Matters of Perspective
It is funny that there are times when we can be reminded of how the simplest things in life can provide the most satisfaction.
Take the image above, for example.
These two balls of fluff spent the first four months of their young lives outdoors as feral kittens. They came to us, because their mother spotted a source first of clean water and later food. Yes, I plead guilty to being the source of both. It was a warm summer and the four kittens we saw together in the bushes outside our front door looked like they could use a cool drink. Mom was occasionally around, but for the most part, these kittens were on their own.
So, I took pity and bought a bag of inexpensive kibble at the local grocery store to share with them. We already had one indoor cat and she was curious about the kittens, to say the least. Downright excited at times. (Belle came to us as a re-home from Craigslist, keeping our pal Cruiser company for the last year of his time with us.) But at that time, we had no intention of adding to our little household.
As the days passed, these kittens and another tame cat all came to water and feed at our trough. I think after Mom left the litter, the other cat took up the role of surrogate watching over the bunch of them. (I suspect she had been abandoned at some point as she was not skittish around us, as most feral cats are.
The kittens became accustomed to us and would wait outside for the time of day when either fresh water was forthcoming or the once a day feeding of kibble. The smallest of the four would be the first at the dish when kibble came out. She would growl as she ate, signalling to the other three that they were going to have to wait their turn. But once they had all eaten, they would come to us for attention. We didn’t threaten them by grabbing or rushing after them. As time passed, they were well socialized.
I am not sure what happened, but the four became three and then three became two. One afternoon, our neighbors had some friends visit, and the friends brought their dog to run about the back yard. The gate to the yard was only about three feet high and this dog could easily look over and see the kittens with us and it was more than a bit interested. Having seen their numbers deplete, I decided we wouldn’t take any chances and brought the two remaining inside the house with us.
They have been inside cats ever since. This summer will see the calendar turn seven years since that day.
Chessie (the runt of the litter) and her sister Peake are named for the railroad kittens of the C&O (Chesapeake and Ohio). As with good indoor cats, we are the staff, attending to their needs as required at all times of the day and night. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
When weather is nice, the bench in the photo is placed behind the safety of the secured screen door and becomes a perch from where the passing panorama can be viewed. Everything from birds and other animals (so far skunks have not been annoyed in passing) to the postal delivery people and our current neighbors children, all have become items of long fascination as hours may pass with the two cats sitting there taking it all in.
Yes, the feline version of people watching. From this perch, the view maybe takes in some ten feet or so on either side of the door. And for the most part, the cats are just fine with that. As long as no one tries to invade their inside territory, they are okay with that. On a couple of occasions, they have received inquisitive visitors at the door in the form of other cats. Meows may be exchanged and occasional growls or hissing can be heard. Yet, in all this time, the two of them are somewhat satisfied with their indoor life. Not to say there have not been escape attempts by both, but safety first and they came right back inside, under protest at times.
Give them some peaceful moments as seen above, and they are both happy with the situation. At least, I hope they are…
Indeed, matters of perspective.
Survivors from the Industrial Past – Baldwin Narrow Gauge Steam Locomotives
Industrial archeology tends to be a subject that you don’t often think about. Unless you happen to be a fan of scenes like the one above, that is.
Railroading in the days between 1870 and 1890 was a heady pursuit. With the late unpleasantness between the States behind us as a nation, not only imaginations looked to the West, but those in search of opportunities did as well. Lines expanded in all directions as the country grew as resources required transportation from the factories and to the markets.
Narrow gauge railroads often were the method of choice because of two points. The first was cost. As narrow gauge railroads were smaller in size that their larger cousins. Which meant lower prices for equipment. The second item was that narrow gauge railroads were more flexible than their larger cousins, too. With some inventive engineering, they could go places that full size railroads found difficult.
