When Boulder residents rode the rails in luxury

It might be hard to believe today, but Boulder was once a railroad hub that included Interurban commuter trains to Denver, the narrow gauge into the mountains and big mainline trains that rumbled through town on their way between Billings, Mont., and Fort Worth, Texas. Another railroad line was the Denver & Boulder Valley that ran between Boulder and Brighton.

In its glory days, passengers rode the rails in luxury on gasoline-powered (and, later, diesel-powered) McKeen Motor Cars.

Coal mining in Erie was the impetus for the Brighton-Boulder railroad route. The D&BV was the second railroad line (after the Colorado Central) to reach Boulder, with both lines first steaming into Boulder in 1873.

Freight cars brought the locally mined coal to Boulder, where teamsters (and, later, the narrow-gauge railroad) hauled the much-needed fuel into the mountains. There, it was used to produce the steam that powered machinery in western Boulder County’s gold and silver mines.

Meanwhile, passengers getting on and off in Brighton connected with the Denver Pacific Railroad that ran between Denver and Cheyenne. That rail line also benefited from Erie’s cheap and plentiful coal.

The self-propelled McKeen Motor Cars were added to the line in 1908.

These single rail cars were aerodynamically pointed in the front and rounded in the back and easily identified by their distinctive large, round windows.

Named for their inventor, William R. McKeen Jr. (a superintendent of Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha, Neb.), they often were referred to by reporters at the time as “submarines on wheels.”

Warm, wood paneling surrounded cushioned seats, with room for 57 to 84 passengers, as well as baggage and mail. The average car was 70-feet long, had a 200-horsepower gasoline engine and reached a top speed of 90 mph. The motor cars were competitors of the electric-powered Interurban rail cars that whisked passengers between Boulder and Denver every hour.

McKeen cars today are few and far between. So far, only one of the four known remaining motor cars to be completely restored and operational is on display at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, Nev. The car was built in 1910 and ran on the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. It was unveiled in 2010 and is now a National Historic Landmark.

In Boulder County, the McKeen cars left the Union Pacific Depot at the depot’s original location at the intersection of 14th Street and today’s Canyon Boulevard. The tracks followed today’s Canyon Boulevard to 17th Street, then cut northeast and crossed Folsom Street before paralleling Pearl Street and then intersecting the current railroad tracks east of 30th Street.

Heading east, the D&BV line continued to parallel Old Pearl Street, ran through the town of Valmont, then crossed 75th Street before running south of Boulder Creek to Erie. The last McKeen car run was in 1941.

Although the McKeen cars operated in Boulder County for only 33 years, trains ran on the Boulder-Brighton line until 1967. Signs for the D&BV crossing on 75th Street are still in place at the turnoff to the Sawhill Ponds Trailhead. Tracks are visible in the town of Valmont and to the east, but no trains, including the old luxury motor cars, run on them anymore.