Luxury on rails.

• Author: STEVENS, M. EASTLAKE
• Position: Colorado Railear Manufacturing LLC

DID YOU KNOW THEY MAKE CARS IN COLORADO, AND FROM THE GROUND UP, JUST LIKE IN DETROIT? THESE CARS, HOWEVER, COST A MINIMUM $2.5 MILLION, AND ARE 18 FEET HIGH AND 85 FEET LONG.

Every one of them -- four to eight a year -- is made to order at Colorado Railear Manufacturing LLC in Fort Lupton, the only custom rail-car manufacturer in the United States. Patented as the Ultra Dome, they are, in the words of Colorado Railcar President Tom Rader, "cruise ships on steel wheels."

Rader and his team, which now numbers about 80 in a 100,000-square-foot assembly plant, invented Ultra Dome luxury rail cars after he and Tom Janaky, the company's vice president of sales, were observing some cruise-ship passengers in Alaska during the early 1980s.

The passengers, boarding motor coaches for a tour, were racing to fill the buses' domed seats, which offered a 360-degree view of the Alaskan wilderness. A lightbulb lit up over Rader's head.

The Kansas native had spent his whole career -- all the way back to his days as a University of Kansas student -- in the tourism/travel business. His idea: build domed rail cars for scenic tours.

The Ultra Dome cars he now builds are designed so that most of the upper deck is covered with 6 feet by 6 feet glass windows that deflect 68 percent of solar gain.

"We designed the windows so everyone could enjoy the view, not just passengers sitting by the window," says Janaky.

The cars cover 3,000 square feet on two levels, an increase of 40 to 60 percent over a standard one-deck rail car.

Colorado Railcar started when Rader purchased and refurbished three Pullman rail cars, left his job as vice president and general manager of cruise tours for Holland America/Westours, and established Tour Alaska, a rail-tour business. With Janaky, Rader started persuading cruise-ship companies to sail into Seward, where ship passengers could take a seven-day tour extension by train to see Anchorage, Fairbanks and Denali National Park.

"Cruise ships used to go only to Juneau and Skagway," says Janaky. From Skagway, bus tours were available to the interior of Alaska. But only 7 percent of cruise passengers would take the add-on bus trip.

Yet by 1986, 40 percent of the passengers on Alaska cruises were signing on for the land tour offered by Tour Alaska, and company revenues exceeded $29 million. Those refurbished Pullman cars seated 56 people, and Rader saw a market for luxury rail cars.

He sold Tour Alaska and went into the custom rail-car...