Sharrod Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Neat!
>
> I am trying to imagine a through journey from
> Denver to Durango. What was the alternative?
> Driving yourself?
Or take a Continental Trailways bus. Or fly (Frontier?)
> Was there a diner on the Denver
> train?
Not that I ever heard of.
> Could you occupy the sleeper in Alamosa
> until a reasonable hour, like 6?
I believe so.
> Why does the
> timetable make the point that the San Juan is
> narrow gauge? Does that imply a lower customer
> service level?
Unknown, they didn't do it back in the 1920's timetables. Perhaps they wanted to make it clear that you had to change trains?
As to service, that would be a personal choice as to how to regard it.
> What is the difference between a
> chair car and a coach?
A chair car had a reclining, high-backed seat like those found on Amtrak coaches today. A coach had old-fashioned "walk-over" type seats with low backs.
Although after '37 the San Juan had more modern seats than the word coach used to imply...
> And if you don't purchase
> parlor space, does that mean there is no food
> service for you on the train?
I've wondered that myself. For what it's worth, I've always had the impression that the majority of through passengers took the parlor/dinette cars with the coaches holding mostly local traffic.
I don't know when the old-fashioned train butches were taken off on 115/116 (later 215/216). There were some reminiscences published in Trains (sometime in the last 20 years) by a guy who, as a teenager, was a train butch on 315/316 in the last years before it was cut back to Gunnison (became the Shavano the next year). Without digging them up, ISTR he stated that was the last run on the D&RGW where the butch didn't operate out of Denver, not sure what that meant for 115/116. Interestingly, I have read that in many countries a modern version of the old train butch, now with a cart/trolley, has replaced dining/lounge cars which are now considered old-fangled. The wheel goes 'round and 'round!
Back in the day, bringing your own food on the train for your trip was a lot more common, dining/lounge cars were more for the upper class types. Now you get strange looks when you do this on Amtrak, BTW. OTOH, there is an Amtrak run that is, or at least used to be, known to the crews as the "Chicken Bone Express" because so many passengers brought fried chicken on board to eat...
hank
