Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Grand Junction Colorado USA 22nd October 1979

Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Budd stainless steel observation car "Silver Sky" on the tail-end of the Rio Grande Zephyr at Grand Junction station, an intermediate stop on from Denver to Salt Lake City. D&RG "first generation" F9 diesel 5771 is at the front.

This train was the last non-Amtrak long distance train in the USA after the Southern Railway stopped running the Southern Crescent from New Orleans. It was a great railroading experience and had a brilliant 1940s-50s atmosphere. We changed at Salt Lake City during the night but the Amtrak train bore no comparison although the journey through the mountains & onward to San Francisco was certainly spectacular.

The train & engine were withdrawn in 1984 & the locomotive is now preserved at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden.

We were en route from New Orleans to San Francisco, Australia & ultimately Medan in Indonesia where I worked for 2 years for Mobil Oil Corp.

I booked the journey myself through Mobil's travel department & they took some convincing that I really wanted to travel by train. "But it is so much slower & I could be in San Francisco within hours by plane & anyway who in America, especially working for an oil company, would even want to travel by train and anyway we don't know how to book it, it's not in our system!"