Ski train tournament tees

Fraser is a town in beautiful Grand County, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains. The population is 1,500 and is in the valley of the Fraser River just northwest of Winter Park, Colorado. Fraser was incorporated in 1953. The post office has been there since 1876. With a subarctic climate, Fraser has an annual temperature of 35 degrees and is one of the coldest towns in the lower 48. Snowfall is heavy and it freezes year-round, so Fraser has been called the “icebox of the nation.” A freeze has been recorded for every date of the year. The Fraser Valley has stunning views, endless outdoor activities (including skiing), wide open spaces, and people who are very friendly and down to earth.

A Colorado tradition for generations, the Ski Train was America’s largest scheduled passenger train running into the hills, carrying riders from Denver to Winter Park to go mountain biking, hiking, skiing, snowboarding, and sightseeing. The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (or simply known as the Rio Grande) started the Ski Train in 1940. Then, there was one trip in each direction per day.

The Ski Train was sold and its last run to the Winter Park Ski Resort was in 2009. In 2016, Amtrak partnered with the resort to run a ski train on select weekends and holidays. The Winter Park Express, or the Ski Train as the locals still call it, originates at Denver’s Union Station, takes passengers directly to the resort, and waits in Fraser until the end of the day when it returns to the resort to take its passengers back to Denver. Recently, the state of Colorado has researched expanding the service on the popular Winter Park Ski Train. Which brings us to this month’s story. We just love telling stories.

Among other outdoor activities, Colorado has become known for the Summer Mountain Volleyball Tournaments, and in 2017 (coincidently coinciding with the reemergence of the Ski Train) our client added the Fraser Valley Doubles Volleyball Tournament. The event is located just 90 minutes from Denver with all grass fields grouped together. The Fraser and Winter Park area hosts these volleyball enthusiasts in the valley annually in late summer. Each year we are asked to develop the merch for the tournament. When we say merch, we mean decorated apparel. Sometimes we get just a little bit of direction and this year we did. “Let’s do a ski train kinda thing, since the train comes right in next to the courts and the timing of dates and all.”

We love trains. One of our fathers was a model railroad enthusiast (God rest his soul). The only caveat though, is we wanted to do a steam engine or locomotive rather than the traditional ski train you may have seen in photos. The first successful steam locomotive in the U.S. was built in 1827 and were used for railroad power until World War II. They are far more interesting in detail than today’s diesel engines ­­— in our opinion, anyway.

First, we would need some reference. We took to Google and simply did a search turning up way too many photos. We chose a few we liked and went to work old school like. We printed several of our photos to a similar size and laid them on a light table and placed some paper over the top where we used a pencil to sketch in some details of multiple train photos. This was kind of a morph of several engines. The customer wanted something fairly simple, and this was a great way to get a clean look. After several sketches with some trees and mountain backgrounds added, it was time to get out the pen and ink to clean it all up. We scanned our final drawing into Photoshop and worked it a bit more. We opened up some areas and filled in others.

We imported our vectorized version of the locomotive into Illustrator and set our type on an additional layer since it would be a different color. We chose a western-style font for this type solution. “Fraser Valley” set largest on the top and “Doubles Volleyball” on the bottom with the established date in the middle. We popped in a generic volleyball as well. Done? Nope. “Not volleyball enough.” So, we laid it out a bit differently with a hot air ballon in the background using Tom’s (the owner) volleyball as the balloon. Not our idea, but hey, it worked for them.

Once our seps were complete on layers and in spot colors, we placed the file on our Illustrator art board where our registration marks, grayscale, and job information live and outputted on CTS (computer to screen) with a frequency of 45 lpi half-tone at a 22.5 degree angle and a round shape. For a very thin ink deposit, both screens were work hardened N-272 tpi (threads per inch) at a tension of 45 N/cm2. We nailed the set up — because there was no registration. We used 75/90/75 triple ply, dual durometer squeegees with flood and print speeds moderate with minimal pressures. Inks were primary blue and red cut 50/50. Easy, breezy run!

Back in the 1980s there was tournament in Fraser called the Never Summer Doubles Tournament. It disappeared in the ’90s and the grass didn’t see much play the next couple decades. Today, Fraser Valley is filled with nets and volleyballers again each Labor Day weekend. The grass is still green and there are over 100 courts, all in one location. Fraser Valley Doubles sees over 600 teams annually and finishes each years’ summer off in style. Too bad we couldn’t take the Ski Train to the tournament. Well, not yet anyway.