52 hours aboard the California Zephyr, the longest train ride in the US

Nobody understands the magic of Amtrak’s California Zephyr train quite like Brad Swartzwelter, better known to passengers as Conductor Brad.

During Swartzwelter’s 30-year career as a conductor, he estimates he’s completed more than 90 trips annually, logging about 500 miles on each trip – in total, he has travelled 1.4 million miles on America’s rails.

But he came to love the train far before he started working for Amtrak, while growing up in Boulder, Colorado. “My father would go fishing…