The last scheduled passenger service was the daily Santa Fe Denver-La Junta train in each direction. It lasted until Amtrak came in. In better days it carried a Los Angeles-Denver through sleeper (6-6-4 Valley series) connecting with 19/20 The Chief at La Junta.

I had understood when the coal was rolling over the Joint Line there was no capacity for a passenger train, but now...

In any event, why not do what Santa Fe did in better days for the trains that did not connect with the one passenger train: run a bus? Don't put the pax on a regular TNM&O/Greyhound on their schedule but run a dedicated connection on Amtrak's schedule.

Phil Mulligan

A fire last night gutted the former Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Burnham Shops coach building in Denver, Colorado.

The building had been unoccupied since February 2016, when Union Pacific closed the shop complex. The property was sold in June 2021 to the Colorado Department of Transportation, which plans to use some of the land for an expansion of Interstate 25 and some for the Regional Transportation District light rail system.

The coach shop was the oldest remaining building at the shop complex, built in 1901 but believed to have incorporated parts of a structure built in 1881 or 1885. The L-shaped one-story brick structure was once used to house Rio Grande’s ski train.

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... -building/