CANON CITY, Colo. — Tourist Railway Association Inc. members are preserving train history they hope will enable their children’s children to understand something about a passe mode of transportation and the great era of the Iron Horse, the Pueblo Chieftain reported.
Known as TRAIN, the professional organization has drawn railroad buffs from throughout the nation to Southern Colorado this week for festivities that lead up to a convention Friday in Durango, where the group will be hosted by the Durango-Silverton narrow-gauge railroad.
As a warm-up to the convention, about 90 TRAIN members took a ride on the Canon City & Royal Gorge Railroad Wednesday.
The group was founded 34 years ago to help tourist train operators share information and resources.
Among the founders are Lindsey Ashby and his wife Rosa, who have operated the Georgetown Loop Railroad since 1975. The Ashbys, with the help of their daughter and her husband, Leah and Mark Greksa, revived the Royal Gorge railroad route in 1999.
“The networking and interaction helps us find out what others are doing, exchange information and parts or get to know the people and how they do things like repairs,” Ashby said. “It helps a number of new operators with a place to come to talk to others who’ve done it — finding parts, locomotives, cars — there are a lot of sales.”
“At the convention, rail operators talk about everything — insurance issues, gift shop concessions, generators — anything related to the train industry,” Greksa said.
Ashby said insurance — for liability, workers’ compensation and property — is a big issue.
“The insurance check is probably the single biggest check you write, but wages are the biggest cost. Running a tourist train operation is very labor-intensive,” Ashby said.
Black Hills Central Railroad train operator Bob Warder of South Dakota said his insurance rates keep rising — 20 percent this year — even though he has never had a liability claim. His 1880s train takes in a 20-mile round trip route that weaves past Mount Rushmore.
The Royal Gorge ride Wednesday featured special “run-bys” that railroad enthusiasts — armed with cameras and video equipment — always love, because they are allowed to step off the train and capture it on film from the outside. The train also stopped in the canyon to allow passengers to ride the incline rail up to the Royal Gorge Bridge.
“This is a professional organization, but we never want to sell the social aspect of it short,” Ashby said.
Other tourist railroad operators participating included Rick Burchett, the vice president of TRAIN, who oversees the Chehalis Centralia Railroad Association between Seattle and Portland. He offers an 18-mile round-trip train ride through a scenic river valley thanks to the pulling power of a 1916 90-ton steam locomotive that was once used in a logging operation.
John Farrell, conductor of the Arkansas & Missouri Railroad in Bella Vista, Ark., returned home to his native Colorado where his father, the late John “J.C.” Farrell and grandfather, the late John “J.A.” Farrell, worked on the Colorado and Southern Railroad in Trinidad. Farrell is conductor for the longest excursion train ride in the continental United States totaling 133 miles round trip.
One of the lead cars, all of which are 1925 and 1927 vintage coaches of the Arkansas & Missouri Railroad was used in the filming of the movie, “Biloxi Blues,” Farrell said. Farrell, like many of the other TRAIN members also is a model-railroad enthusiast.
Farrell said he is building a 1/87 scale model of the route from Denver to Pueblo.
“If we don’t preserve history, we will remember this, but our children’s children won’t,” Farrell said.