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Passenger Trains > Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expandDate: 03/19/25 11:16 Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expand Author: weather https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/denvergazette.com/content/tncms/custom/image/10947872-a635-11ed-b48e-8f7271f80f3d.png?resize=200%2C61
1 of 51 of 5https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/denvergazette.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/b/74/b7488b83-9b86-5ffa-a17a-1ef802817564/641dd6febf73e.image.jpg?resize=674%2C500 Multi-vehicle accident on Westbound I-70 in Vail at milepost 178 https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/denvergazette.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/d/3c/d3c8361c-d534-52d6-81a9-ce927f0bd490/67d5c597827bb.image.jpg?resize=375%2C500 Retired Amtrak conductor Brad Swartzwelter is advancing the idea of a truck-by-train “rail bridge” over the
Date: 03/19/25 11:18 Re: Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expand Author: pdt Pls post without all the html tags, and break the actual text into paragraphs. OW, unreadable.
Date: 03/19/25 11:30 Re: Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expand Author: Dcmcrider Formatting fixed. No comment on the content.
---------------- A longtime Amtrak train conductor credited with crafting a business plan that helped revive the mothballed Winter Park Express ski train in 2017 now has a plan to get at least 60% of the commercial truck traffic off of Interstate 70 and free it up for skiers, snowboarders and other mountain travelers. Brad Swartzwelter, 60, retired as conductor of the ski train last spring after 30 years with Amtrak, the federal rail agency that runs the popular, seasonal and recently expanded ski train service between Denver’s Union Station and the city of Denver’s Winter Park Resort. “I-70 congestion has cost us dearly in the snow sports industry, and it is my absolute mission in life … to get people safely, conveniently and economically up to our economic engine, which is skiing and snowboarding,” Swartzwelter said in a recent phone interview. Swartzwelter’s idea, based on successful European models, is a truck-by-train “rail bridge” over and through the Colorado Rockies using Union Pacific’s existing Moffat Tunnel Subdivision rail line that runs from Kansas in the east through Denver to Grand Junction and on to Utah in the west. Entire semi-tractor trucks would be driven onto flatbed rail cars and drivers would then have the option of sleeper cars for the nine-hour trip across the state in either direction. “I-70 is our biggest problem in this state," Swartzwelter said. "The congestion is unbearable. All we need is one trucker making a mistake to cause one of the 99 shutdowns that pummels us and takes away millions of dollars, especially from places like Vail. Removing the trucks from I-70 and putting them in a different corridor would relieve well over 70% of the problem.” In a recent letter to Gov. Jared Polis, Vail Mayor Travis Coggin pointed to the state’s own analysis that estimates nearly $2 million in economic losses for every hour I-70 is fully shut down by a crash. That happened 99 times in 2024 for a total of 161 hours and more than $320 million in statewide economic impact just last year. So far, 2025 is on track for similar numbers. Coggin has called for dramatically higher fines for truckers who violate the state’s chain laws. Vail is drafting an emergency ordinance increasing penalties, and Coggin made the rounds on Denver TV stations over the particularly snarled Presidents' Day weekend, when I-70 shut down numerous times at Vail Pass and elsewhere during an intense snow cycle. Asked in an email late last month about Swartzwelter’s truck-by-train idea, Coggin wrote: “If it's a viable solution that safely and quickly gets semis off I-70, then I would be all for it. Since I did those TV interviews, I've had several miserable Vail Pass experiences.” Getting trucks off I-70 Swartzwelter estimates Union Pacific’s rails between Grand Junction and Denver are at about 30% capacity since coal’s heyday in the 1980s, when about 30 trains a day went back and forth through the Moffat Tunnel. These days there are about six oil trains a day and a few passenger trains in the form of Amtrak’s long-distance California Zephyr, the seasonal ski train, and the high-end, seasonal, Canadian-owned Rocky Mountaineer from Denver to Moab, Utah. Colorado, which owns the Moffat Tunnel, recently reached the framework of a new lease deal that allows the state up to three free roundtrip passenger trains on Union Pacific’s tracks in exchange for the company using the 6.2-mile tunnel. That doesn’t include the Winter Park Express, which the state hopes to expand on to Steamboat Springs and Craig (Mountain Rail), and the California Zephyr, which connects Chicago and California’s Bay