California Zephyr Schedule

[Tadman]

SlC- Denver has so much potential , scenery wise , for a tourist train. But its a lonngggggggggg day. Some have suggested breaking the journey overnite at Grand Junction. I would think that would be better operated by a private operator, tacking cars onto the Zephyr, .

Bingo. Rocky Mountaineer does this so well and makes money at it. Forget Amtrak at all. Rocky Mountaineer on a two-day SLC-DEN service with layover in Glenwood, which is also right by Vail, a tourist haven. Then the CZ can be a fast overnight CHI-OMA-DEN service with no worries about handoffs between UP and BN. If Rocky's parent isn't interested, maybe Vail is.

Salt Lake Valley is an island. There's almost no one to support, need, or justify corridor-length routes in any direction.

They already have a very viable corridor in the Front Runner, a 38-mile commuter train between the biggest cities for hundreds of miles around. No other significant population centers exist in the state, thus your statement is otherwise correct.

Houston with a MSA of 6,997,384 million is only served with 6 trains a week, Salt Lake City with a MSA of 1,222,540 million...

I will never feel sorry for SLC’s poor service as long as Amtrak provides Houston with far worse service.

Agreed. Neither city is served well by Amtrak because we have the pretend network of often late UP-hosted 3-day long trains, one 3x/week. We have to cut the crap. SLC should have a Rocky train and a beefed up Front Runner. HOU should have 3x/day corridor to NOLA and DFW. The LD trains to either SLC our HOU are a joke and useless for travelers in any need of timeliness or predictability. As a NOLA resident I just can't make the Sunset work, it's 8 hours to cover a 5 hour drive on some days, not on other days. It's useless.

[Arborwayfan]

Better than that, Tadman. Frontrunner's up to 90 miles now, give or take: Ogden to Provo. And you're right, it's really the only feasible corridor in the whole state, and it's almost a perfect corridor. When I said there are no feasible corridors, I meant there are no feasible corridors that would connect the valley (the area served by Frontrunner) to any other part of the state. Frontrunner has dense populations the whole way, hemmed in by mountains and the lake so they will never get too far from the line and will keep getting denser as long as the population grows, TOD going up at several stations, parallel to nasty crowded highways and also to a great system of bike paths that match the bike racks on every train, almost completely separate ROW, low-labor-cost POP fare collection perfectly integrated into the UTA fare structure, half-hourly service at peak, hourly off peak, I think maybe a couple two-hour gaps off-off peak but I'm not sure. If anyone spends any more on Utah pax rail it should be on putting in the full double track on the Frontrunner route, maybe electrifying the route, and taking the service up to quarter-hourly. It's urban transportation that's corridor-length.

And, Electricon, I was thinking of a grad student in transportation studies, maybe working on a master's thesis. The AAR and the railroads hire these people for all kinds of research (operations, service planning, rail wear, etc.); true, usually working under a PhD or masters reseacher/PI, but pros, not amateurs. I agree that some railfan college student writing a term paper would not do a better job than Amtrak. But I do think that a ten-year-old study that was designed to figure out how to lose less money and provide better service on the existing CZ does not necessarily tell us whether other kinds of trains might succeed in the region. That's not the question they asked. Should Amtrak get someone with the right tools and information and access to interview Amtrak employees to ask whether a train designed specifically to take people who don't care about seeing the canyons but who are willing to spend 12-14 hours on a train from greater Den to greater SLC could break even? I kind of doubt it. Short corridors elsewhere in the country, places where the chance to run full hourly trains as fast as driving could justify a lot of capital investment (thinking Houston for ex) would be a better target. But it's an unasked question, and it would not be that hard of a question to answer.

[Westernstar1]

How about bringing back the Rio Grande Zephyr.

