Cowboys and Bandits: Why it’s worth travelling to the Grand Canyon by rail

Beside a dusty gravel track in what feels like the middle of nowhere, the train screeches to a halt. A herd of antelope disappears into the horizon: first chased by the thick dust cloud of their own doing, and then by three cowboys on horseback with revolvers. “I’m sorry to tell you that those cowboys have made it onto the train,” announces our conductor, as the town marshal rushes through the carriage.

Sure enough, those desperadoes would soon skulk from seat to seat, parting unsuspecting passengers from their cash along the way. “Get your hands where I can see ’em!” shouts the leader of the Cataract Creek Gang; this is an old fashioned train robbery featuring every darn Wild West cliche imaginable – except the dynamite, obviously. Butch Cassidy would be proud.

I’m travelling on the Grand Canyon Railway, a 65-mile stretch of single track heritage railroad that, until this point, was gently swaying its way between Williams and the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. The cowboys are, of course, part of the act. We all hide dollar bills in creative places – under hats, between book pages, in hair – as gratuities for the actors to find.

It’s so much of an act that I’d already seen these dastardly bandits and the town marshal before boarding the train, at the 9am-on-the-dot, 364-days-a-year slapstick show in the Williams railway depot’s faux Old West town. The show continues during the journey. The town marshal – an (actual) authentic marshal, originally from the Netherlands and with seven horses at his private ranch – teases us by saying a bobcat has been spotted a couple of miles ahead. Cue cameras for a Bobcat forklift left in a small construction site.

Williams has a lot to thank this railroad for. Having first operated in 1901 – to be followed in 1908 by the historic Fray Marcos Hotel and Williams Depot – passenger services were stopped in 1968 due to the rise in popularity of the motor vehicle. The line would later reopen for passenger service in 1989, followed by the current incarnation of the Fray Marcos Hotel: the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel. By 1993, the railway was carrying 105,000 passengers each year and removing 40,000 cars from the road.

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