A baggage-express car, a coach and a snack-lounge behind a lone E-unit: This is all that’s left of the once-great Rocky Mountain Rocket by late September, 1966. Hard-pressed Rock Island lopped off sleeping- and dining-cars service the previous summer, and now the last run is only three weeks away. The tracks here belong to Union Pacific, which Train 8 will follow east to Limon before returning to home rails. The overpass carries the main north-south runway of Denver’s Stapleton Airport, which itself will one day vanish, replaced by a new International airport a few miles north.
Photos of North America's favorite First Generation locomotives. EMD, ALCO, Baldwin; essentially anything that represents the OG wide cab diesel locomotive
The Rock Island was an also-ran in the markets it served competing the likes of the Santa Fe Super Chief and Burlington Denver Zephyr, but it did its best to put on a good show.
