In the Rockies: Farewell to the Zephyr

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Soon there came the call to board, the slithery sound of raincoats pressing toward the train, and the familiar lurch of a rail journey commenced. Denver fell away in a fog, and the passengers fell away into rapture. Since 1949 this poky thing had made the 570-mile run to Salt Lake City in 14 hours. Then and now it had four domed cars, the better to see the aspens and the Douglas firs blur by. Later the Colorado River foamed white alongside, and in the high, cold meadows the snorts of fine horses showed clear as clouds. Here and there little communities clung to cliffsides like cockleburs to a collie. And in the dining room were linen, flowers and heavy crockery. One could have breakfast at the top of the world.

"Look out there," said Julia Sanders, wife of Richard O. Sanders, president of the Central Pennsylvania chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. "Most of the rail fans are not on the train. They're out at the crossings, taking pictures." So they were. As the train creaked and jounced, listed and groaned, shutterbugs in their cars chased like deer flies, buzz-bombing at every vista, no doubt planning blowups to adorn untold mantles. A pesky Mustang convertible appeared to lead the pack. They outran the locomotive, recorded, outran it again.

Aboard was a typical lot: the whiskery old romantics, the backpackers, the bawling babies, the obsessed railroad fans, the golden-wedding-anniversary celebrators, the drunks and the people not constitutionally equipped to function in civilization. Six distribution managers for a major publishing firm hit the club car, took a swim in a sea of vodka and scarcely saw the sights. In the long line for the dining car, people with impaired manners made themselves known as something more than peckish, and thus snappish. (It takes patience to take a train, so why do those who do not possess it always book a seat? One's own inner peace urged the cry: "Slow down! Relax! Enjoy!" Maybe eight-cylinder, eight-lane, jumbo-jet America does not deserve the Rio Grande Zephyr. Maybe the country is too loutish for a good train.)

Then across the Continental Divide and down the western slope, on ground the color of lions. "I sure hate to see the old gal go," the conductor, Red Knuter, had said before the start. Others among the crew were not feeling so charitable. In the lounge, a bartender named Gerald answered a drinker's question about his future plans. "I'm gonna rob banks, man," said Gerald, turning to his friend, a coat attendant named Leon. "Seventy times a day, man," said Leon. "At least 70 times I get asked what I'm gonna do. I don't know. I don't know! You got a job? Ah, hell, we're just an inconvenience to this company."

Engineers, conductors, brakemen on the Rio Grande have the elective of switching to Amtrak. Gerald, Leon and about 20 cooks and waiters do not. Gerald, shutting down the bar on his last run so he could take his lunch, was asked whether he would reopen after he had eaten. "Maybe I will," he said, "and maybe I won't." He didn't.