CAL. SERVICE, RIO GRANDE ZEPHYR MEMORIES, POSSIBLY COMING CZ ADDED LATER

[daveklepper]

Galesburg

Denver

Glenwood Springs

Grand Junction

Sister Lillian and I.  SP business car at rear of train.  But we rode in the dome coaches.

[daveklepper]

CZ or "California Service" at Denver.

[daveklepper]

A Holiday greeting card sent by D&RGW's Leonard Bernstein:

[Anonymous]

Love it!  When did you make the trip with your sister?

[daveklepper]

My sister Lillisn, 16 years older than me, was living in a retirement home in Aurora.  I made yearly business trips every spring including the Los Angeles or San Francisco spring Audio Engineering Societ Convention and the Conference Acoustics Boad meeting of the LDS Church in Salt Lake City.  (I was one of the two non-LDS members of the Board.)  Usually I used the Lake Shore or the Broadway to Chicago, Amtrak to Denver, spent time with my sister and often with Leonard Bernstein and his first wife Alice, then the RGZ to Salt Lake City, then Amtrak again to LA (while the Desert Wind was running) or SF, and often returned the same way, but did ride the last eastbound City of LA on the UP.

Lillian made the round-trip RGZ with me twice, one was the year before the Thistle mudslide and the Amtrak use of the D&RGW and once about two or three years earlier.  The photo is from the second trip, when the D&RGW had already been merged into the SP.  If 1988 was the date of the Amtrak switch, then the photo is from 1987.  All in all I've ridden the stretch between Grand Junction and Denver 33 times, the first time in 1960 on CZ on a multi stop business trip, including Chicago, Wichita, Colorado Springs, Denver, Salt Lake Citiy, and Boise, the last on Amtrak in 1995 on the ususal business trip.  One business trip did not have me stopping off in Denver on the return, because on that trip I rode from Seattle or Portland all the way to New York on LV 353 with Richard Horstmann. The Amtrak Broadway was used east of Chicago.  Lillian passed on two years ago.  I have to thank the LDS Church authorities for reembursing for a two-room hotel stay so my sister was accomodated, doing the tourist thing, while I was with the LDS engineers and architects.

Here is California Service coming west into Aurora on the first of such regular business trips, before Amtrak, in 1970.

Lived in Westmont and worked at the BBN office in Downers Grove at the time, and used a scoot to Aurora from Downers Grove.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Dave for sharing the story about your sister.  Would loved to have met her. Would still like to meet you too for that matter!

[daveklepper]

Passing a freight in a snowstorm, with the sun breaking through a gap in the clouds

Boarding at Grand Junction

 

[SSW9389]

Thanks for posting Dave. I got my one CZ ride thanks to my parents back in '64. We rode east from Oakland to Galesburg. I was nine years old, we were in one of the dome coaches toward the front of the train. And yes a lot of my time was spent up top at see level. It was an incredible experience.

[daveklepper]

Rio Grand Zephyr at Bond.  Note CZ tail sign is now missing:

[daveklepper]

Another photo at Bond, probably the same trip, moving father north toward the head end:

[daveklepper]

Dome interior:

[daveklepper]

Going back even earlier in time, 1938 photo supplied by Henry Deutsch, D&RGW 4-6-0 No. 77 with an excursion train, on a siding to allow the Royal George to  pass.  Anyone identify the location?

[MidlandMike]

daveklepper

Going back even earlier in time, 1938 photo supplied by Henry Deutsch, D&RGW 4-6-0 No. 77 with an excursion train, on a siding to allow the Royal George to  pass.  Anyone identify the location?

 

Judging by the lack of mountains in the background, I would guess it is east of the Royal Gorge.

[rcdrye]

Engine 77 is a Western Pacific 4-6-0, class TP-29 (Brooks, 1908).  More likely west of the Rockies... The number of the larger engine is not completely readable (178?), but it looks like one of the ex-Florida East Coast 4-8-2's WP acquired in 1936.

[Overmod]

rcdrye

The number of the larger engine is not completely readable (178?), but it looks like one of the ex-Florida East Coast 4-8-2's WP acquired in 1936...

... made surplus by the eradication of the Key West extension in the hurricane of 1935...

[daveklepper]

Thanks.   Very worthwhile information.

But do you really mean WP and not D&RGW?

Did D&RGW consistantly borrow WP power?

[Overmod]

daveklepper

But do you really mean WP and not D&RGW?

FEC shucked a fairly large number of these 4-8-2s after the hurricane.  Ten went to WP (as 171-180; "178" certainly fits the data).  See this page for a more complete list of 'what went where'.

These are very distinctive engines, unconfuseable with anything D&RGW ran.  

[Miningman]

" I'm so unconfuseable" 

[Jones1945]

Those "unconfuseable" engines are available in Trainz (train simulator), with the Exposition Flyer consist (1939. mid 1940s). 

[Overmod]

Miningman

"I'm so unconfuseable"

Sometimes I leave the extra 'e' in there, as with 'loveable'.  No, it isn't standard.  

[Miningman]

That's ok you're overmodulated. 

[rcdrye]

Rio Grande and WP did work together; both the Royal Gorge and the later Exposition Flyer were through trains that were competition for the Overland Route. Still, even in diesel days each railroad's power rarely strayed from home rails.  The excursion must have ventured west of Salt Lake City.

[daveklepper]

Thanks!