After decades of inactivity, plans are underway to restore passenger rail service between Denver and Craig, Colorado. While details like train type, fares, and travel times are still being determined, the project is moving forward with a key hurdle already cleared – the existing tracks.
More than a half century after the last passenger disembarked Car No. 10 of the Yampa Valley Mail train, an effort to revive passenger rail from Colorado ’s capital city to the state’s northwest corner is taking shape. The type of train hasn’t been chosen, ridership projections haven’t been publicized, fares haven’t been set and travel times haven’t been announced. But the first leg of— which eventually would connect Denver to Craig — could carry its first passengers in as little as two years.
The biggest battle to making the 231-mile-long service a reality is already won, says Paul DesRocher, director of the Division of Transit and Rail at the Colorado Department of Transportation. “The tracks are there,” he said of the corridor Union Pacific Railroad has used for years to transport freight across the state. “Many of the stations are there, and we have a good partnership with Union Pacific. It’s logical for us to capitalize on the built environment that’s there and reinitiate passenger rail service.” But one of the big questions still outstanding — the cost to launch and operate the line and from where that funding will come — has not yet been answered by CDOT.when the state announced a set of agreements with Union Pacific, which owns the tracks. The framework includes renewing a lease allowing the railroad to traverse the state-owned Moffat Tunnel — a century-old, 6.2-mile bore under the Continental Divide between Rollinsville and Winter Park. The new lease, which will run for the next 25 years, is conditioned upon Union Pacific providing access to its tracks for passenger trains running the Colorado Mountain Rail corridor. There are still many details to be worked out, but a final execution of the contract is expected by Ma
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