The New Mexico House has passed funding for the Southwest Chief

Now it is the Senate's turn.

HB 241, sponsored by Rep. Roberto "Bobby" Gonzales (D-Taos), would fund repairs to the New Mexico portion of the Southwest Chief's route through the issuance of severance tax bonds. The bill passed 47-12, but may die in the Senate because of a lack of time to consider it. New Mexico's legislative session is over at the end of this week.

Here is Rep. Gonzales talking about maintaining funding for bus service among other things:

Now New Mexico is looking for comments on their rail plan

New Mexico is developing a state rail plan, and train riders there are concerned that they are being ignored. The New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT) is saying that there is no demand for rail in New Mexico even though more than a million people rode the Rail Runner and the Southwest Chief is often full. We need to make our support for the Southwest Chief and the Rail Runner clear. Please send an email to Rail.Plan@state.nm.us before January 3, 2014.

You do not need to be a resident of New Mexico, you just need to ride the trains there.

You can read New Mexico's Rail Plan (PDF) online, but it is kind of a mess.

NMDOT wants to know what you think of their rail plan

The New Mexico Department of Transportation has written a state rail plan, and they would like to know what residents of New Mexico think of it. You can comment online at Rail.Plan@state.nm.us until January 3, 2014. You can also attend meetings starting this week which I would encourage because the plan itself is an unreadable mess. A powerpoint presentation might actually be more comprehensible.

The presentations all start at half an hour after the start of the meeting.

Monday, November 4 at 6 pm
City of Santa Fe Offices at Market Street
500 Market Street, Suite 200
Santa Fe
Train: (Rail Runner)
Bus: 1, 2
The M and the free Santa Fe Pickup will get you to the meeting, but may stop running before you need to go home.

Tuesday, November 5 at 6 pm
Mid-Region Council of Governments
809 Copper Avenue NW
Albuquerque
Bus: 66 (Be aware that east bound buses stop on Central.)
This is near the downtown bus terminal so many routes run within a ten to twenty minute walk.
Train: A ten to fifteen minute walk from Rail Runner and Amtrak trains. Greyhound buses also stop at the Transit Center.

Wednesday, November 13 at 5 pm
McKinley County Emergency Management Center
2221 E. Boyd Avenue
Gallup
I think that if you type this address into Google Maps, it may send you to the wrong place. Gallup has a Call-n-Ride, and has intercity service from Amtrak, Greyhound, and Navajo Transit.

Thursday, November 14 at 6 pm
Farmington Civic Center
200 W. Arrington
Farmington
Bus: The Green, Blue, and Purple routes stop here, but I can't find out what hours they run. Here is their website: Red Apple Transit.

Tuesday, December 10 at 5 pm
Las Cruces Railroad Museum
351 N. Mesilla Street
Las Cruces
Bus: The bus system in Las Cruces stops running at 7 pm. The 50 and the 80 run closest.

You can try to read the PDF of New Mexico's proposed rail plan at http://www.dot.state.nm.us/content/dam/nmdot/Transit_Rail/New_Mexico_State_Rail_Plan_Draft_2013-09-30.pdf

RTD Recognizes National Train Day!

Good for them.

Let's hope that next year they recognize the actual events that take place in Colorado. This was the second year in a row that ColoRail members went down to Trinidad to take the train from Trinidad, CO to Las Vegas, NM and back again. Along the way, they accepted proclamations from cities along the route in support of the Southwest Chief.

RTD recognizes National Train Day.

(Let's also hope that whoever designs the Train Day website makes it possible to link to individual events.)

Special Trip over Raton Pass Coming Soon

The Rio Grande Scenic Railroad is moving one of their dome cars, the Sky View #551, this weekend, and they are offering rail fans a multi-modal circuit through Colorado and New Mexico on Sunday, May 6. Passengers start in Alamosa. From their they go to Trinidad by bus or van to board the train. From there the trip heads to Albuquerque along the Santa Fe line, the Sky View's original home. Lunch is served along the way. Everyone changes to a van to head to Santa Fe for dinner followed by the journey back to Alamosa.

