An argument (and podcast) for reviving passenger rail in Colorado ski country
A high-speed rail fantasy (2013 by graphic artist Alfred Twu).
In doing some research for my appearance on Forrest Whitman’s On The Rail’s podcast on KHEN 106.9 FM radio in Salida, Colorado, I realized that I first started seriously writing about passenger rail service into the Colorado mountains back in the mid-aughts but that my true connection to trains, mountains, skiing and water runs much deeper.
I’ll dive into all of the history in a moment, but first some breaking news on the Tennessee Pass Line lease exemption filing by Colorado Midland Pacific Railroad. In a letter to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB) on Monday, March 15, a Washington, D.C. attorney wrote that “erroneous” opposition to the passenger proposal based on speculation about crude oil transport had prompted an amendment request.
Love them or hate them, the railroads created a template that other nascent industries followed. Telegraph and telephone, automobile and airplane, radio and television, and now the internet each of these technologies, in its own way, made us ever more tightly connected. Industries that sprang up around these new technological products generated enormous wealth and great power for some. And all of them eventually felt the hand of government regulation.
But first the railroad had to come through.
Railroads dominated the economy in the 19th century as no industry would again; they practically were the industrial economy for decades. Charles Dow’s first stock index