably more like 14:00, especially if you add any stops to the state train...and isn't there more than just the one resort on the route?). How you punch this together depends on a lot...but I do think it would work quite well (the Ski Train would attract a _ton_ of local-ish traffic...Amtrak complains about having to "lock out" local traffic along that route in peak seasons...as well as a good pile of thru traffic if bags are automatically transferred and you can work with the resorts).


Why go half-assed? Do both.
Two trainsets to run:

DEN 10 AM

WIP 12:30 PM

GSC 4 PM

GJT 6 PM

GJT 8 AM

GSC 9:30 AM

WIP 1:30 PM

DEN 4 PM

AND

one trainset to run:

DEN 7 AM

WIP 9 AM

GSC 1 PM

GSC 1:30 PM

WIP 5:30 PM

DEN 8 PM

This provides one a day to Grand Junction... but it also provides truly attractive two-a-day schedules for Winter Park and Glenwood Springs.

(Perhaps we should split this off into a "Ski Train Service" thread.)


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## Anderson (Nov 18, 2015)

Ok, I split it off.

The biggest issue I see with your timetable is the GSC turn. I'd probably push the afternoon train back by an hour or so as a matter of padding; I'm presuming that the second service would run as a push-pull operation. Here's what a consolidated timetable looks like (I went with Fraser-Winter Park for the WIP stop):

| SKIT | AMTK | SKIT || SKIT | AMTK | SKIT | 
| 1 | 5 | 3 || 4 | 6 | 2 |
DEN | 0700 | 0805 | 1000 || 1600 | 1838 | 2000 |
WIP | 0900 | 1007 | 1230 || 1330 | 1550 | 1730 |
GSC | 1300 | 1353 | 1600 || 0930 | 1210 | 1330 |
GJT | ---- | 1610 | 1800 || 0800 | 1023 | ---- |

Edit: Fixed the timetable so it's more "orderly". My immediate instinct is to try and space the morning trains out a bit more; all three firing out of Denver in a three-hour timeframe feels a bit wasteful. I'd probably knock SKIT-3 back an hour or two (so depart at 1100-1200, arrive 1900-2000). Eastbound, things look a bit better; SKIT-2 might need to move back by 30-60 minutes for turning reasons (delay cascades and all); that said, four hours' spacing is better than three hours' spacing. I _do_ think there's a train missing from a desirable schedule...let me massage something in here.


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## Anderson (Nov 18, 2015)

Ok, I massaged the schedules and here's what I've got:

| SKIT | AMTK | SKIT | SKIT || SKIT | SKIT | AMTK | SKIT | 
| 1 | 5 | 3 | 11 || 12 | 4 | 6 | 2 |
| Daily| Daily| Daily | Fri. || Sat. | Daily| Daily| Daily|
DEN | 0700 | 0805 | 1200 | 1800 || 0900 | 1600 | 1838 | 2000 |
WIP | 0900 | 1007 | 1430 | 2000 || 0700 | 1330 | 1550 | 1730 |
GSC | 1300 | 1353 | 1800 | ---- || ---- | 0930 | 1210 | 1330 |
GJT | ---- | 1610 | 2000 | ---- || ---- | 0800 | 1023 | ---- |

The Saturday morning trip might as well be a deadhead; one option I did consider was running the train a bit earlier and adding a Sunday/Monday trip as well. That train would use the equipment from 3/4, so no extra equipment would be needed...and you'd only be running it on a "Holiday" schedule of sorts. Alternatively it might be run with stuff from the commuter pool in Denver and simply returned that evening (dep. WIP 2030, arr. DEN 2230)...and heck, there might be a market for such a round-trip on some days around Christmas, President's Day, etc.


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## neroden (Nov 18, 2015)

Well, part of my thought is that the local Denver-Ski Areas traffic wouldn't want to deal with the unreliability of the train coming from Chicago or California, so I was figuring that that "didn't count" as a Ski Train frequency. I was therefore planning a two-out, two-back schedule.

I just looked at Glenwood Springs and realized that (a) there is a wye which could be reinstated, and (b) there are sidings on which the train could be held off the mainline between arrival and departure. Nice.

(More fascinating to me is that the branch line to Aspen has been turned into a trail.)

I went to the trouble of calculating the entire potential lost traffic: assuming

-- a Ski Train runs Denver-Grand Junction and connects with service from Chicago-Denver, so those riders are still on trains

-- Helper and Green River lose service

-- SLC-Ski Areas, Provo-Ski Areas lose all riders

-- Emeryville-Ski Areas and Sacramento - Ski Areas lose all riders, which is an exaggeration (some would stay overnight in Denver, some would rent cars in Salt Lake)

-- I had to use high estimates for some because I couldn't extract the exact numbers from the NARP ridership datasheets.

The total potential lost ridership is less than 21,000/year. (Sadly I lost my calculations in a browser error. But anyway.) Unsurprisingly most skiiers coming from the west are going to Grand Junction, fewer to Glenwood Springs, almost none to Granby or Winter Park.