This all costs $199 for both transportation and lunch and dinner. Call 877-726-7245 for more information.

What Can We Do to Save the Southwest Chief?

Trinidad, CO

It is a good thing that people have started to organize to save the Southwest Chief because it looks like the entire route might be in danger. Congress has not given Amtrak the money that it needs to run its trains, so, as Fred Frailey points out, Amtrak may have to stop running some of its long-distance routes. He not only points out the five routes that lose the most money (Sunset Limited, Cardinal, Silver Star, Crescent, and Southwest Chief), he and commenters on his article point out that external factors influence how much a line loses money.

In the comments to Mr. Frailey's piece, people discuss both the fact that the Southwest Chief loses money because it is responsible for a greater percentage of maintenance of the track that it runs on than other long-distance routes, and the fact that the Cardinal and Sunset Limited both need large subsidies because not running daily only cuts a small portion of costs. Basically, there are fixed costs to running any route and to using any piece of track. If you double the number of trains that use a particular track, you do not double the costs to maintain that track. If you double the number of passenger trains that run on a particular route, you do not have to double the number of people that you need to hire to sell tickets and take care of passengers.

The Southwest Chief runs at 90% capacity through Colorado, so we can't sell more tickets to raise more money.

There are two things that we could do to increase revenue on this track.

For one, the states where this train runs could join together and fund a second daily train. Kansas is one of the states that is being asked to chip in to help fix the track, and so far they have not been very enthusiastic. Maybe that is because the Southwest Chief does not really work for the people of eastern Kansas. A lot of people get on the train for long-distance trips in Missouri which does not leave a lot of tickets for people in Kansas. And the train runs at night which means that it is not convenient for people who want to travel from Garden City to Hutchinson. A second train that would run through Kansas during the day would solve that problem. This would increase revenue more than costs.

We could also take action to increase freight on the line. If the BNSF abandons the line that runs through New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas, those states could encourage a Class 3 railroad to carry small loads of freight. It is my understanding that the state of Kansas already assists these kinds of carriers on other lines because they save the state money on road repairs. We could start looking into making it possible for refrigerated trains to run in Colorado which would make it easier to ship fresh foods, like cantaloupe, to market. Other states do so, why not us?


What do you think we should do to save the Southwest Chief and to make better use of the tracks that it runs on?

Through Colorado Twice by Train (Another Guest Post)

Excerpts from Canyons, Curveballs and Cornfields

By Jim Loomis

Amtrak’s Train #4, the daily Southwest Chief, departs Los Angeles on time at 6:45 p.m., beginning a two-day, 2,200 mile journey to Chicago. I’ll be leaving the train at Kansas City, however, to watch the Boston Red Sox in a three-game series with the Kansas City Royals. It’s my annual summer indulgence of train travel and baseball.

As soon as the conductor collects tickets, it’s straight to the dining car for dinner. By the time I get back to Bedroom 2 in Sleeping Car 31, the bed is made up and waiting. San Bernardino is behind us, Barstow is just ahead, and all of Arizona slides quietly by during the night.

Dawn finds the Southwest Chief crossing a New Mexico desert. We’re in the land of mesas now, some off in the distance, others in our path and causing the train to slow as it twists and turns through canyons separating these massive obstacles. Many have Jeep-sized boulders scattered up and down their flanks.

Just after a leisurely breakfast in the dining car, the Chief eases to a stop at Gallup, New Mexico. The town’s main street – at least the one seen from the train – is a collection of small buildings of stucco or adobe topped with large signs, most promoting Indian jewelry and crafts. One offers a startling opportunity for one-stop shopping: “GUNS & LIQUOR.”

Today the landscape east of Gallup is a desert in name only for there has clearly been a lot of rain recently. The wild grasses are green, there are large pools of standing water, and the usually dry stream beds that crisscross the landscape are running with brown water. The train sweeps around a long graceful curve and passes a dozen horses, including two spindly-legged foals, who look up for a moment, then resume their grazing.

