WINTER PARK, Colo. -- The Winter Park Ski Train is back! After a seven-year departure from the rails, skiers and riders can now take the train to the slopes.
The train will leave from Denver's Union Station at 7 a.m. and leave Winter Park at 4:30 p.m. to Denver.
“With the train, your experience starts when you leave Denver, you've added to the experience of the day and you don't just dread going home, you look forward to going home, because you get to ride the train again and then you arrive in Union Station which I just think is spectacular," said Gary DeFrange, President of Winter Park Ski Resort.
The trip will take two hours and the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) said it will pull about 500 cars out of ski traffic on I-70 each day of the weekend.
The trip will cost adults $39 one way; children riding with parents pay half price -- and the experience is not what you may remember from years ago.
Winter Park, with help from some grants and donations, is spending about $3.5 million to build a new, heated, ADA compliant train platform that sits just a couple of hundred yards away from the chair lift.
The effort and expense to build the new platform is reassurance that organizers want this to stick around for good.
"Of course we have to recognize how the economics are performing on it, but we're going to make at least a three year commitment to test this and try get it up and running," said Matthew Hardison, executive vice president of Amtrak.
The first train leaves Union Station on January 7 and will run through the ’16-’17 ski season.
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