These railroads served a variety of masters to reach resources that the West needed to bring from remote places to markets across the country. Cattle and sheep could spend summers in high pastures full of green grass. Mines could get necessary supplies needed to dig deep into the earth where the mineral bonanzas lay; and to bring those bonanzas of coal, gold, silver, copper and more to smelters and other locations away from the mines for processing. Or perhaps it was timber from forests to mills to be come lumber used in building homes, businesses, ships or other structures of all kinds.
One of the most prolific builders of steam locomotives for the 3-foot gauge railroads of California and Nevada was the Baldwin Locomotive Works, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From the first locomotive in 1832 to it’s last in 1956, it set standards that made it the envy of others in the business.
Image from Wikipedia.
This Baldwin product was a good example of the art in the period starting in 1870. It was built in 1872 for export to Finland. The 4-4-0, or American type, featured four (4) pilot wheels, four (4) driving wheels and no (0) trailing wheels on the locomotive. It had been a standard locomotive type on both Union and Confederate railroads throughout the War. First patented in 1836 by William H. Campbell (as chief engineer for the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railway), it was estimated that by 1872, this wheel arrangement represented eighty-five percent of all steam locomotives in operation in the United States.
So great was the demand for this design, that even when surpassed by larger and more flexible designs, orders for the type continued to be received at manufacturers around the world. The last one built in the United States was a Baldwin product in 1945 for the United Railways of Yucatan in Mexico (Interestingly enough, this was the same railroad that the Walt Disney Company chose to purchase the five Baldwin 3-foot gauge steam locomotives from in 1969. They became the locomotive fleet still in operation today at the Walt Disney World Railroad in Orlando, Florida.)
My own connection to these products is a genealogical one. One of my paternal great grandfathers was a young man earning his living as a vaquero at ranches in the Pine Valley in Central Nevada before the turn of the 20th Century. He joined a group traveling to a Mardi Gras dance by train in the mining town of Eureka, Nevada in 1899. He was hoping to spend time with a certain young woman at the dance, but she was intent on someone else, and he had a miserable time that evening.
Instead of riding back to the ranch in the passenger cars of the narrow gauge Eureka and Palisade Railroad, he rode in the cab of the steam locomotive instead. It was on this trip that he decided that he would give up life on the back of a horse and take up railroading instead. While he was turned away by the Southern Pacific (as being too small) that year and told to come back the next, he had a 51 year career in railroading; retiring as a locomotive engineer in 1951 and holding number one in seniority on the SP’s Salt Lake Division. I have no doubt that the narrow gauge locomotive that started his life long interest in railroading was a Baldwin 4-4-0.
Thanks to him, I started my own passion for railroading with a cab ride in a diesel locomotive with him and my father at the SP’s Sparks, Nevada yard facility at the tender age of 3 years old. I have strong memories of being handed up to cab and hearing the airhorn blow during the short ride and forth. Likewise, it probably explains my attraction to the sounds of an Electromotive Division 567 diesel engine. But that is another story…
Oddly enough, there are a good number of Baldwin 3-foot gauge steam locomotives still with us today. Especially here in California and Nevada.
Of those, there is one that may even be the locomotive that started it all for me. The Eureka and Palisade’s steam locomotive number 4. the “Eureka” calls Las Vegas, Nevada home and it is owned by Dan Markoff. Built in 1875, it is Baldwin builders number 3763. From Wikipedia:
The locomotive was built in 1875 for the Eureka & Palisade Railroad, which was built to transport passengers and goods from the mining town of Eureka to connect with the Central Pacific Railroad in Palisade. The engine served on this railroad until 1896, when it was sold to the Sierra Nevada Wood and Lumber Company. It operated on the Sierra Nevada Wood and Lumber until 1938 when the company dissolved and the engine was sold to a scrap dealer.
