In the Rockies: Farewell to the Zephyr

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"What are they gonna do," chimed in a brakeman named Gary Stehle, "fire him?" Stehle is quitting. He went down for a day of indoctrination at Amtrak and found it did not cut the mustard of his standards, sad to say. He sold his uniform to a railroad freak from Florida. Ken Jackson, another brakeman who is quitting, has held on to his uniform. Like Stehle, Jackson is bitter, feeling that the company could have done better by them and kept the Zephyr going. Jackson says sarcastically of his uniform, "I'm going to wear it to Halloween parties, along with my funny little hat. I'm going to go as a meathead."

The train went down a gorge, rounded a bend and entered middle afternoon just as some sated diners entered drowsiness, offending Robert Robinson. An infantry major from Fort Hood, Texas, who said he was on the Zephyr taking pictures with his camera as well as his mind, Robinson looked disdainfully at three slumbering bodies curled catlike across the seats. "Can you imagine that? On this train? On this ride?"

Sunlight shone upon the mountains, and bars of sunlight lay upon the floors of the domed cars. Outside, the speedy, four-wheel-driven photographers kept kicking up rooster tails of dust. Inside, those passengers who were awake and old enough to have ridden other wonderful trains, and who were given to reflection, appeared to set to work. Could they really have lived long enough to be riding an anachronism? Could it be possible not only to tolerate but to enjoy this age, with its computers, its characterless cars, its designers' names flashed everywhere from dumpy derrières? Could it really be possible to have grown so fuddy-duddy as to agree with Walker Percy's remark that "what nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than in J.C. Penney pantsuits"?

Then it was over, far too quickly. A mud slide in Utah had truncated the trip. The mud slide would also keep Amtrak crossing southern Wyoming, at least for another month. The Rio Grande Zephyr was out of business all the same. Its last trip west ended at Grand Junction, Colo., 275 miles up the line. Anyone who really wanted to get to Salt Lake City could continue on a bus, rolling through the night. All things considered, the connection was unappealing.—By Gregory Jaynes