Area on a daily basis. Swartzwelter proposes floating a voter-approved billion-dollar bond issue that would provide the funding to build the truck-by-train rail bridge, including specialized terminals for loading trucks west of Grand Junction and east of Denver, as well as passenger rail projects, such as Mountain Rail’s Oak Creek to Steamboat section and possibly a revival of the Tennessee Pass Line. Truck drivers from the West Coast would be able to get to western Colorado in one shift, load their semi, get nine hours of federally mandated sleep in a sleeper car, unload in eastern Colorado and continue on east, or vice versa. “That driver would essentially be able to continue operating nonstop, also while sleeping,” Swartzwelter said. “The beauty of it is, with a train departure every three hours going both directions from both terminals, with 70 trucks per train, we could get 1,120 semis a day off of I-70.”He estimates there are currently about 2,000 semis a day on the Colorado stretch of I-70. Swartzwelter says the 24-foot-high Moffat Tunnel can easily handle a standard semi-tractor and trailer, which is 13.5 feet high, while 70 modified, 85-foot flatcars pulled by three locomotives can handle 70 big rigs, tractor, trailer and all, with the standard semi-truck length in the U.S. at 72 feet. The Moffat Tunnel is also tall enough for 20-foot double-stacked containers on flatcars, but several of the 15 tunnels on the line west of the Moffat Tunnel are not tall enough. In total, there are 43 tunnels on the Moffat line between Denver and Grand Junction. Swartzwelter proposes an additional 16 trains per day could be added to the Moffat Subdivision (eight in each direction) with a capacity of 70 semi-trucks per train. There are currently only about eight trains a day in each direction on the line, and in its coal-train heyday, there were about 30 trains a day on the line. “The model for this whole thing is Austria. They were sick of their highways being congested and destroyed by the trucks going from Germany to Italy,” said Swartzwelter, a skier whose wife is from Vienna. “They’ve got nothing on us except for political will.”A company called ROLA Rolling Road started a service on the Austrian Federal Railway, loading trucks onto flatbed trains and running them across the Austrian Alps. It’s also done through the Channel Tunnel, or “Chunnel,” between London and Paris. “How do we remove commercial vehicles from the I-70 corridor? When there's accidents that happen at a higher rate with commercial vehicles, and they're more catastrophic, and they shut down I-70 for longer, that impacts everybody more dramatically,” said Glenwood City Councilmember and former mayor Jonathan Godes. “This (rail bridge) is a really innovative solution.” Godes credits the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and the state legislature with spending to improve I-70, funding buses and passing laws to compel truckers to chain up and stay in the right lane in critical stretches such as Glenwood Canyon and Dowd Junction. But problems persist on I-70 as the state’s population grows. Encouraging alternative forms of transportation only goes so far, he said, because “everybody loves public transportation for other people” and buses are often stuck in the same traffic. He also isn’t worried about increasing freight rail through Glenwood with the rail bridge, as long as it isn’t oil: “(Trucks are) coming through Glenwood regardless. They're either coming through on I-70 or they're coming through by rail. (The rail bridge) is a great conversation to have.” Do oil and skiing mix? Swartzwelter has one major concern about his concept, though, and it has to do with the surge in oil production in northeastern Utah that spurred the proposed 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway plan, which Eagle County and a coalition of environmental groups sued to successfully delay, pending a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the case. “The one thing that might kill (the rail bridge idea) is that the crude oil trains from Vernal, Utah, that are being first trucked … down to Wellington (Utah) to be loaded onto oil cars that are then run on trains (through Colorado),” Swartzwelter said. “America needs that energy. We don't want to try and stop those oil trains, but those oil trains will definitely slow down and cause great trouble to whatever we try and do on that line, whether it's passenger rail or a truck by train rail bridge, or even running the ski train,” Swartzwelter said. “I was late 30% of the time because of the very few oil trains that are running today. The Uinta Basin Railway, to me, is a nail in the coffin of the Colorado River. ”Utah’s waxy crude oil is too thick to be sent through pipelines, which is by far the cheapest way to move oil, so it needs to stay heated and get all the way to refineries on the Gulf Coast to then be processed into gasoline or plastics and