Warner Bros. bought the engine in 1939, and it was featured in many films, such as Torrid Zone, Cheyenne Autumn, and The Great Train Robbery. The Eureka’s last film appearance was in the 1976 film, The Shootist, and it was sold thereafter to Old Vegas, an amusement park in Henderson, Nevada, where it was placed on display. In 1978, the California State Railroad Museum, was in the process of restoring North Pacific Coast no. 12 Sonoma, another 8/18C class 4-4-0 nearly identical to the Eureka. The museum had the latter stripped down to reveal its original paint scheme that was still on the engine, and used it as a guide for restoring the former. In 1985, a fire had consumed the Old Vegas park, with one of the burning buildings collapsing on the Eureka, badly damaging the engine.
A year later, the engine was discovered by Las Vegas attorney Dan Markoff, who then purchased the engine and had it restored to operating condition. The restored Eureka debuted at Railfair ’91 at the California State Railroad Museum.
The locomotive has visited a number of 3-foot gauge railroads and has seen operation at the Nevada State Railroad Museum at Boulder City, near it’s Las Vegas home. Markoff is also building a brand new “vintage” passenger coach to match the “Eureka”.
The restored “Eureka” seen on the Durango & Silverton Railroad at Rockwood, Colorado
during a refueling (wood) stop in October of 1997.Photo from Wikipedia.
Another Baldwin locomotive from Palisade, the Eureka Nevada Railway number 12, a 2-8-0, builders number 14771, built in 1896 (for the Florence and Cripple Creek Railroad in Colorado) is part of the collection on display at the Nevada Southern Railroad Museum in Boulder City, NV. The museum has a new executive director and we can hope some love and attention will come to this classic locomotive in the future.
Dan Markoff isn’t the first person to take on the restoration of a Baldwin narrow gauge steam locomotive of the 1870’s. In 1938, that honor fell to Ward and Betty Kimball with their acquisition of the Nevada Central Railroad’s number 2, a 2-6-0, built in 1881, builders number 5575, as they brought it to their home among the orange groves in San Gabriel. The “Emma Nevada” from the Grizzly Flats Railroad is the project of a determined group of volunteers at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris, CA. Be sure to check out the new Facebook page for this group!
Another Nevada narrow gauge veteran recently returned to operation after a long restoration (including using portions of the original lap-seam boiler) is the “Glenbrook“, locomotive #1 of the Carson-Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company. Built by Baldwin in April of 1875 (Builders Number 3712), she was part of the efforts of the Carson-Tahoe Flume and Lumber Company to bring much needed wood for construction from the shores of Lake Tahoe to the mines of Nevada’s Comstock Lode at Virginia City.
When lumber operations ceased in the late 1890’s, the owners moved the locomotive to a new railroad, the Lake Tahoe Railway and Transportation Company, providing passenger and freight service between Tahoe City and the connection with the Central Pacific at Truckee. in 1926, that line was sold to the Southern Pacific and converted to standard gauge. The Bliss family (owners of the LTR&T) held onto the “Glenbrook” until 1937 when it was sold to the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad between Colfax and Grass Valley, CA. When that line was abandoned in 1943, it looked like the locomotive was headed to scrap as the war was rounding up all kinds of surplus metals.
The Bliss family was convinced to repurchase the “Glenbrook”, and to donate it to the Nevada State Museum in Carson City. There it sat until the creation of the Nevada State Railroad Museum. Restoration efforts began in the 1980’s and were finally completed last year. A great deal of the original locomotive was retained in the project including parts of the original Baldwin lap-seam boiler.
The “Glenbrook” is the oldest operational steam locomotive in the country, and was first operated for public display on May 23, 2015. Truly a gem!
The sister locomotive to the “Glenbrook” was the number 2, named the “Tahoe” and was Builders number 3709, also built in 1875. She also went to the Lake Tahoe Railway and Transportation Company after the end of lumber operations. After the line was standard gauged by the Southern Pacific, it was sold off to the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad, becoming their number 5.
The Nevada County 5 seen at Grass Valley in 1935. Photo courtesy of Phil Reader.