Lamy, New Mexico, is the station stop for Santa Fe, the state’s capital, and a dozen or so people get off. Santa Fe is quaint and interesting and very old, dating back to the Spanish explorers who settled here in 1607, more than a decade before the pilgrims stepped off onto Plymouth Rock.

Leaving Lamy, the train climbs up through Apache Pass, a narrow, twisting cut in the mountains with steep red-rock sides. Once through, we’re again crossing grassland, home to several small herds of pronghorn antelope. Off and on for the next several hours, a rutty dirt path runs alongside the tracks – the original Santa Fe Trail.

Near Trinidad, Colorado, four men on horseback are coaxing a dozen steers into the back of a large semi-trailer truck. They stop for a moment to watch the train pass and one lifts his dusty cowboy hat rather grandly in response to waves from passengers in the lounge car.

The Southwest Chief pulls into the Kansas City station on time the next morning. It’s only 7:30, but it’s already hot when I step off the train: well over 100 degrees without the hint of a breeze.

I’ve picked a hotel that’s within walking distance of Kauffman Stadium and it’s full of Red Sox fans decked out in Boston caps and T-shirts. Checking in just before me is a father and his young son who have come all the way from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to see their team. Three nights later, after the last-place Royals have somehow managed to win all three games, I encounter the two of them again in the hotel parking lot. The dad is trying to console his son. “I know you’re disappointed,” he says to the boy, “but you might as well get used to it.” Every serious Red Sox fan knows what he means.

My train-baseball odyssey resumes the next morning with a five-hour ride to Galesburg, Illinois, once again aboard the Southwest Chief. East of Kansas City is corn country, endless rows of man-high stalks running off to the horizon. The train is really moving now, over 80 miles an hour, flashing through a small town every ten minutes or so. Most are just clusters of a few weathered buildings, but the defining feature of each little community is the water tower, a huge tank perched on 100-foot-high legs and emblazoned with the name of the town it serves: Marceline, La Plata, Wyaconda, Argyle.

Where there’s corn there are birds: black and white magpies, ducks, swallows, and a swarm of small dark-feathered starlings darting in and out through the exposed rafters of an abandoned barn. And settled comfortably in some soft green grass not 50 feet from the tracks, a flock of Canada geese ignore the train as it thunders by.

Fort Madison is the Southwest Chief’s last port-of-call before leaving Iowa and crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois. From here it’s another hour to Galesburg, where I’ll stop for tonight. There’s a lot of history in these parts. Abe Lincoln and Steven Douglas held one of their debates on a street corner right here in Galesburg. A plaque in the sidewalk marks the spot.  

(After a stop to see the baseball field that inspired the film "Field of Dreams", Jim picks up the California Zephyr at Burlington, IA.)

Tonight in the dining car the table is shared with two sisters, both teachers from New York City enjoying their first cross-country train ride. Proving the theory that everybody has at least one interesting story to tell, it turns out that their father was the chief electrician at the old Polo Grounds in New York, home of the New York Giants baseball team until it moved to San Francisco. The older sister says her father installed some special wiring behind the center field bleachers which he thought could have been used for a signaling system to tell Giant batters what pitches were coming. Conspiracy theorists have suspected that nefarious plot ever since the Giants won the National League pennant in 1951 with a dramatic last-inning home run by Bobby Thompson, although Thompson and others in a position to know have always denied it.

Within minutes of leaving Denver the next morning, the Zephyr begins a slow, steady climb into the Rocky Mountains. Off to the right are the Flatirons, huge slabs of rock, mountains in their own right, that literally lean up against the Rockies.

It’s 275 rail miles from Denver to Grand Junction on Colorado’s Western Slope and along the way we pass though 43 tunnels. The longest, at 6.2 miles, is the Moffat Tunnel, boring through the mountains at an elevation of 9,000 feet. It’s the highest point of the Zephyr’s route and, when we emerge at the far end, we’ve crossed under the Continental Divide. Back on the Denver side of the tunnel, all the water flows east to the Mississippi River, eventually ending up in the Gulf of Mexico. From this point forward, water flows west toward the Pacific Ocean.

