The conductor shouted “All aboard!” as stragglers scurried to the train with coffee in hand, their ski and snowboarding equipment already safely tucked inside the Winter Park Express.

The last few hopped on and the train slowly rolled out of Union Station just as the pink sunrise began to overtake the sky Saturday morning, signaling the return of train service from Denver to Winter Park after a seven-year drought.

“To me, this is just heaven, obviously,” passenger Andrew Kemler said. “It’s such a pain struggling with the traffic on the weekends. It just took so much out of me.”

Kemler, a skier of 40 years, was taking the two-hour train with his 8-year-old daughter Emily. He’s already bought another ticket for a weekend in February.

He had never taken the previous ski train that stopped running in 2009. A neighbor told him about the Winter Park Express and he thought it was a good idea. He said he was equally excited for the views from the train, including the Moffat Tunnel that cuts through the Continental Divide, as he was for skiing.

“This could take an hour longer and I’d still do it,” Kemler said as he was walking on to one of the compartments.

Snowboarder Andy Marsh said he hasn’t been up to the mountains yet this season. He rode the former ski train once during its last year. He had an Epic Pass for the past 15 years and a Winter Park pass five years before that. He said he was excited to get back there.

“I don’t know how often (I’ll use the train). It’s kind of expensive,” Marsh said while waiting to hand over his equipment so it could be stored on the train. “But it’s a unique experience and worth the cash once in a while.”

One-way tickets are $39, $49 or $59. The train can hold 554 people and will make one round trip a day on Saturdays and Sundays, leaving Denver at 7 a.m. and departing Winter Park at 4:30 p.m. There will be two three-day weekend services in February and January, respectively. The service will run through March.

When arriving in Winter Park, passengers get off onto on a newly built 950-feet long heated platform. Both the platform and train are wheelchair accessible.

Weekend train service started in 1940 but was closed nearly 70 years later by Ski Train owner Philip Anschutz, who cited declining profits, cost of insurance and complexities of passenger service on the rail line which is heavily used by freight trains.

Public and private partners, including Amtrak, Union Pacific Railroad and Winter Park Resort, teamed up to bring the train back. During a trial run, the train sold out two days of service in hours.

Winter Park Resort president Gary DeFrange said the demand was still there when the train closed and may have grown since, thanks to a shift in demographics in the past seven years. He said downtown Denver has changed with more apartments and millennials, who are less likely to own cars compared to other generations.

He also said the train is being marketed abroad, where people are accustomed to taking trains to move about.

At a news conference Friday, local politicians and industry representatives touted the new train, saying Colorado is now the only place in the nation where a visitor can get to a ski resort without having to rent a car. They said visitors can fly into Denver International Airport and take the University of Colorado A Line to Union Station where they are able to board the Winter Express Train.

“It is so good to see skis and snowboards back in Union Station on a regular basis,” DeFrange said Friday.