Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad

The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, often shortened to the Rio Grande, was an American Class I railroad company that started as a 3 foot narrow gauge line running south from Denver, Colorado, in 1870 and served mainly as a transcontinental bridge line between Denver and Ogden, Utah, while also carrying substantial coal and mineral traffic. At its height in 1889 it operated the largest narrow gauge railroad network in North America, with 1,861 miles of track across Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, and it ran the Rio Grande Zephyr passenger train until 1983, the last private intercity passenger train in the United States until Brightline began service in Florida in 2018. In 1988 the parent company Rio Grande Industries purchased the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, and the resulting merged railroad took the Southern Pacific name, with most of the former Rio Grande main lines now owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad.