Dedicated to preserving, organizing, and making available information on the
Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad


PURPOSE - WHY DO WE EXIST?
In a nutshell, we exist as a strictly non-commercial, non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and making available information concerning the late Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. As an extension of that, we also have provided space and server power to any other railroad or railfan related efforts that have approached us and we feel are worth giving a home.

NOTE: In actuality, with the constraints of college on most of our lives the past few years, most of the D&RGW content has yet to materialize (but I'm working on it, I promise...), and drgw.net has also been used to host a few non-rail related sites that are related to other interests in our lives, such as electronics, weather, and solar racing vehicles.

Historically, the system that has come to be DRGW.NET was actually founded back in 1995 under a different name with completely different goals. The original server and LAN was just a spare time project by a group of us in college to connect our own machines to the internet. As this project grew and got higher-speed connections, several political rifts formed in the founding group, and I decided to start over. Being a longtime railfan as well as a fan of the Denver & Rio Grande Western and its history, I decided to pick up the drgw.net domain with the intent of using it to store and preserve information on D&RGW, since it had long since disappeared into the SP and then more recently the UP. With the advent of the Iowa Interstate Photo Archive and the CNW Photo Archive, though, I expanded the purpose just a bit to housing any railroad or railfan related site that interested me. Now that I'm out in the real world, have more time than I did in college (sort of), and have moved to Colorado, I'm going to get back to the original goal and start filling in Rio Grande content. - NDH
I HAVE SOME/LOTS OF D&RGW RELATED INFORMATION, CAN I HELP?
YES! Most definitely! If you have old Rio Grande documents or photos that you don't mind freely sharing (electronically, obviously) for historical purposes, we'd be very interested in talking to you. Timetables, roster photos, route information, construction data/photos, anything D&RGW, RGW, or even for that matter most any information related to railroading (past or present) in Colorado or Utah are all of interest to us. In terms of photos, please make sure you own the necessary rights to allow us to do such a thing, as we're not interested in doing anything that would infringe on the original author's rights. Concerning old Rio Grande company paper, however, we feel that in most cases we're safe in reproducing them for historical reference, as the company itself is now gone and such documents have no practical / commercial value to Union Pacific.
SO IS THIS STRICTLY D&RGW MATERIAL - THERE'S A LOT OF MODERN STUFF!
Yes, mostly. The focus is, and will be for the forseeable future, the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. The Grande has been gone as a corporation for over a decade, but bits and pieces of it live on. Most of Colorado mountain railroading is somehow Rio Grande related, even if it is five UP SD90MACs pulling an all-aluminum coal drag. The Moffat Line is as intact as ever (and quite possibly in better shape than it's been in a few years), and the saga of Tennessee Pass continues to be written. Additionally, Rio Grande motive power and rolling stock are still, well, motive and rolling. Many former Rio Grande employees stayed on with Southern Pacific and Union Pacific in their old territories. While the past history of the Rio Grande is a good thing to cover (and we will be covering it - don't worry), the final chapters are still unfolding in front of us. As far as I'm concerned, the D&RGW story won't be done until the Moffat is ripped out, Tennessee is little more than a paved hiking trail for Vail yuppies, Minturn has been annexed, and new residents of Helper, UT, are amazed that they ever had a railroad, let alone one that needed helpers. So, in the meantime, in addition to filling in the history, I'll keep covering the current events on the system. Besides, you speak of the Grande as dead like it's a terminal thing - as if Palmer and Moffat's railroads haven't come back from worse...
I HAVE A SLIGHTLY USED D&RGW SD40T-2
THAT NEEDS TO BE DONATED TO A GOOD HOME...
I'll call the contractors tomorrow to start on a shed for it in the back yard. Please let me know where to tell UP or BNSF to pick it up.
Honestly, does anyone know what scrap value is on one of these? I'd really like to see one preserved.
I HAVE A RAILROAD-RELATED SITE, CAN YOU HELP?
We're a little tight on space and resources at the moment, but as long as it's strictly non-commercial and focused around the historical, newsworthy, and or hobby aspects of railroading and railfanning, please don't hesitate to ask. We'll see what we can do to help.
WHO'S IN CHARGE?
Now that's a good question... Umm...
Honestly, there are six of us who really keep things going around here. Only three of those are railfans...

Nathan D. & Michelle M. T. Holmes
Nathan is really the one responsible* for the whole D&RGW focus in the first place, and is more or less the founder of the whole thing. Michelle is my wife, and she has been known to have railfan tendencies, though not quite as hard-core as I am yet. I'm working on it. We're both engineers and both live and work in Colorado Springs, CO.

*However, if you're looking to sue someone for something, I firmly claim Mark is responsible. He's been there since the beginning, too.
Mark A. Finn
If there could be called two "original" users, Mark would have to be the other one. He was also there the night that DRGW.NET was born. He's currently working on the east coast as an engineer for an electric vehicle firm. Mark's not a railfan, just one of us insane solar car people from years back. Now I've also managed to get him hired on at FedEx as my co-worker. Three of us in the same office - scary, right? Mark in a line: "What comments in my code? I didn't put those there!"
Michael D. Petersen
Michael, the third railfan and the driving force behind DRGW's sister project, RailARC. Michael's working for Maxim Integrated Products here in Colorado Springs, CO, as a design engineer. He's also primarily behind the Iowa Interstate site we host.
Brenton D. Rothchild
Brenton is by far the newest member of this group, but he's another recruit from the solar car team at ISU. He's currently trying to get DriveCluster off the ground.
Brenton in a line: "See my surplus SGI - guess what I can take out with it!"
Troy Benjegerdes
Don't have a suitable picture of him, but Troy is one of our background administrators, which is justifiable as he's married and trying to raise almost two young kids at the moment, in addition to working on PPC Linux stuff and scalable Linux clusters.
 


LEGAL DISCLAIMER: First, we are in no way a for-profit organization. We're so non-profit we consider ourselves an anti-profit organization. In fact, we suffer a net loss every month to keep DRGW.NET running and we will not and cannot ever charge for what we do. Second, we are in no way affiliated with the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (even though they disappeared into Southern Pacific and now, Union Pacific), except for being fans. If you need transportation services on former Rio Grande lines, please contact Union Pacific. The owner of this network is a D&RGW enthusiast, including prototype historical research as well as modelling - this is the sole reason behind the name. Also, thanks to Benn Coifman for the Rio Grande font - it's available at RailFonts.