Grand Canyon Railway ceases steam op's !

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

The Grand Canyon Railway Company announced two months ago that they were to cease steam operation by the end of this year.

Their last steam has now run.

Grand Canyon will continue to operate using heritage diesel hauled trains - as an operation they are far from dead!

The decision to discontinue operation of steam was based on purely financial grounds - it was too costly to continue operating steam, compared to diesel, and more importantly, passengers polled did not seem to care if steam or diesel hauled the train!

The steam they did run were beautiful standard guage 2-8-0,s and 2-8-2's - their most recent refurbished engine came of the line at the end of last year.

The staff of 20 who maintained steam have now been laid off, and two of the units (a 2-8-0 and 2-8-2) are to be plinthed on site - the fate of the other and spares etc are unknown.