By Forrest Whitman
There was a lot of hopeful passenger train talk on my recent trip from Denver to Seattle on AMTRAK. On the first leg of that trip, the California Zephyr carried over 800 passengers. The train up the coast from Sacramento to Seattle looked full too. No one in either train’s lounge car doubted the popularity of passenger rail.
by Forrest Whitman
Ramblin’ Jack Talks Booze Trains
It’s time to head down to the Vic in Salida and drink rye whiskey in honor of Ramblin’ Jack Snyder. When he passed away two years ago, we lost a repository of Colorado rail history. The story is that he drove his aging Cadillac to a Denver hospital and died before he could check in. He was in his upper nineties. Each time Jack took me riding in his vintage Cadillac convertible he’d tell train tales. We’d stop at some railroad yard, and he’d point out where whiskey was stored and loaded at night. Sometimes we’d even find old barrel staves and broken bottles.
By Forrest Whitman
One of the railroad gems of Colorado Central Country is The Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad. I had a ghost at my side when I spent two days exploring that fantastic railroad this summer. The ghost was that of the greatest railroad writer ever, E.M. Frimbo. It has been rumored that some of Frimbo’s ashes were scattered atop Cumbres Pass. It’s no rumor that a metal memorial to him was attached to a tie near the summit in 1981. Frimbo thought the Cumbres & Toltec was one of the top railroad rides he’d ever had. That’s saying something since he rode every train in America and much of the rest of the world. He logged close to three million rail miles and wrote up many for the New Yorker.