The Denver and Rio Grande Western has a wonderful history. Crossing Colorado, Utah and New Mexico, it managed to overcome adversity and be the lifeline to many communities in the days when roads were few and trains were the only really reliable way to go from place to place.

The Rio Grande used a slogan in marketing the railroad which really did describe what it did best. “Through the Rockies, Not Around Them.” And yes, it was a dig at competition. The mighty Santa Fe and it’s Chief took the southern route west. The fabled Union Pacific went over Sherman Hill to the north through Wyoming on it’s way to Salt Lake City. The Rio Grande went direct through the Rockies. But with the construction of the Moffat Tunnel, and opening in 1928, it shortened the route west between Denver and Salt Lake City.

At 6.2 miles long, it was an engineering marvel. A smaller tunnel next to the railroad tunnel carries water, as part of the supply for Denver. Previously, trains crossed the area high on the mountain in a slow and laborious route. This new route was a key element when the Rio Grande joined forces with the Western Pacific and the Burlington Route to run passenger trains between Chicago and San Francisco. The 1939 Exposition Flyer and the 1949 California Zephyr proved popular with travelers offering the best scenery along the route.

I’ve ridden through the Moffat Tunnel twice; once east and once west, back in the fall of 1980 on my vacation to Denver. Aboard the Rio Grande Zephyr, it was a throwback to earlier times in the streamliner era. The Rio Grande had decided against joining Amtrak in 1971 and continued to operate their own segment of the California Zephyr between 1970 and 1983. Using the same passenger cars and offering much the same service as it had years before, the train operated on a tri-weekly trip between Denver and Salt Lake City, with Wednesday’s being the day the train was serviced in Denver. My trip was part of a larger adventure, but I know many for whom the Rio Grande Zephyr was the destination, rather than the mode of transport.

As I head east again this week, I will head back some 39 years to my first ride. Indeed, “Through the Rockies, not Around Them.”

In a little more than a week, I will be riding with a small group of folks on a private railroad car heading from Emeryville to Denver and back again.. As things go, this isn’t a new experience. I have made many a trip aboard private railroad cars including a couple of long distance trips of many days.

What sets this one apart is that I haven’t ridden a train east of Sparks, Nevada by rail over the Southern Pacific”s Salt Lake Division since October of 1980. As then, the destination in 2019 is Denver, Colorado.

Now before this particular trip, I had been lucky enough to have ridden to Reno a number of times by train including a trip before Amtrak in 1963. But this trip would be different. For the first time, I would be riding the same rails that my great grandfather had worked over between Sparks and Carlin. I was keyed up from the excitement that night. I chatted with some of the train crew members who worked for the SP then. Listening in on my train radio, I could hear discussions between the train and the dispatcher as we sped east. The stop the train made in Carlin to change crews was a quick one. Headlights from automobiles illuminated the trackside for those moments as the San Francisco Zephyr made it’s short stop there. It was a visit back in time, even if a brief one.

I was lucky enough to have ridden for a short ride around the Spark’s yard at the age of 3. My great grandfather arranged with some friends to take me into the cab of a locomotive being moved about one afternoon. It was indeed memorable and somewhere, I have a photograph taken at the ancestral home at 401 Sixth Street in Sparks with my father and great grandfather after the ride. I was all smiles. (And yes, it rubbed off big time, leading to a life long passion for railroading.)

My father used to ride on occasion with his grandfather on trips to Carlin. They would stay with my grandfather’s brother Joseph, who was also a conductor with the Southern Pacific. My father recalled trips aboard both diesel and steam locomotives, including the famed Cab-Forwards. In those years, Chris Walker had enough seniority that he was strictly working passenger trains. I have some train register books from the post war era, and his name is listed among the engineers who signed in, on a regular basis.

While I may not have the same anticipation today as I did back in October of 1980 for the ride over those rails between Sparks and Carlin, I will be taken back to many years ago of family history.

Special, indeed…

When I was growing up, one of the greatest adventures we could have was to go out for the day for a ride in the car with my mother’s dad. Always some place different, always some thing we hadn’t done before.

And of course, whenever we would ask where we were headed that day, he would always tell us, “the car knows where it’s going.” For a young child, the promise of an unknown adventure was just the thing. Travel down a new road could (and usually did) offer all kinds of rewards. A new place for lunch, a stop at a roadside fruit stand, even ice cream! There where times when I think he was as amused by those days out as we were.