After brief stops in Winter Park and Granby, the train begins following the Colorado River, which will be off to the left for the next 100 miles or so. All along the way it’s dotted with people floating in a variety of watercraft ranging from elaborate inflatable imitations of double-hulled canoes to simple inner tubes. Many of the rafters cheerfully observe a time-honored tradition: they moon the train as it passes.

A mid-afternoon stop is Glenwood Springs where the gunfighter Doc Holiday came hoping his lung disease would benefit from the natural minerals of the springs. It didn’t and he’s buried here. This is a refueling stop for our twin locomotives and, although passengers are invited to step off the train to stretch their legs, the conductor warns everyone several times over the P.A. system against straying too far from the platform.

An hour later, with the Zephyr underway again, a man in his 40s tells the conductor he thinks his wife was left behind in Glenwood Springs. Sure enough, she’s paged several times with no response. With

Grand Junction still some 80 miles ahead, the husband is ping-ponging back and forth between real distress over his wife’s predicament and near-rage at her carelessness. The conductor shrugs. “It happens all the time,” he says.

I hit the jackpot for dinner companions tonight: a personable young film animator whose parents emigrated to Australia from Malta and a Japanese doctor doing research on organ donations in Boston. He, of course, has become a Red Sox fan and we happily exchange high-fives across the table. But the laws of probability are really stretched by the fourth person at our table: Keith Lewin, a 40-year resident of Kailua before moving to Las Vegas five years ago. Conversation flows all through dinner and it’s well past dark by the time everyone heads off to their respective bedrooms.

It’s still hot and dry the next morning, but no longer desolate. In fact, the vegetation is green and wild flowers – yellow and purple and white – are growing in profusion. There’s a lot more wildlife, too: jack rabbits, antelope, crows, more magpies, vultures soaring overhead and, floating placidly on a small lake, white pelicans. From his perch on top of a fence post, a large golden eagle glares at us as we pass. Cattle by the hundreds are grazing with heads buried almost out of sight in the tall lush grass.

By late morning, it’s all changed. The Humboldt River is alongside now, meandering westward through what has once again become hot, dry country. How hot and how dry? Well, a few miles from Reno, Nevada, the river simply gives up. It slows down, spreads out and quietly disappears into the desert.

After leaving Reno, the Zephyr crosses into California and begins climbing into the Sierra Nevada mountains. This is where the Donner Party – some 90 men, women and children – arrived from Indiana in 1846. It was late in the year, but they nevertheless attempted to cross the Sierras and were trapped

by heavy snows. By the time a rescue team reached them, more than half of the party had died. This stretch of the Zephyr’s route, overlooking the American River Gorge at an elevation of some 7,200 feet, is appropriately called Donner Pass.

Less than three hours later, the train has descended all the way to sea level and by late afternoon the California Zephyr reaches its final stop at Emeryville, just across the bay from San Francisco.

Jim Loomis has crossed the North American continent by train more than twenty times and is the author of All Aboard: The Complete North American Train Travel Guide.

Train Day - New Mexico

New Mexico is celebrating train day with an art contest for children and entertainment in downtown Albuquerque.

The deadline for the art contest is Friday, May 6. Children ages 6-12 are invited to design a cover for the RailRunner's magazine. The drawing must be on an 8-1/3 by 11 piece of paper and can be a drawing or painting. Color is encouraged! Send the artwork along with your name, your parent's name, your address, and a phone number or email to Inez Russell. care of The Santa Fe New Mexican, 202 E. Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87701

Performances, art, and lots of trains are going to featured at the Alvarado Transportation Center at 1st and Central right next to the tracks in Albuquerque this Saturday from 1 to 5pm. Local dance troops will perform flamenco, hip hop, modern, and other forms of dance. You can go inside Amtrak, BSNF, and Rail Runner cars and a historic bus. You can see lots of model trains. You can watch FREE movies. You can eat food from local vendors. You tour a new transportation museum.

And you can take the train there!