During the middle of the day, Salt Lake City's Amtrak station at the Rio Grande depot was a great place to observe passenger train power laying over from the Desert Wind and Pioneer trains. Three of Amtrak's contemporaries were on hand on May 28, 1994, a GE P40DC (GENESIS AMD-103), a GE P32-BWH, and an EMD F40PH. On May 10, 1997 the Pioneer and Desert Wind trains were discontinued and by 1999, the Amtrak depot was closed and the tracks were dismantled from the depot property to make way for a shopping mall.
Depicts Amtrak's "Desert Wind" service, which operated from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, via Las Vegas. Its discontinuance in 1997 left the lower Intermountain region, including Las Vegas, without any passenger rail service since.
Depicts Amtrak's "Pioneer" service, which operated from Denver to Seattle, via Salt Lake City and Boise. The route was discontinued in 1997, thus leaving most of the upper Intermountain region without passenger rail service since.