A Rocky-Mountaineer train, Salt Lake to Denver, would be nice. I've always thought a R. Mountaineer-like train from Seattle and Portland to Glacier Park, daylight only, would be very successful. Have two, separate trains starting from SEA/PDX and have both unite just before Spokane, with an overnight in Spokane. Then on to Whitefish, West Glacier, and East Glacier the next morning. The one problem would be lodging at the destination. Part of the RM's success is contacting with up-scale hotels in Banff and Jasper. Would that work for stops at Glacier and would there be enough hotels or motels to accommodate the train passengers?

Western Star

[Tadman]

I don't disagree with the RGZ idea, as long as the context is different. RGZ existed for one reason: DRGW wanted to keep Amtrak out. In response, they had the RGZ using fully depreciated equipment 3x/week the length of the system. Evidently any operating losses were cheaper than the cost of letting Amtrak into their network.

If a new RGZ were to run, it should be in the context of a Rocky-type train rather than a threadbare Amtrak stopgap.

I think we tend to forget what the RGZ really was when we all see the great pics of a domeliner behind F9's 45 years ago. It looks cool! But it wasn't a great train, it was a stopgap.

[Westernstar1]

I agree that a stopgap train wouldn't work. A luxury, R. Mountaineer-like train might. Here is the schedule for the old Rio Grande Zephyr:

https://is.gd/AJmJIz

Possibly Denver to Grand Junction the first day, Grand Junction to Salt Lake the 2nd day. The RM's cheapest fare, from Vancouver to Kamloops to Jasper or Banff is somewhere in the low $2000 range. I think a luxury RGZ could be less.

Western Star

[Gilbert B Norman]

We should note that the D&RGW's operation's philosophy was short, fast, and frequent; in other words, the opposite of Precision Railroading - PSR.

If Amtrak were to insist upon a Daily operation, which they did upon D&RGW signing up during '83, that would result in additional interference with their operations.

One final thought is that CY 69 was a "measuring" period for determining the Amtrak entry fee. The Zephyr was Daily throughout that entire period , but became the tri-weekly RGZ after March 22, 1970. Therefore in consideration of ponying up for relief from a Daily train, D&RGW would only receive benefit from being relieved of a tri-weekly.

[electricron]

The D&RG does not own the right-of-way anymore, the UP does!

Let\s recall some history within the last decade, when Iowa Pacific tried to reinvent the SkiTrain using just private funds and IP old rolling stock. It died after inception but before birth because the UP would only allow Amtrak to run on their tracks over the great divide.

Any other privately funded proposal using the same corridor will die just as quickly today. So the existing Amtrak ran SkiTrain subsidized by the City of Denver to its ski resort remains, along with Amtrak's long distance train the California Zephyr.

It's great to reflect upon history many decades ago, but let's not forget recent history.

[John_Perkowski]

Let’s make it simple

Union Pacific isn’t going to let anything on its line without a couple hundred tons of gold in liability insurance.

Remember, they were relieved by federal statute of the obligation to run intercity passenger rail as of 1 May 1971.

If you want this to happen, show Mr Anderson a business plan which has a profitable bottom line.


DISCLAIMER: Long IRA position in UNP.

[Tadman]

I'm not forgetting recent history, I'm remember it quite well. Ed Ellis p-o'ed quite a few people at Amtrak and UP. That Ski Train failure was not a conceptual failure, it was an Ed Ellis failure. He had the trains all lined up to run before securing UP's permission and it didn't sit well with UP. Two years later, he tried the Hoosier State and it barely got off the ground before faltering.

On the other hand, Rocky has run over CP and BNSF without a problem. Further, the ex-Rio Grande mainline is quieter than it was under DRGW management - most traffic has shifted to the UP route through Cheyenne. A new passenger train at market rates is not hard to envision. UP was not under any mandate to accommodate the Amtrak ski train, it just works financially for Amtrak and UP.

[David Benton]

The private Ski Train fell through because they were unable to secure the liability insurance cover UP wanted at a affordable cost. Amtrak probably gets a better deal because its liability is spread over several trains.
Perhaps that is a major difference between Canada and the USA , the cost or requirements for liability insurance.