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. |
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