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Letter: Thanks and remembrance from Railroad Museum

As the Glenwood Railroad Museum is in the final stages of being dismantled, we would like to pause and thank all the individuals behind the hard work and dedication to the vision of saving one of the pieces of Glenwood’s history and heritage in the form of a little museum. In particular, Oscar McCollum, Jan and Pat Girardot, Dick Helmke, Pat and Anne Thrasher, Bill and Phyliss Coleman, Ross Talbott, John Ainsley and Lisa Hayes, and Bob Warner.

Beginning in 2002, through many years of raising funds, sharing the vision with the community, building, painting, hanging doors and lights and refurbishing just about everything in an all but abandoned section of the old D&RG Railroad Depot, these volunteers and many others, put together the Glenwood Railway Museum … from scratch.

Now, the artifacts and photographs, many on loan from generous people here in town and around the western slope, are being returned to their original owners. Some of these things will find a new public location in which to be displayed. Some will not. But what our community is losing cannot be replaced.

The model trains will no longer run through the weekends. The Christmas Train displays will be gone. The public lectures on how the Denver and Rio Grande helped to build Glenwood Springs will have to be provided elsewhere. But not in our train station. The 50,000 or so folks, most of whom are tourists, who ride Amtrak to and from Glenwood, will not be visiting our train museum and learning about the unique history that has, in part, made our town on the 2,500 mile California Zephyr Route the place not to miss.

I am sure that Pat and Anne will continue to share their experiences and knowledge in different ways in our community, but we have lost what we may not regain.

At the risk of being a little philosophical … we know ourselves in part by where we have come from. Our history, our museums and their curators, our elders, their histories and their cultural memory, cannot be overvalued.

Thank you.

Sandi Brown, Dawn Robison and Eric Pedersen

Glenwood Springs

 


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