Today we take a break from menus to present this eight-page brochure about the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. It doesn’t have a date, but a map on page 7 shows the railroad as it appeared before 1963, when the Rio Grande built a line to Potash, Utah, so I would guess around 1960.
Click image to download a 5.9-MB PDF of this brochure.
Two pages of the brochure are dedicated to Colorado scenery–which isn’t enough–and two pages to Utah scenery–which was evidently too much. Utah has lots of scenic areas, but this brochure only has small photos of a strip mine, the Mormon Temple, and Utah Lake, plus a lot of white space. What about Dinosaur; Arches; Canyonlands; or Wasatch Mountain ski areas, none of which were very far from Rio Grande trains?
Anyway, the brochure also has two pages about Rio Grande’s routes. Curiously, the brochure pictures, but doesn’t mention by name except in photo captions, the railroad’s major trains: the California Zephyr; Prospector; and Royal Gorge. But it does mention two minor trains by name: the Silverton, which went from Durango to Silverton; and the Ski Train, which went from Denver to Winter Park. The Silverton still operates, while the Ski Train continued to operate until 2009.