![]() What if those trains came down the Colorado River to Dotsero, where passengers could then connect to a TPL train and head southeast to Avon, where a gondola connects to Beaver Creek? The Winter Park Ski Train in Denver’s Union Station (Wiki Commons). ![]() Surface Transportation Board, which is currently weighing the Colorado Midland deal over the objections of Colorado Pacific, intervenes on behalf of passenger rail service, which the state of Colorado would love to see expand beyond its current parameters? Could Dotsero become a key rail hub?Īmtrak, which contracts with Denver-owned Winter Park for the ski train, just parks those trains during the day while they wait for passengers to ride the slopes of Winter Park and Mary Jane. The Rocky Mountaineer hopes to start service in the spring, although, notably, none of these passenger trains will stop in Dotsero before heading west through Glenwood Canyon or east along the Colorado River through Gore Canyon on the way to Denver.Ĭould that change if the federal government in the form of the U.S. Amtrak also hopes to resume its popular weekend-only Winter Park Express ski train from Denver to that Grand County resort in 2022 – the only slopeside ski train in the nation.Īnd a Canadian high-end tourist-train operator has filed to start running summer passenger trains on the Moffat Line between Denver and Moab, Utah, and back, with overnight stays in Glenwood Springs. Why wouldn’t Colorado Midland want to connect at Dotsero, where’s Amtrak’s California Zephyr currently comes through three times a week between Chicago and the Bay Area (daily service will hopefully resume post-pandemic, an Amtrak spokesman recently told Real Vail). That line services passenger and freight trains the east-west length of Colorado through Denver, Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction and on into Utah to the west. East of that point, the TPL tracks are in pretty rough shape, but they extend another seven miles or so to the west on what’s still an active UP line to Dotsero, servicing the American Gypsum wallboard plant.ĭotsero - a growing bedroom community and workforce housing hub for the “up-valley” Eagle County commercial centers along Interstate 70 - happens to be on the very active UP Moffat Tunnel Line (MTL). ![]() Highway 6 smack in the middle of a commercial strip just north of the Eagle County Regional Airport in Gypsum. Sage is really just a point on a railroad map along U.S. ![]() Sounds like a “cute” idea, as one stakeholder told, but why not connect service on through to places that actually link up to existing, active rail lines, if in fact this very expensive revamp of a quarter-century dormant line is all about passengers? The Colorado Midland proposal would not do that, nor does there seem to be big demand for Pueblo to Minturn. Colorado Pacific, a rival railroad company with a freight line in southeastern Colorado, has proposed passenger service from Pueblo to Minturn. Where the hell is Sage, Colorado? And why would a railroad company be considering starting a commuter passenger rail service there and running trains along the long-dormant Tennessee Pass Line (TPL) to a place called Parkdale? Seems like a train to nowhere, right (see map)?īut that’s the extent of the lease deal the nascent Colorado Midland & Pacific Railway struck with TPL owner Union Pacific to run passenger and freight trains over 160 miles of revamped tracks right through the heart of Eagle County. March 1, 2021, 1:17 pm The Tennessee Pass Line at Sage with Gypsum wallboard plant in background. ![]()
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