There were all kinds of adventures. A stop at a trout farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains was one occasion. Sure, it was exciting, but when that six-year old puts a hook and a line into the water of a pond, only to be rewarded with a trout on the line moments later, it was pretty neat! That first fishing trip lead to other adventures, such as the casting ponds in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and lunch at the Angler’s Lodge, as he proudly showed off his grandson’s to friends. Later on, some of us even accompanied him on long fishing weekend trips up to Fall River Mills in Shasta County. The Golden Gate Casting and Angling Club had arranged the use of a section of prime trout fishing along the Fall River. Whether trolling from a rowboat or casting from shore, adventure was always there.

One afternoon in particular always comes to mind from those years. We were fishing from a road bridge as the sun set. Now, my grandfather was very proud of his hand tied flies used for fishing. Works of art, they truly were. One in particular he was very proud of was a large back ant. Using that ant, he had hooked into a good sized trout and was giving it all the fight it could handle. At 14 inches, the trout was not giving up easily. He must have spent a good 20 minutes letting the fish run and reeling it back in. It was a moment for the ages. Until the line broke and the trout went free.

I don’t recall my grandfather as an angry man on many occasions. You could annoy him, as kids are want to do, but for the most part, he didn’t display anger often. I recall a few choice words being said, and that we grandchildren were very quiet on the ride back to town. Looking back, it may have been he was angrier about loosing the black ant fly than he was losing the fish.

As we grew older, he discovered another passion. Wine. With a basement at the home in Seacliff that never varied in temperature, it was the idea wine cellar. With California wines coming into their own, he was able to explore vintages by sampling on various trips about Northern California.

A couple of those are notable. The first one was a trip to a railroad museum, east of Fairfield, on State Route 12. We made the trip from Walnut Creek to Fairfield in a little more than 45 minutes, pulling off on eastbound Interstate 80 onto West Texas Street. And almost as soon as we made that turn, we made another sharp turn into a driveway of a house. Now, I had no idea where this detour was taking us, but he certainly did. We ended up downstairs at the house as he tasted the wine. And we left with several gallon jugs of good red wine. Years later, as a volunteer at the same railroad museum. I enjoyed more than a few glasses of the same jug red wine; the product of the Cadenasso Winery in Fairfield. Closed since 1982, it was good enough for my grandfather that first trip and friends, years later.

Another trip took us along the Sacramento River through the Delta, from Walnut Creek. It was a warm summer day when we found ourselves in Clarksburg at another home. This time, it was a tasting room in a converted garage. At the Bogle Vineyards. And as I recall, there were more than a few bottles purchased to make the trip back to San Francisco, with him.

He passed away in November of 1978. And while I didn’t taste a great deal of wine while he was alive, I did pay attention to lessons at the dinner table about what folks were about to enjoy. When it came time to clean out the house in Seacliff, the wine cellar was one of the last parts of the house to be addressed. My grandmother, aunt and mother decided to sell the collected wines together to someone they had known in the area for a number of years. In fact, my mother and aunt had grown up with him. The only proviso was that my mother would be allowed to keep a case of wine from the collection for herself. Being her fathers daughter, she chose well. Almost too well, as the gentleman making the purchase began to object to her choices. “She was taking the best wines!” Of course she was, and informed him that if he didn’t keep quiet, she would take it all.

I can attest that she did pick some of the best wines. We had a selection of them on my 21st birthday, including a stunning Chateau d’Yquem. A trip to Germany in 2001, saw us visit and sample at his favorite German winery, Schloss Johanisberg. We had another for my 50th birthday and most recently for my 60th, an absolutely amazing 1966 Chateau Margaux. It was as close to perfection in a glass as I am ever likely to enjoy. He would be greatly pleased that 46 years later, it was enjoyed as he would have liked to have done when he laid it down.

Recently, I was taken back to that afternoon at Clarksburg many years ago. Buying wine for an upcoming train trip, I picked out four bottles of Bogle’s Old Vine Zinfandel to enjoy. It may not be the equivalent of that 1966 Margaux, but I will indeed raise a glass with a smile to his memory when we open a bottle ad go back to that afternoon when the car knew where we were going…

A look ahead, as later this month sees me off on another private railroad car adventure.