From there, she became the railroad star at Universal Studios, appearing in many films. When it was retired at the studio, it came back to Grass Valley and the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum. Today, the number 5 is also under restoration and will make use of new replacement boiler, originally ordered for the “Glenbrook” by the Nevada State Railroad Museum.
Down the road a bit from Grass Valley, two other narrow gauge Baldwins are on display at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. Another 2-6-0 is the Nevada Short Line number 1. She was built in 1879, builders number 4562, for the Utah & Northern as their #13. She led quite a life moving from railroad to railroad, eventually becoming number 6 on the Nevada Central.
Battle Mountain turned out to be quite the place for Baldwin survivors. Another 4-4-0, built in 1876, as builders number 3483, is the “Sonoma“, number 12 of the North Pacific Coast Railroad. The NPC ran in Marin and Sonoma Counties to reach the rural communities bringing passengers and freight from the North Bay into San Francisco by ferry boat. At it’s peak it had almost 93 miles of railroad in service. The railroad later became part of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad and was standard gauged with electric commuter service from Mill Valley and San Rafael.
In 1879, the “Sonoma” was sold to the Nevada Central, becoming their number 5. She was still in service when the line ceased operation in 1938. However, that was not the end for the number 5 and number 6. They went on to a life on stage during the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939, recreating the Golden Spike ceremony between the Central Pacific and Union Pacific at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869. And that show has a Disney connection as it was showman Art Linkletter who produced it! The experience he gained there came in very useful in 1955 when he was called upon to emcee the Disneyland opening telecast.
Both locomotives were donated to the California State Railroad Museum where they have been restored and are on display today.
Now Disney theme park fans have enjoyed their own Baldwin products in service on the Disneyland Railroad. Number 3, the “Fred Gurley”, a 2-4-2T, builders number 14065, built in 1894; number 4, the “Ernest S. Marsh” a 2-4-0 with the tender addition, builders number 53867 from 1925; and number 5, the “Ward Kimball”, also a 2-4-2T, builders number 20925, built in 1902. If you haven’t read either the books by Michael Broggie or Steve DeGaetano on the Disneyland Railroad, they have plenty to share on the subject of these locomotives.
The Ernest S. Marsh, Disneyland Railroad #4, on display at the New Orleans Square Station.
DRR number 5, the “Ward Kimball” and her restoration crew at Boschan Boiler Works.
But theme park fans have two more Baldwin survivors just down the road from Anaheim in a pair of two narrow gauge Consolidations (2-8-0’s) at Knotts Berry Farm’s Calico Railroad. Denver and Rio Grande 340 (builders number 5571, built in 1881) and Rio Grande Southern 41 (builders number 5731, built in 1881). Both hail from 1881, and came west from Colorado to Buena Park in 1952. The railroad has always been a part of this classic theme park.
Rio Grande 340 and train leaving on another trip around the Ghost Town & Calico Railroad.
Finally, the Southern Pacific’s narrow gauge line in the Owens Valley had quite the stable of Baldwin steam locomotives in operation at one time. Starting as the Carson & Colorado, then the Nevada and California, and finally as the Southern Pacific, ending service in 1959. Three steam locomotives survive, all Baldwins and all 4-6-0’s. SP 8 (builders number 31445, built 8/1907), displayed at Sparks, NV; SP 9 ( builders number 34035, built 11/1919) displayed at Laws, CA; SP 18 (builders number 37395, built 12/1911), under restoration to operation at Independence, CA.
The Southern Pacific 18 project underway at Independence, CA.
Who would have predicted such a group of these industrial tools of their days would still about 135 years later? If you have the time and are in the neighborhood, stop by a visit one of them!
Westward Ho!
Or How We Learned to Love the Past as the Future and Stop Worrying About It?
Oh, the sound of wailing at the end of all things Frontierland…
If you haven’t heard, Disneyland is making some changes again. Read all about it, here from Fab News over on Micechat. Part of adding Star Wars to the Park, with some long-term closures of various attractions and areas about Frontierland as a galaxy, far, far away comes to Anaheim.
