Salt Lake City to Las Vegas

I swear there was already a topic on this, but I couldn't find it. Anyway, looks like a grant has been requested for a study: https://kutv.com/news/local/agencies-ex ... sportation

Could this end up being a section of the Zephyr?

Passenger train from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City under consideration

LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — State agencies are looking into a potential passenger train connecting Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.

The Utah Department of Transportation says it applied for a $500,000 grant to study passenger rail with the two cities serving as endpoints.

Travel time is pegged at seven to nine-and-a-half hours each way, based on Amtrak's Desert Wind service, which connected Las Vegas and Salt Lake City until it was discontinued in 1997.
...

There’s just so little in between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. Just one stop between the two cities by the time the desert wind went away, and that stop doesn’t even have a wiki page it’s so irrelevant.

It does make sense to connect the two cities but it feels like the desert wind would benefit as a service that runs alternatively to the CZ instead of just being a branch off of it essentially.

Whether that’s as a train entirely from Chicago to LA, or just from Denver to LA, it could be a nice opportunity to return service to the Overland Route through Wyoming.

It's unfortunate that the only routing available manages to miss every population center between Provo and Las Vegas...

Or it could be fortunate whereas timekeeping is concerned. It’s a route to Vegas from Chicago (if run as a section). Amtrak covers the eastern portion and Brightline the western.

Jeff Smith wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 2:21 pm Or it could be fortunate whereas timekeeping is concerned. It’s a route to Vegas from Chicago (if run as a section). Amtrak covers the eastern portion and Brightline the western.

Brightline will be using 180-200 mph speed trains south or west of Las Vegas, terminates in Rancho Cucamonga, and never reaches downtown Los Angeles. How will Brightline ever allow slow 90 mph max speed Superliners on their single track line and not slow down their HSR trains to 90 mph, completely destroying their high speed service to Las Vegas?
Don't even moderators of this forum take the time to think what the consequences of their proposals will do?
While the Brightline West trains will go as slow as 79 mph on portions of their track, its only a small percentage. Most of the track will have 110-125 mph speeds, and more will have 180 mph speeds than 79 mph.
So, to return to service a single train per day per direction slow long distance sleeper train, what most would call a daily train, you propose to completely ruin an hourly train service. ????????????????

The only way to not ruin the HSR Brightline West service, and do something akin to what you propose, is for Amtrak to provide their slow long distance service to terminate in Las Vegas somewhere along the UP owned tracks, miles away from Brightline's Las Vegas terminal. In fact, some agreement would have to be made with the Plaza Hotel and Casino to use the now discarded and unused train station, otherwise there is not one existing. Assuming Las Vegas participates in building Brightline's new train station, will they assist Amtrak rebuild the old one as well? I think not.

READ what I said and breathe. I did NOT suggest Amtrak run on Brightline's ROW; I made the VERY CLEAR observation that Brightline would handle the WEST, and Amtrak the EAST, of a hypothetical route from Chicago to LA on the Zephyr. It's not a real connection, but a plausible one, using two different services.

By the way, I'm the OWNER not the MODERATOR. It states such in my signature. You're welcome.

Looking at the Google overheads of the southern reaches of LV (and it's been 20+ years since I was out there), the Brightline station complex is slated to go on the large vacant property bounded by I-15, Blue Diamond Road, Warm Springs Road and the Strip (LV Boulevard), just south of I-215. There is a spur line a couple of blocks north of there, running between I-215 and the airport, which ties back into the UP mainline with a wye at Boulder Junction (per the map) and which has a grade crossing at LV Boulevard, 1 mile from the nearest corner of the Brightline property. In theory one could find a way to bridge that mile gap, and basically have the northbound Brightline trains and southbound Amtrak trains both dead-end at a cross-platform transfer. But, that's not a trivial gap to bridge unless one is willing to re-engineer that stretch of the boulevard and blow up a northbound flyover into Town Square Mall, and even so it doesn't account for any Amtrak maintenance facility that might be needed.

I don’t mean to imply that it’s a desirable route. But say you were just planning a short visit to LV on the way to LA from somewhere along the Zephyr route. Then it becomes feasible. Again, no one is advocating running Amtrak on Brightline, or Brightline to Salt Lake. But a section of the Zephyr to LV from SL may make sense as a stand-alone.

Right. But to elaborate on what @eolesen said, there are really only two decently-sized towns between Las Vegas and SLC, specifically St. George and Provo, and the UP does a marvelous job of missing them both entirely. I suppose the train could stop in Delta instead of Milford, since that's larger than Milford and Caliente combined.

Provo is indeed a big miss with BYU right there.

Let's accept that UP has gotten the "traditional wishbone UP" passenger train free (Zephyr reroute over D%RGW, and getting rid of Desert Wind and Pioneer) - and safe assumption that our company - Col. Perkowski and I - intend to keep it that way!!!.

Given that the Amtrak timetable between the two stations was 8:30, Google gives current driving time between them as roughly 6 hours, and neither SLC nor LAS airport is of the "40 miles out in the boonies" variety a la IAD or ORD, I think the "400 miles is a sweet spot for rail travel" rule of thumb fails here, and the UP is likely safe from passenger agitation.

Jeff Smith wrote: ↑Tue Jul 04, 2023 9:51 am READ what I said and breathe. I did NOT suggest Amtrak run on Brightline's ROW; I made the VERY CLEAR observation that Brightline would handle the WEST, and Amtrak the EAST, of a hypothetical route from Chicago to LA on the Zephyr. It's not a real connection, but a plausible one, using two different services.

By the way, I'm the OWNER not the MODERATOR. It states such in my signature. You're welcome.

Well stated. And if there were to be an Amtrak through service, connecting all the way to L.A., it would simply continue on UP's existing ROW to Barstow and beyond.

HenryAlan wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2023 10:35 am Well stated. And if there were to be an Amtrak through service, connecting all the way to L.A., it would simply continue on UP's existing ROW to Barstow and beyond.

Los Angeles
San Bernadino
Victorville
Barstow
Baker
Las Vegas
Caliente
Milford
Delta
Tooele
Salt Lake City

If you want to take a slight detour, from Delta you can hit:
Nephi
Santaquin/Rocky Ridge
Provo
Lehi
Sandy
Salt Lake City

STrRedWolf wrote: If you want to take a slight detour, from Delta you can hit:
Nephi
Santaquin/Rocky Ridge
Provo
Lehi
Sandy
Salt Lake City

This detour only adds about 15 miles to the journey.
Against the ~800 miles LAX-SLC on the previous route, it's only ~2% longer.
Barring slow speeds, it seems like a good trade-off to travel through populated areas versus wilderness.