A round-trip from Emeryville to Denver, crossing the Sierra and the Rockies, hopefully with plenty of snow. It’s been a while and this promises to be a good trip with a select group of travelers. Using a car we have traveled aboard a few trips before. And of course, I intend to share moments from this trip with you, loyal readers.

I’ve been lucky enough to have had more than my fair share of adventures that have taken me places that the average tourist doesn’t give any thought to. And I have been lucky enough to have shared those adventures with good friends.

Yes, a lot of miles. A lot of miles… More than a few of them to places that the average person would need to look three or four times to find on any map, let alone understand why anyone would travel there.

Take this one for example.

It was a trip to a ridge of a hill in central Nevada. A spot that overlooks a bend in the Humboldt River, out in Eureka County. A road, a dirt one, does lead to the spot and if you really track down the place, you will see it on Google Maps. In the big picture of things, it is place that doesn’t matter much. Yet, friends and I made the trip there a while back.

We were out in this part of the Silver State on what could best be described as a photographic expedition. Back in the era before digital cameras, when Kodachrome 64 ruled the world of photography, the goal was to get the best quality images and use the least amount of exposures in doing so. Okay, so I was shooting black and white film just because it was different from that of everyone else. Not to mention that I have found black and white allows a greater way to take advantage of light and shadow…

So, why was I there? A worthy question.

Not far from where we were that day was the spot where the streamliner City of San Francisco derailed at what the Southern Pacific called Harney, on August 12, 1939. At 9:39 pm that night, while passing over the fourth crossing of the Humboldt River, the train left the rails. The result was the deaths of 24 and injuries to 121 passengers and crew. Officially, the railroad blamed sabotage and the incident remains unsolved to this day, despite a $10,000 reward having been offered by the Southern Pacific.

My own connection to the location is a family one, as my great grandfather, Chris Walker, was a locomotive engineer with the Southern Pacific, and he later ran the City between Sparks and Carlin (along the route through Palisade Canyon and over these same rails).

Two other points figure into the area with Chris. In November of 1881, not long after his birth the previous month, his father had opened The Pioneer Saloon in a nearby mining camp, called Safford; not far from this location.

And Chris had a memorable incident one day in the years after the end of World War II, while running the City through the same area. As related by his fireman, Jack Bradley, when they took over the train from the incoming crew at Carlin, the previous engineer complained that the diesel electric locomotives powering the train that day were not up to standard. They had trouble maintaining the usual 90 miles per hour speed. The train was almost an hour late at that point. Quite the embarrassment and one that would not go unnoticed by the big brass. Someone would have some explaining to do.

So Chris and Jack headed off west from Carlin, through Palisade Canyon. The hope was that they could coax a bit more speed out of the locomotives and make up some of that lost time out on the open range across country. But things changed as they came out of the Canyon and were heading for the next manned station at Beowawe.

A track section gang had were getting their tools and track car clear of the mainline as Chris and Jack approached them around a corner. Chris later recalled that he only had a split second to act and he lifted his foot off of the dead man pedal. This was designed so that if the engineer should become disabled, he would not be able to keep his foot pressing on the pedal. By lifting it up, the electricity that powered motors on the axles of the locomotive was interrupted and the train braking system automatically went into a full emergency application.

The track crew all got clear, with the exception of one man who was still holding onto the track gang car as it was hit by the train. He suffered a broken arm and shoulder from the impact. Once the train came to a stop, Chris and Jack checked on the track crew and then consulted with the train’s conductors as to the passengers. While it had been a rough stop, no one was injured. That was something Chris was intensely proud of years later after he retired in 1951; no passenger aboard any of his trains had ever been injured.

The train was inspected at the scene and the decision made to head for the station at Battle Mountain, some 30 miles west – albeit at a much restricted speed. When they arrived, it became obvious that this would be a very long day for Chris, Jack and everyone else on the City that day. Every wheel in the train had been flattened by the emergency stop. With over 200 miles to go to Sparks, it was going to be a very slow and bumpy trip.

Eventually, Chris and Jack used up all of the 16 hours of on duty time they had. Years later, Jack remembered the meal they were served in the train’s dining car, by a crew from the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad (one of the trains partners, which also included the Union Pacific.) When the train finally reached Sparks, it was annulled and the passengers heading west, put on another train.

So, with all of those points of history, how could I not have made the trip to that spot? But that’s only one of many adventures, and I hope to have many more.