With all of this at hand, I decided to give a bit of thought as to how the Frontier or the American West came to be of such interest that it got a substantial part of real estate dedicated to it when Disneyland opened.
For the sake of discussion, let us say that the American West came to be almost anything west of the Allegeheny Mountains and east of the Pacific Ocean. Fascination with it came along in American popular culture long ago. For the temporally impaired, this interest goes back to the pre-Revolutionary war era. Back when tales of what lay unexplored in the West were the stuff of dreams. When men like Daniel Boone carried popular imaginations along with them on their explorations.
In today’s era of instant gratification via Google Street View, it may be hard for many to imagine that you actually had to travel over the next hill to see for yourself what lay ahead of you. There was no preview of what was around that next bend in the river. For more than a few folks, that kind of adventure was a siren’s call waiting to be answered. If there was nothing to keep you tied to a place, you could pick up and go.
Some of the first Western tales that caught imaginations were those of writers such as James Fenimore Cooper as far back as the 1820’s. Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls of the 1850’s and later were full of the stuff that readers longed to know; fictional or not. Tales of wide open spaces, man versus nature or civilization versus the wild men of the prairies and plains made for sales.
Fascination did not stop with the printed word. Folks in the East and across the Atlantic rushed to see various Wild West shows, as early as 1872 with Ned Buntline in Chicago. Bringing the West and all of it’s excitement to civilization? Oh, yes… profitable! Consider that W.F. Cody organized his own show in 1883 and it played until 1913. And he was far from alone.
Western tales also came into some of the earliest motion pictures produced in this country.”The Great Train Robbery” was a smash hit with audiences. At the time, Edwin S. Potter’s revolutionary telling of the story wowed audiences every where it was showed. (It was as much of a game change for the day as “Star Wars” would become in the summer of 1977.) The Western film became a staple. Cowboys like “Bronco” Billy Anderson, Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and The Lone Ranger were the heroes of their day on screen and on radio.
Now, I know, thanks to a bit of ancestry, that life out West was not adventure every day. It was hard and it was boring. Men and women did what they had to do because their options were very limited. For example, when my great-great-grandfather turned to his oldest son at the age of 12 and informed him that it was time for him to make his own way in the world, choices were few. Living in central Nevada did not offer much, especially for the son of shop/saloon keeper in a boom town gone bust.
Somehow, my great-grandfather convinced some ranch owner out in the Pine Valley to hire him on as vaquero. With cattle and horses to tend, he spent the next eight years of his life on the back of a horse. Work was life. You wore the same clothes day in, day out. Same slouch hat and coat. If it got cold, and you had an extra shirt or pair of pants, you wore them too. As a hired hand, there was a bunk house and food, but it was nothing special. Life out West? Dull, dusty and downright dull.
I have been out to the Pine Valley a number of times. Sure, it has its charms. Some beautiful vistas. But at the end of my day, I could get back into the air-conditioned car and drive off to my motel room in the big city. My great-grandfather and his fellow hands? Pretty much, they stayed where they worked.
Lucky for me, the opportunity to see what railroading was all about ended life on the range. And opened another chapter. Railroading also was the stuff of dime novels, plenty of tales of exciting trips over the pass to deliver the goods.
When television came along, the Western was an established genre that audiences enjoyed and wanted more of. Popular shows like “Gunsmoke” and “Have Gun, Will Travel” were just the thing. “Gunsmoke” had been a favorite on radio for many years before making the change to television. From 1952 to 1975, it kept audiences regaled with tales from the West. With 635 episodes, it remains the longest-running television program. Westerns also helped bring color televisions to many homes. For example, NBC (with parent RCA selling the color sets) went into color in a big way with shows such as “Bonanza” and another series from Desilu Studios, with a somewhat interesting series of stories, set along the lines of “Wagon Train to the stars”.