I think you could get a lot more than that from:

-- stations in the Front Range of Colorado (either Boulder/Longmont/Loveland/Fort Collins or Brighton/Greeley)

-- a trip time which is minimum 2.5 hours shorter (on the Boulder route) or 3.5 hours shorter (on the Greeley route)

(I used 1972 Amtrak timings for Ogden-Denver, but I deleted the excessive 25 minute layover in Cheyenne.)

-- Daytime service to Salt Lake City, and better times in both directions

-- Better departure and arrival times in California, allowing for better connections from distant points in the Bay Area

-- Laramie and Cheyenne passengers

OF course, if there are *two* trains a day from Denver to Chicago, then you want to sit down and look at the schedules all over again. Maybe I'll do that. For that, we really want to assume the Iowa rail project.


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## Anderson (Nov 18, 2015)

Let's sit down and go over a two-train-a-days scenario. I've been a supporter of something like that for a _long_ time. I'd presume that at least one train/day would need to remain on the existing route for a whole host of reasons (though if you've got two trains/day you might be able to make something work where both through trains use the Overland Route...for example, run a Rio Grande Zephyr which connects from the "early" train into Denver and then allows you to connect to the "late" train into Denver at SLC, for example). Other ideas do abound.

(No, really...I'd like to get someone else's mind working over this situation alongside me since I do think that additional CHI-DEN service, regardless of whether it continues on beyond DEN as such, is probably a good longer-term goal)


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## Seaboard92 (Nov 18, 2015)

I like the idea of increasing service in this route. But I have to say I'm not the biggest fan of rerouting the CZ off it's current route. As we know the original Zephyr wasn't ran for time between points but more as a land cruise. While the Union Pacific City of San Fransisco was more direct with a time savings of about nine hours from it's route. If the Pioneer was to come back and run from CHI-DEN-WY-Odgen-POR and scheduled right wouldn't that be able to better serve the Salt Lake market with a guaranteed Front Runner connection. I know a lot of people who take the current CZ for the land cruise aspects of it, so that's not a market I would want to alienate. But I do want better service. What about structuring your service like my idea. I would love to move the time of the eastbound CZ later without losing the Chicago Connections. If the Iowa route would open, and hopefully be a high speed line with a speed limit around 110. So that the CZ could roll around 100 mph the Superliner limit. But I'm not sure how much time savings that would be.

Now I would be curious if one could operate the train and use a cab car, which would cut down the cost, and operating expense of turning the train on the wye. And if this train could sell enough seats to make it worth while. As I'm not sure there is intermediate or much of a summer market. I'll start a thread in a few minutes for a Denver Zephyr type train from CHI-DEN.


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## Anderson (Nov 18, 2015)

There's definitely at least something of a summer market (the train is reasonably full in both summer and winter; having been there both times, the scenery is pretty good in both seasons, and in summer you've got rafting and other activities).


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## Seaboard92 (Nov 19, 2015)

That is true I forgot about that. And I'm sure there is a decent hiking market that one could cater to as well. I could support this as a really good idea. My question is? Would the ridership be there year round enough to support the train. I see this working really well as a weekend train. But I'm still skeptical on it. Do you have any numbers?


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## Anderson (Nov 19, 2015)

I don't have access to data in such a granular format (the only time data like that was ever released here in VA, it got used by a bus service to set up a competing operation). I _can_ say that Zephyr sleeper traffic crashes _hard_ in winter; I'd need to poke at overall data, however...but even that wouldn't disentangle a spike in DEN-GSC and EMY-RNO traffic from a crash in CHI-DEN and other traffic.


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## jis (Nov 19, 2015)

There was a period when Anshutz tried to make a go of the Ski Train and finally gave up and folded. Anyone recall what happened?

Then Iowa Pacific tried to start it up and Amtrak effectively blocked it.

Current situation is described in http://www.cpr.org/news/story/winter-park-ski-train-reboot-shifting-higher-gear

Someone seems to think that Amtrak will fund such a train, which we know it is not allowed to. So we'll see.


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## Anderson (Nov 19, 2015)

From what I can tell, given that it was 2009 it was _probably_ the recession forcing the operation into the red for that year and lousy projections for the 2010-11 season which caused Anshutz to dump it. The IP/Amtrak situation...argh, I _really_ hate it when Amtrak decides to behave stupidly like that.


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## jis (Nov 19, 2015)

Anderson said:


> From what I can tell, given that it was 2009 it was _probably_ the recession forcing the operation into the red for that year and lousy projections for the 2010-11 season which caused Anshutz to dump it. The IP/Amtrak situation...argh, I _really_ hate it when Amtrak decides to behave stupidly like that.


I wish mere stupidity could explain Amtrak's behavior. I think it is worse than that.


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## Anderson (Nov 19, 2015)

jis said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > From what I can tell, given that it was 2009 it was _probably_ the recession forcing the operation into the red for that year and lousy projections for the 2010-11 season which caused Anshutz to dump it. The IP/Amtrak situation...argh, I _really_ hate it when Amtrak decides to behave stupidly like that.
> ...


