Grand Canyon Railway

There is so much to the Grand Canyon Railway, it's hard to know where to start. It's a historic railroad, an excursion railroad, a useful railroad and above all a successful railroad. The first revenue train to the Grand Canyon was in 1901. This was the preferred way to get to the canyon until it was displaced by the automobile and the last train ran in 1968. It was in 1989 that the new Grand Canyon railway ran it's first train out of Williams to the Grand Canyon. Now it carries over 225,000 people a year, and a corresponding number of cars are NOT going to the limited facilities in the park. They only use their steam engines between Memorial Day and Labor Day so I didn't get to experience that ... maybe next time. Tied to the railroad is both a hotel and a huge RV park and a restaurant, allowing GCR to sell complete packages to families. Their Polar Express season starts in early November and runs into January. They board as many as 1000 people per train and often run two trains in an evening. They also do "A Day Out With Thomas," which starts this Friday. I plan to stay around long enough Friday to see how they run their Thomas operation.