So, should it have been much of a surprise that when Disneyland opened in 1955, a good amount of space in the new park was devoted to the American West and was called, Frontierland. If you look at the attractions of the area as it developed, it is interesting to note that most of them dealt with transportation. The Stage Coach, the Conestoga Wagon, the Mule Pack Train, the Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad, the sternwheel steamboat Mark Twain, the Davy Crockett Keel Boats, the Indian Canoes, the Tom Sawyer’s Island River Rafts, the Natures Wonderland Railroad… All on the move; bringing guests out into the wild and unknown of days gone by. Safely inside the berm, in what only a few years before had been untamed orange groves.
After World War II, Americans looked to pop culture for distraction. And they found it in the West, with tales of the wide open spaces, with clearly defined heroes and villains. White hats versus black hats took up where Americans versus Nazi’s or Jap’s had been all too real. Stories where the good guy triumphed, rode off into the sunset, with or without the girl, searching for a place to settle down and call home. These were the tonic plenty of folks could see their way to enjoy.
Things changed when the space race began. In the era of mutually assured destruction by Cold War enemies via long range missiles and bombers, stories changed there setting from the Wild West to outer space. The good guys may not have worn white hats and space monsters replaced the bad guys in the black hats. Ray guns replaced six-shooter pistols, but the stories still told of a wide open galaxy, where there was always treasure waiting to be discovered on the next planet along the Milky Way.
While Frontierland may have lost some of it’s allure to guests as pop culture changed, Disneyland did not change a great deal over the years along the Rivers of America. The Painted Desert gave way to Big Thunder Mountain as thrill rides became the rage at theme parks.
While some folks would like to give George Lucas credit for changing the cinematic world by taking audiences to a galaxy, far, far way in the summer of 1977. But the story that came on screen was very similar to what was told in previous films such as “The Magnificent Seven“. Which it’s self, was a retelling of the Japanese film, “Seven Samurai“. People searching for redemption in their own way, became unlikely heroes, doing what was best for the greater good.
With “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” bringing audiences back to theaters and with the Disney company acquisition of Lucasfilm (and it’s empire of intellectual properties), changing a good part of Frontierland into a Star Wars land in Anaheim is somewhat a no-brainer. Sure, Disney needs to come up with something to match Universal’s Harry Potter additions in both Florida and California. Taking guests on that journey to a part of the galaxy, far, far away is just the thing to capitalize on audience love of the film franchise.
I won’t spin up the crystal ball for a look ahead, but rather offer a glimpse back today. Into the era when the wide open spaces and adventure ahead was the wild, wild West. Where bad guys and Indians waited to trap the unsuspecting settlers, coming in search of better than what they left behind.
While some of us may still have our coon skin caps at the ready, more are ready for “lightspeed to Endor” as Captain Rex, used to say. Maybe we can still make the trip to join them and take another spin around the Rivers of America in the same visit.
See you out there on the trail…
Time and the Machines
I have indeed been very lucky. With Time and Machines, I have been able to connect.
For there have been more than a few moments when I was able to experience a direct connection to the past. And the past was that of my family; people who came before I did by a good number of years.
Yes, the railroad will loom large in this tale. Be it the place or the people, the railroad plays a part.
A good start came in the fall of 1980. Having finished my first full year of employment at AAA, I decided to head off on an adventure. The first time that I was solo, visiting places I had never been. But there was a moment on a September evening, aboard Amtrak’s “San Francisco Zephyr” when it was about to depart Sparks, Nevada; continuing on its journey to Chicago. In that moment, I was making my first ride east of Sparks. And I was about to follow the same route my great-grandfather made countless times in his career as a locomotive engineer from Sparks to Carlin. It was pretty simple stuff, but pretty heady. And it was indeed special. I knew it then and was filled with excitement. So much that I don’t think I slept at all that night.