shipped to global markets. But instead of using train tracks along the scenic headwaters of the endangered Colorado River, or building the estimated $2 billion, 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway to Union Pacific’s Moffat line, Swartzwelter recommends the oil be trucked straight north to Wyoming with around $100 million in highway improvements on remote U.S. Highway 191. It’s about 110 miles on 191 from Vernal, Utah, to Rock Springs, where Union Pacific owns the underutilized, double-track Overland Route that runs east-to-west across Wyoming before connecting with north-south rail lines on Colorado’s Front Range. “It is almost the same number of miles to run those heated tanker trucks north to Rock Springs instead of south to Wellington (Utah),” Swartzwelter said. “At Rock Springs, (Union Pacific’s) got a double track mainline that would be far more efficient rail-wise to load those oil trains there and then run them across the grasslands of Wyoming and then south to the Gulf Coast, rather than through the extremely fragile canyons and curves and steep, high-altitude grades of Colorado, where one accident has the potential of putting a million gallons of raw, waxy crude into a river that 40 million people depend upon.” Paul Wilson Arlington, VA Date: 03/19/25 11:48 Re: Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expand Author: pdt Looks good on paper. Logistical nighmare tho. And capital intensive. Youd have to put up so much money for emphastructure for loading and unloading trucks. and then operate a a big loss for a year, as truckers try it to see if it works. Is the state going to put up several Billion to save 320M a year in theorhetically lost tourist revenue.
Pll with new ideas are a dime a dozen. Pls who can implement new ideas successfully, hard to find. Date: 03/19/25 12:38 Re: Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expand Author: dan Brad is just thinking out of the box, he sat in traffic the other day, but if you stick to skiing winter park, you can avoid traffic jams easily, going early or going later after rush hour.
But i brought up that train service would take 3 four five times longer than the current situation, and the grand junction market isn't very big, the prospecter did have tofc service, users were the grocery stores and coors. the loading/unloading of trains is a big delay on a slow route, sees a fair amount rockslides too. he is also anti oil trains on the rio grande, instead of a wyoming routing, which some UP train do when loaded at the north location on the grande, but BNSF oil trains are still confined to the moffat. I wanted oil trains to go thru the royal gorge too, which nimbys detested. They would pay for the restoration of track there, and then passenger trains and other freight cold then use. CDOT tried to kick off large trucks off I70 during rush hours, but that program is dormant. CDOT is providing bus servcice thru out the state, and is studying more rail service, so perhaps we can see some mixed trains to see if there is a market for tofc stuff on those? be neat to see 70 get heated surfaces on the major passes would help too. AS a delivery driver in the past a customer can order stuff in the morning and get it in afternoon thru out the mountains alnog I70 . I also skied every afternoon just by waiting after rush hour with no problem goiing to winter park all week or copper mountain. You can just leave early to get up there, when i skied with ski patrol. patrol. Date: 03/19/25 13:52 Re: Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expand Author: baretables Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expand
That's easy, just eat more, especially junk food. Date: 03/19/25 15:01 Re: Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expand Author: coach It's being done in Austria--there is your model. Study it, and implement it. It's already being done!
Americans have lost their will power to get things done. We're lazy complainers now. I like this guy for speaking up and pushing the idea--people like him who succeed are remembered. Date: 03/19/25 16:30 Re: Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expand Author: dan your aware the rio grande did this allready in the late sixties when the roads were much worse? you would quadruple costs easily is the drawback and for inferior service CDOT banned trucks during rush hours a few years ago and dropped it.
Date: 03/19/25 17:46 Re: Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expand Author: portlander pdt Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- > Pls post without all the html tags, and break > the actual text into paragraphs. OW, > unreadable. > Yeah, you should probably sit this one out. . . Date: 03/19/25 19:21 Re: Amtrak Conductor who revived Col. Ski train wants to expand Author: WM_1109 Just who is Colonel Ski, and where's the horse he rode in on?
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