News Archive: 1st quarter 2004

March 31 — Landmark car hits the road! Rocky Mountaineer 9523 was picked up by the Union Pacific today to begin its trek to Vancouver, BC. Also joining the 9523 is RMR 9521, which was built last August. The 9523 is significant for several reasons. First of all, with four cars delivered to Holland America earlier in the month, the 9523 completes a record month for deliveries from Colorado Railcar. More importantly, the car is the 30th full dome car built by Colorado Railcar, making CRM the largest manufacturer of full domes, and equaling the COMBINED full dome production of Budd and Pullman. Congrats to everyone that helped make these 30 cars possible, and, well, keep 'em coming!

Also, as a footnote, we've gotten our extra site space, so the photos will begin to fly.... Enjoy!

March 29 — It was bound to happen! With the volume of photos, I have reached the limit of available space for the site. Trainweb has graciously granted me more space, but I didn't find out until I was in the middle of doing yesterday's update, so there are several photos (mostly from the Holland America features) that didn't get added because I added the expanded versions of the other photos first. Please bear with me on this one. My friendly hosts at Trainweb say it may take a few days before the system administrator gets the extra space allotted, so there may be some gaps in the mean time. Sorry for the inconvenience, and I will see you in a few days...

March 28 — I've added three new photo pages detailing the delivery of Holland America's new domes. Part 1 focuses mostly on my tour of the cars in Pasco, WA, while Part 2 details the chase of the cars through the Columbia River Gorge and shows some final images in Seattle. Also, for comparison, I have a tour of HALX 1055, with the photos taken in the same basic locations as those in the construction tour.

I recently revised a lot of the standards surrounding the photos on this site. At present, there are over 220 photos on the site, which astounds me considering the site has only been active for six months. The majority of those photos have been held to a 400 pixel maximum width for the purposes of keeping file sizes down. But two trends in computers today - increases in monitor resolution, and easy access to broadband connections - have made those decisions obsolete. So I have rethought my position and am increasing the size of the photos to 600 pixels, which should provide a better look at the cars while still keeping file sizes reasonably low. A number of the images have been changed over already, and more will follow.

March 25 — Two of the new Holland America dome cars are on a barge en route to Alaska. After being switched out on Monday night, HALX 1054 and 1055 were moved to Stacey St. yard, then moved to the docks to be placed on the barge. HALX 1056 and 1057 are still at King Street Station, and will follow next week. The primary reason all four of the brand new, $3.5 million cars were not shipped at one time was to minimize the risk of loss should the barge encounter problems in transit.

March 15 — Holland America's dome cars have been delivered to Seattle for transport to Alaska. First of all, thanks to Mike McGowen for the following photo of the four cars in Ft. Lupton on March 7 just prior to being picked up by UP.

The cars left Ft. Lupton and were transferred to BNSF, departing Denver for Laurel, MT on the H-DENLAU, then moving from Laurel to Pasco, WA on the H-LACPAS, where I caught up with them on Sunday, March 14. The cars moved to Seattle on the rear of the M-PASINB-13, and were deposited at King Street Station in the wee hours of this morning. They will depart by ferry for Alaska in pairs over the next few weeks.

A photo feature will follow in the next few days. In the mean time, I have photo updates on the pages for HALX 1054, 1055, 1056 and 1057.

Feb. 25 — Once again, we owe a debt of gratitude to Michael McGowen for providing photos of Holland America cars 1054 and 1056, which were recently trucked and rolled outside the shop in Ft. Lupton for final finishing. Also, Mike caught RMR 9521 there, and provided photos.

Speaking of Rocky Mountaineer, I added two photos by Martin Oscarsson depicting RMR 9507 and 9511 in their earlier paint scheme, with pink stripes instead of the gold ones.

Feb. 3 — Thanks to Chip Sherman for sharing his photos of Holland America 1052 at Denver Union Station. We've added a pic to the roster page for the car.

Feb. 2 — I've added a few photos from the Rocky Mountaineer press conference to announce their proposed Whistler Mountaineer service on BC Rail (see the Dec. 4 news item.) Anyhow, the photos were provided by Rocky Mountaineer. I'd like to get pics of the car's run over CN, if anybody happened to catch this move.)

Jan. 29 — I've been meaning to add these links for a while. In two separate locations, I've found 360-degree interior tours of several Colorado Railcar products. All of these links will require the iPix plugin, which can be found at iPix.com. Take the time to download the plugin and take a look at these photos. They're extremely cool!

First of all, from Princess Railtours, we have photos of the interior of one of the Midnight Sun Express cars. Also, courtesy of our hosts at Trainweb, we have links to photos of cars from Holland America, Rocky Mountaineer, and BC Rail. Enjoy!

Jan. 18 — Last week, two of Holland America's new cars were placed on their trucks and placed outside Colorado Railcar's plant in Ft. Lupton, CO. Thanks to Mike McGowen, we now have photos of those cars, HALX 1055 and 1057. Some of you might remember that the 1055 is the car that we toured back in November while it was under construction.

Jan. 9 — More excellent news! First of all, I am pleased to report that according to an article published in the Palm Beach (FL) Post (and several other newspapers in the region) on Jan. 1, Florida's Tri-Rail commuter agency plans to purchase a DMU test set from Colorado Railcar.

The order will include a single level DMU and two double Decker cars. I have no information as to whether those cars will be trailers or powered DMUs (CRM's DMU brochure includes information about a double Decker powered car) or some combination of the above. According to the article, the cars will enter service in 2005.

Also, courtesy of an unnamed Alaska Railroad source, we have some more specifics about the planned coach purchase that was mentioned a couple of days ago.

"The Board of Directors, at its last meeting, approved the acquisition of two each, bi-level, full dome cars. These will be for custom class, extra fare service, in the Denali Star. They will be located at the head end of the consist, just behind the baggage car, so that there is an unobstructed view forward. Target seating in the dome is 72 people. Every passenger will have a dome seat. Below will be a full width kitchen capable of serving the lower level dining room of approximately 36 seats and an attached, high ceiling table car of approximately 64 seats (which we already own). Cars are to be 89 feet long from pulling face to pulling face and about 18 feet tall above top of rail." (ed note — Sounds like Colorado Railcar should be able to handle this pretty well.... similar specs to the newest Rocky Mountaineer cars, 9521 and 9523.)

The RFP will be out this month, with a projected delivery date of April, 2005.

Jan. 7, 2004 — Happy New Year! Two bits of news to report today. First of all, Colorado Railcar's DMU prototype was spotted in revenue service on Florida Tri-Rail shortly before Christmas. A source in Florida reported the DMU arrived on Dec. 21. The car was seen with a cab car in tow.

Also, a if you're wondering what's next for Colorado Railcar, the answer may be found in a recent article in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, which reports that Alaska Railroad has decided to order two new double Decker domes for a new upscale first class service. While no order has been placed, CRM is mentioned by name. You'll find the entire article at this link.

And finally, Rocky Mountaineer 9521 arrived at Colorado Railcar's Ft. Lupton, CO plant for annual servicing, and will be released sometime in late January.