I lost one of my closest friends this afternoon when longtime Burlington fan and BRHS member Robert E. (Bob) Jensen passed away at age 75. His health had been failing for nearly a year and he was in a care facility near
his home (and mine) in Arvada, Colo.
Bob and I met on June 6, 1959, on board a steam excursion between Denver and Colorado Springs sponsored by the Colorado & Southern and powered by CB&Q O-5-B No. 5626. The big Northern was laying over in Denver after
bringing the Illini Railroad Club's Journey to Yesterday excursion to Denver from Lincoln. The excursionists were down in southwestern Colorado riding the Rio Grande narrow gauge, so the C&S took the opportunity to put the 5626 to work while it was in Denver.
Bob and I quickly became good friends and have remained so ever since. Bob's father immigrated from Germany in 1926, came to Denver and was employed as a machinist in the three-year-old CB&Q-C&S locomotive shops -- a position he held until the shops closed
in September 1955. So it was only natural that Bob became a Burlington fan. After graduating from North High School in Denver he worked briefly for the C&S as a messenger before enrolling in the Colorado Institute of Art, where his natural artistic skills
were refined. He soon began cranking out railroad paintings prodigiously, the majority of them with Burlington subject matter. Since that time his paintings have appeared in or on the cover of over a dozen books, including Corbin's
Burlington in Transition, my own The Colorado Road, and numerous
Annuals of the Colorado Railroad Museum. I am proud to have three of his paintings, including my favorite, one of his few works in oil, from
The Colorado Road, of the Texas Zephyr behind E5s passing Castle Rock, Colo., in the snow.
After a stint in the Army, spent primarily in Germany, Bob took a position with the U.S. Air Force Academy as an illustrator and moved to Colorado Springs. He worked at the Academy until, after the sudden death of his
wife Jenny from cancer, he retired and, with his daughter Annje, relocated to Arvada and went to work at the Colorado Railroad Museum. He held that job for more than 10 years, designing exhibits, books and promotional materials and producing more railroad
paintings. When he finally retired for good, my wife and I had just moved into an Arvada home just a few blocks from Bob, and the two of us began meeting every week for lunch, a tradition that continued until last year when his health would no longer permit
it.
Like most railfans, Bob was a prolific photographer. He was one of a group of 10 local fans who founded the National Railway Historical Society Intermountain Chapter in 1961 and planned and hosted the NRHS national convention
in Denver in 1963. When the chapter purchased CB&Q office car 96 from the Burlington in 1962, Bob designed a temporary tail sign for the car and then the permanent drumhead that it carried on dozens of excursions until its retirement to the Colorado Railroad
Museum after the 1971 creation of Amtrak. Bob finally let his NRHS membership lapse a few years after receiving his 50-year membership pin.
He will be greatly missed.
Hol Wagner