By Dick Kreck

Around Denver

Fair is fair: With all the knocks I've been putting on the Postal Service, it's only right to give them a kudo, too: One-time Lakewood resident Brett Roth writes (via e-mail), "My wife's grandmother sent us Christmas cards over the years addressed simply to 'Brett & Tara, Lakewood, CO.' No ZIP code, no address, no last name, and yet we received a Christmas card from her every year. Despite the multitude of problems with the USPS, 37 cents is still a bargain in my book." ... Notice the fences around Skyline Park? They're finally getting around to rebuilding the abandoned strip park. It won't be done until next spring. ...

The indomitable Captain Obvious leads the 22nd Almost-Annual Matt Armbruster Memorial Big Wheel Rally, starting at 9 p.m. Saturday at the West End Tavern in Boulder. Bring your own Big Wheel, ride along. ...

In, out of embed: The Post's Bruce Finley and Charlie Brennan of the Rocky Mountain News talk about their experiences working in Iraq during the war, starting at noon Wednesday for The Denver Forum luncheon at the Oxford Hotel. Reservations, 303-832-9030. ... Quotable: "Hear that lonesome whippoorwill?/He sounds too blue to fly./The midnight train is whining low,/I'm so lonesome I could cry." - Hank Williams.

Steamed up about state's old trains

It's tourist season. The Bermuda shorts are in full bloomers.

Unless, like me, you are a closet train goof, you may not know that one of the best ways to get your summertime guests out of the house is our state's steam railroad attractions.

All is revealed in "Steam Trains," a segment of Rocky Mountain PBS' award-winning "Spirit of Colorado" series, airing at 7:30 p.m. Saturday on Channel 6.

From Durango to Cheyenne, the chuffing beasts lug scenery peepers to spectacular views, as they did 100 years ago.

In the early part of the 20th century, tourists flocked to ride "Over the Loop," an engineering marvel that linked the silver-mining towns of Georgetown and Silver Plume in 1884. The line was dismantled in 1939, then rebuilt and reopened in 1984 so we can once again gasp going over the spindly Devil's Gate Bridge.

Down in Durango, one of the construction wonders of the West, the Durango & Silverton Railroad, makes dozens of trips weekly, highlighted by a slow creep along the High Line, enough to give any flatlander the jim-jams.

Steam fans will revel in the views of the Union Pacific's giant Challenger 3985, the world's largest operating steam locomotive, which annually pulls the Denver Post Train to Cheyenne Frontier Days. The fiery beast rushes past the camera in a swirl of steam, dust and sound. Even longtime engineer Steve Lee marvels at the 1.7-million-

pound monster. "The West was big country, big mountains, big engines."

If seeing it rush by inspires you, the train will run again on Saturday, July 19. Some tickets remain at www.cfdtrain.com

The 30-minute "Steam Trains" also covers steamers as diverse as "Puffin' Billy" circling a mile of track at Lakeside Amusement Park and the Colorado Live Steamers, hobbyists who meticulously produce scaled-down versions of historic locomotives.

The fascination with steam locomotives leaps across generations. It is, one rail fan says, "a kid's idea of a dragon." Their engineers talk of their locomotives' "personalities" and recall the nostalgia of the steam engine's whistle.

Old men whose memories flow back to the days when steam locomotives were the last word in transportation build tiny replicas of the steamers of their youth. "Why do we play with trains?" asks one. "We're children who haven't grown up."

Or, as one of the enthralled passengers on the train to Frontier Days even more grandly defines it, "It's the romance of the rails. It's beautiful."

Dick Kreck's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He may be reached at 303-820-1456 or DKreck@denverpost.com .