The Golden Gate Exposition ended in 1940, but the Burlington-Rio Grande-Western Pacific train named after it was so successful that the railroads kept it going. This attractive train booklet creatively uses just three colors of ink–blue, orange, and black–on most … Continue reading
Category Archives: D&RGW
This is an update to an undated version of Panoramic Views shown here previously. The map on that one shows the Dotsero Cutoff and Uintah Railway, placing it in the 1934-1939 time period. The Uintah Railway, which stopped operating in … Continue reading
This is a peculiar booklet. The ten interior pages each contain an interior photo of a Rio Grande passenger train, accompanied by an average of just 15 words per photo. While there is a system map on the back cover, … Continue reading
All of the photos in today’s postcards are taken from nearly the same spot of different eras of passenger trains in Colorado’s Royal Gorge. The first shows a moonlit-train passing through the gorge with no sign of a suspension bridge … Continue reading
Here are some postcards either issued by or showing scenes along the Rio Grande Railroad. The first one, which shows Colorado Springs’ Garden of the Gods as viewed from the visitor center, is marked “D&RG Ry.” The lack of a … Continue reading
Dated 1926, this handsome little booklet contains 15 pages (about 4,500 words) of text praising Colorado scenery by the then-well-known “cowboy poet,” Arthur Chapman. I put cowboy poet in quotation marks because Chapman wasn’t a cowboy; he was a newspaper … Continue reading
The Rio Grande ran a special train on winter weekends from Denver to Winter Park, Colorado. The train stopped in Winter Park just 100 feet away from a ski lift. At one time, the train used former Northern Pacific heavyweight … Continue reading
The heart of this booklet is a lengthy essay by Joseph Emerson Smith, a Colorado newspaper writer and editor who lived from about 1877 to 1955. The 20-page booklet also includes eight hand-colored photographs and numerous other illustrations. Click image … Continue reading
We’ve seen an edition of this brochure from the late 1930s and one from about 1950. Here’s a version from around 1916 that features not only the Rio Grande but Western Pacific’s Feather River route. The brochure’s map is dated … Continue reading
The centerfold of this booklet has a beautiful color illustration of the Moffat Road’s route over Rollins Pass with an arrow pointing to the future location of the Moffat Tunnel–a tunnel that would not open for another 13 years. The … Continue reading