I said the _behavior_ was stupid, not that it was the _result_ of stupidity. Hostility and so on are the root causes, but the behavior is just inane.


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## ainamkartma (Nov 20, 2015)

neroden said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > Actually, trying to run the Zephyr on the Moffat Line considerably screwed up convenient schedules at the Wasatch front. (SLC), and there is no easy way to fix it.
> ...


I understand your use of scare quotes above, but it should perhaps be noted that the Moffat Line goes nowhere near any ski area between Denver and Grand Junction, except for Winter Park. It is a solid hour by car from Glenwood Springs to Aspen, and 40 minutes (in the wrong direction!) from a hypothetical Dotsero stop to Vail. The Summit County areas and Steamboat are much farther, and over either one or two high passes from the rail line.

I suspect one reason that the Winter Park ski train actually makes sense is that it is very close to time competitive with driving from Denver, especially if Berthoud Pass is dicey or impassable. The train has no such advantages with respect to the other Colorado resorts.

Maybe calling them "scenery trains" or something would be closer to realistic.

Ainamkartma


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## DesertDude (Nov 22, 2015)

Good points, Ainamkartma. It's refreshing to read comments that actually demonstrate a familiarity with the region in question. 

I agree that the only ski resort that would benefit from a dedicated Denver - Grand Junction train is Winter Park. Considerable interest exists right now for establishing the ski train to Winter Park (now to be called the Winter Park Express). When the WPE ran for one weekend this past March, all tickets were sold out in a matter of hours. And based on what was spoken during a recent ColoRail meeting, the $75 round-trip tickets covered all operating costs that weekend - i.e., Amtrak, RTD, etc., didn't have to subsidize the train. Despite not meeting the 750 mile PRIIA requirement, I'm assuming Amtrak was able to run the WPE for that reason - they didn't have to subsidize the train. The question now becomes whether the WPE could run at an operating profit for an entire ski season. Given how horrendous I-70 has become in the winter time (a lot of people in Denver won't even bother going into the mountains on a weekend), I think the WPE has very good prospects. It's also worth noting that coal traffic on the Moffat Tunnel subdivision has decreased significantly in recent years, making it easier to add another train on that route.


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## neroden (Nov 22, 2015)

I know that the line doesn't actually reach any of the ski sites other than Winter Park. Maybe "Scenery Trains" would be a better description.

It is interesting to note that there still is a rail line to Steamboat Springs. And there's the Dotsero-Vail line, although it is "wrong-way". And the Aspen branch (also "wrong way", but the roads aren't particularly direct either) was supposed to be preserved for future passenger rail service between Glenwood Springs and Aspen, but they turned it into a trail instead, and now the localities are trying to fully abandon it and sever the line. Oy.

So if the state ever gets serious about providing alternatives to road travel, a bunch of the routes exist already. Even if they are slower than the roads, the traffic congestion is an issue (which it probably wasn't when the passenger services were removed originally).


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## ainamkartma (Nov 22, 2015)

neroden said:


> I know that the line doesn't actually reach any of the ski sites other than Winter Park. Maybe "Scenery Trains" would be a better description.
> 
> It is interesting to note that there still is a rail line to Steamboat Springs. And there's the Dotsero-Vail line, although it is "wrong-way". And the Aspen branch (also "wrong way", but the roads aren't particularly direct either) was supposed to be preserved for future passenger rail service between Glenwood Springs and Aspen, but they turned it into a trail instead, and now the localities are trying to fully abandon it and sever the line. Oy.
> 
> So if the state ever gets serious about providing alternatives to road travel, a bunch of the routes exist already. Even if they are slower than the roads, the traffic congestion is an issue (which it probably wasn't when the passenger services were removed originally).


That's fascinating. I didn't know that any of the lines you refer to above were even partially still in existence. Do you know what the customer base is? Is there significant mine traffic from the Vail area, for instance? Or was it just former Tennessee Pass traffic that justified that line? The google shows that there are some major coal mines on the line up by Steamboat.

I can confirm that I-70 can often be a parking lot on winter weekends. It seems like there really could be a market there, at least to Winter Park.

Take care,

Ainamkartma


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## neroden (Nov 22, 2015)

ainamkartma said:


> That's fascinating. I didn't know that any of the lines you refer to above were even partially still in existence. Do you know what the customer base is? Is there significant mine traffic from the Vail area, for instance? Or was it just former Tennessee Pass traffic that justified that line?


It used to be the Tennessee Pass route. Which is still officially mothballed, *not* abandoned. There were mines all along it originally -- they picked a route which had online traffic.The tail end which is in service has one shipper, American Gypsum, in Gypsum CO.

The dismantled Aspen line is also a former mine route.



> The google shows that there are some major coal mines on the line up by Steamboat.


Yep, the coal is the major (probably only) traffic on the Steamboat line currently.


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