By David O. Williams | Denver Gazette
A longtime Amtrak train conductor credited with crafting a business plan that helped revive the mothballed Winter Park Express ski train in 2017 now has a plan to get at least 60% of the commercial truck traffic off of Interstate 70 and free it up for skiers, snowboarders and other mountain travelers.
Brad Swartzwelter, 60, retired as conductor of the ski train last spring after 30 years with Amtrak, the federal rail agency that runs the popular, seasonal and recently expanded ski train service between Denver’s Union Station and the city of Denver’s Winter Park Resort.
“I-70 congestion has cost us dearly in the snow sports industry, and it is my absolute mission in life … to get people safely, conveniently and economically up to our economic engine, which is skiing and snowboarding,” Swartzwelter said in a recent phone interview.
Swartzwelter’s idea, based on successful European models, is a truck-by-train “rail bridge” over and through the Colorado Rockies using Union Pacific’s existing Moffat Tunnel Subdivision rail line that runs from Kansas in the east through Denver to Grand Junction and on to Utah in the west. Entire semi-tractor trucks would be driven onto flatbed rail cars and drivers would then have the option of sleeper cars for the nine-hour trip across the state in either direction.