Travel Date: September 6, 2025
For the past few years we’ve traveled with Terri and Jim in September. For three years we went to Canada; this year we decided to stay stateside. When discussing where to go someone (I swear it was not me) mentioned the word “trains”. I did not say no. We found a Road Scholar tour of Colorado tourist trains and mining towns. Carla and I had never been on an organized tour (though we were thwarted three times in the past few years); but Terri and Jim had great things to say about the company so we booked the trip.
Day 1 of the trip was a get together dinner at the Denver airport hotel; so Day 2 was the first full day. We started out heading west to Georgetown but then headed roughly clockwise the rest of the trip. Here is a Google maps screenshot of most of our trip. Google ran out of stops so you’ll have to imagine the return drive from Redstone to Denver through mountain roads. Click on the map to go to Google Maps
As you can see we were up over and down the Colorado Rockies. We were in store for some incredible scenery.
Our transportation from town to town was aboard a beautiful and comfortable bus motor coach.
Victor was our tour drive. He is amazing. Such a good driver as well as friendly and helpful. During the travel season he drives for Road Scholar and other tours. In the winter he drives the bus for visiting NBA basketball teams and NHL hockey teams playing in Denver. We tried to get some juicy goss from him but he wouldn’t spill. After driving us for 9 days he took off on the same trip with a different Road Scholar group the next day. What a wonder. To paraphrase a previous work mate, Jeff Willis: “I love me some Victor, and not just a little bit.”
Our tour expert was Al. He has been the tour guide for this trip for about 40 years. He is very knowledgeable about the history, people, mines, and railroads of western Colorado. Sadly I didn’t get a good picture of him. Here is an unflattering picture from later on the tour. He deserves a better photo; if I can find one I’ll share it in a later post.
PJ was our Road Scholar trip manager. She made sure everything ran smoothly,. Here she is with Victor seeing us off as we head out on another train.
The Georgetown Loop Railroad was our first stop. The depot is located next to Clear Creek.
Looking the other way we saw a trestle that we would travel over.
Along with the steam power there are some diesels for moving stuff around.
I was excited to ride on my second ever steam train. My only other trip was on the Grand Canyon RR. Our power was working in the yard to get our train ready.
Our first steam locomotive of the week; that deserves a close up.
Before long we were on board and heading up the mountain and crossing Clear Creek on the trestle
Upon arriving back at the Georgetown depot we boarded our bus and headed down to Colorado Springs for our next train. Next post
