In the Rockies: Farewell to the Zephyr

"The train depot, please."

"You mean the train station?" the taxi driver asked.

"Yes," said the passenger. It was dawn in Denver, outside the Brown Palace, a 19th century hotel that is, in good weather, within strolling distance of Union Station, a 19th century train depot. Rain fell from a dirty-ashtray sky, however; hence the cab. Ten minutes later, the woman at the wheel seemed not to have a clue. "I've seen it," she said. "I know it's right around here somewhere." In time she found the place, a building the size of Notre Dame. As for the passenger: ah, how patly explicable it seemed all of a sudden. If a 26—or so—year-old cabbie could not find the station, no wonder the train was bound for the end of the line.

The Rio Grande Zephyr, the last privately operated long-haul passenger service in the Lower 48 states, was about to be shut down. Its operator, the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, said the train was losing $3 million a year. The new operator would be the National Railroad Passenger Corp., the Government-subsidized organization known as Amtrak. The old cars with their rump-sprung seats would be replaced with Amtrak's firm-chaired, bullet ride to modernity. The cuisine of the dining car, a draw for serious trenchermen, would be replaced with Amtrak food, no adjective necessary.

The deal was attractive to both sides.

The Denver and Rio Grande would get out of the unprofitable passenger business and make some money on its tracks from Denver to Salt Lake City by leasing Amtrak the right of way. In turn, Amtrak would hope to gain more passengers on its Chicago-Oakland route by changing the train's path so that it crossed more spectacular terrain. The former route traversed southern Wyoming; the new route, and the new train, will cut through the Colorado Rockies.

The losers are the people of southern Wyoming, whose representatives are suing to keep train service there, and the nostalgic, who recently thronged at the gate for one last westward roll. The smell of bacon lay heavy on the morning air, spreading from a car with the name "Silver Banquet" flung back along its flank. "It is truly the last one," said Steve Patterson, a locomotive engineer with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and a man who rides the Zephyr mostly just to eat. "All the other passenger trains anywhere you go in this country all look alike. I call them generic trains. The little old Zephyr was all we had left. They had the last dining car. I tell you, the rest is airline food. They cook it somewhere else. On the Zephyr, you actually see real food. They crack eggs on the Zephyr. They actually peel potatoes on board."