To Shiny Rails

A 2018 Halter Ranch Vineyard Estate Syrah was selected as one of five wines for a Dual Top Chef dinner in Colorado Springs, CO on January 18, 2024. Top Chef Chris Viaud from New Hampshire and Top Chef Brother Luck of Colorado Springs joined forces at the Four by Brother Luck restaurant to present a 5-course Top Chef Dinner. Halter Ranch Vineyard Estate is the home of the Halter Ranch Railroad that debuted as a Participant at last year’s Central Coast Railroad Festival. How in the world did we know about this?! The Central Coast Railroad Festival Committee Chairman and CCRRF.com Webmaster and lifetime member of the SLO Railroad Museum lives in Colorado Springs – me! For a video about the railroad, click here.

Sam was in for the holidays from Germany, so among all the outings we did, a trip to the top of Pikes Peak via The Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway was in order. And indeed it was a fun trip as usual.

After our second and last show at the John Wesley Ranch, I stopped very briefly at the Midland Depot in Divide, CO. The ranch is just a few miles south on Highway 67 from Divide. The Teller Historic and Environmental Coalition is working to restore and open this piece of history. Click here to see their plans as published earlier this year. The depot is next door to the new police station which is about 1500 feet from the signaled intersection in Divide back toward Woodland Park on Highway 24. From the Coalition’s website: “The Colorado Midland Railway built the first standard gauge line into the Colorado Rockies in 1886. The first Midland Depot in Divide, constructed in 1887, burned and was replaced by the existing structure built in 1903.” For more about the depot, click here. I learned about the existence of this depot from all the framed artwork hanging on the walls, at the John Wesley Ranch, about the Midland Railroad and the depot in Divide. The Coalition usually has a Midland Days event in early September (this year set for September 9th).

AJ told me about this guy a couple of days ago, and today I finished the last 3 episodes of his trip across America from the southernmost rail station in the country to the northernmost rail station in the country. It was a 10-week odyssey that he documented in 10 episodes on his channel (15 to 25 minutes in length each, roughly). Though I’ve never met him, I’m convinced Michael Downie is a kindred spirit! I highly recommend this series to any rail fan, particularly those of you who like traveling by rail, any kind of rail. He started at Dadeland Station in Miami and ended up at the Fairbanks, Alaska train station ten weeks later (or so). And he hit several iconic, historic, and unique trains along the way. It turns out he hit a few I’ve had the pleasure to ride: the California Zephyr, the Cog Railway at Pikes Peak, the Grand Canyon Railway, and the Alaska Railroad. My next-up bucket list items that Mike’s trip covers are the Rocky Mountaineer Denver to Moab and the Durango and Silverton, both within “easy” reach of Colorado Springs. Mike’s trip starts here on YouTube.

“All Aboard!” Just so I’d have a photo on this post, I threw in the image above of my Dad on our Zephyr trip from Chicago, IL to Emeryville, CA in 2005. This was shot at the Glenwood Springs, CO station. It is pretty hard to beat a train trip across the Rockies in a snow storm!

I had the good fortune today to visit two depots in Castle Rock, CO. The first (pictured last in the gallery below) was from a distance. It’s the dark green building, a 1911 AT&SF Railroad Depot building that today sits as pictured along the southbound Joint Line route. That’s as close as I could get. The other was a total surprise. I did not know that the Castle Rock Historical Society and Museum was an old Denver & Rio Grande Railroad depot built in 1875. They’re not normally open on Tuesdays, but I just happened to meet some of the staff and board members at a meeting in town and voila, they invited us over! The two depots are basically across the highway (I-25) from each other on the south end of town (“Old Castle Rock”).

While Lynn and I were visiting Steamboat Springs, CO, we found the old Steamboat Springs Depot. It was built in 1909 by the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, but rail service ended by April of 1968, and by 1977 the building housed a theater. Union Pacific Railroad hauls coal through here today. The interior is now a beautiful art gallery and events center. They managed to make the conversion to an event center and still keep some of the great features of the depot, like the bay windows. They’ve also incorporated an amazing wall system that amounts to lots of panels hanging from the ceiling on tracks (get it!) that can be moved around to create all kinds of configurations for the room. Those are trackside hot springs in two of the photos below. The tracks are still live there today, and I did watch the signal drop from red to yellow to black; but obviously never saw the train as it was moving away from us.