Now in years since, I have made many trips east of Sparks, with friends and solo by automobile. Oddly enough, I have not made the same trip again by rail. There always lies hope of it. But I have visited many locations along the way that my grandfather and his family members visited during their years in the Silver State. Some of those were to places where I know family had been. Palisade, Nevada, for example. Today, it is pretty much a siding on the railroad. A cemetery overlooks what had once been a town site. Here is a view from the Barriger Library of what the town and surrounding area looked like sometime in the 1930’s. (This gallery offers more images from the same collection.)
All of the structures seen are gone today and have been for a number of years. Since discovering this image, I have found a great deal more information that links members of my family to both the standard gauge railroad (the Southern Pacific) and the narrow gauge railroad (the Eureka and Palisade) seen, not to mention businesses and properties in and about Palisade.
Standing in about the same spot as the photo shows, again, it did not take a great deal to connect with those people at the moments their lives were experienced here.
Starting in the mid-1970’s through the late 1990’s, I volunteered at a railway museum between San Francisco and Sacramento. You name it, I did it. Steam, diesel and electric trains. Track work, restoration projects, train crew with and without passengers, ticket sales, gift shop sales… it never seemed to end. On the Museum’s demonstration railway and then the adjacent former mainline railway the Museum eventually acquired, it was bringing history back to life that offered some of the most satisfying moments.
A few of them come to mind. The first was in the early 1980’s, on an early morning getting a steam locomotive ready for the days operation. Again a connection, as here I was doing much the same tasks as my great-grandfather had some 80 years earlier when he had been a young locomotive fireman with the Southern Pacific. I knew that I was proud of him for what he had done back then; and I hoped that he would have been proud of me carrying on, doing what he had all those years ago. (He had passed away over a dozen years before, but he lived his life as a railroader. So much so that he carried his railroad watch for reference, even though he had not used it for many years in railroad service. That watch is deservedly treasured by another grandson named for him.) A later chance meeting led to a connection with another retired locomotive engineer who had worked with my grandfather, in the late 1940’s after World War II, when he was starting his railroad career. He had some good stories to share from those years.
The second moment came in the mid-1990’s towards the end of a long day. The group I was part of had been out on the railroad doing work on the track, getting a little used line ready for a special passenger excursion as part of an upcoming convention of railway museums. I was running a diesel locomotive on a train carrying everyone back from the work site to the museum. As the train rumbled along at the mighty speed of 15 miles per hour, I was again connected to the past as I was doing what my great-grandfather had.
When I graduated high school in the summer of 1977, a career on the railroad looked promising. Along the way, other things got in the way and I never did make that job choice. I look back at times and wish I had. Part of me understands, but then reality comes along and reminds me I would have been laid off during the recession of the 1980’s and probably would have been soured against the industry. While I still have an interest in railroading today, the experiences of the railway museum and private railroad car operations have offered some fantastic times with some truly amazing people.
That is where the third moment comes into play. One of those days as a steam locomotive fireman, I had the pleasure of firing for a gentleman who had not only been a locomotive engineer but who had actually run the locomotive we were on that day in service on the Western Pacific. We didn’t go very far or very fast that day, but for him it had to have been a trip back in time. And I was glad I was able to share it with him.
We do not always get such opportunities. All of these moments are the kind of memories worth having. Special they are and I am glad to have been in the right place at the right time. With the people and the machines that made them happen.
Would you believe…
As odd as it might seem, I have not set foot in a Disney theme park since May of 2015.
And even more interesting, is the fact that I am okay with that.
Yes, I was an Annual Passholder. Disneyland Premium, to be specific. It expired in early December and I struggled to decide if I should renew it or not.
Part of me kind of leaned toward the Nostalgic side of the coin. Lots of great memories of visits with family and friends over many years of having an AP. I still see the value of one and will likely get one again at some point in the future.
But after having paid for one (on a monthly payment plan) and not making use of it, I could not see continuing to pour money from my pocket into Disney’s.
I have mixed feelings about the expansion of a Star Wars land in the Anaheim parks. I get that the company wants to exploit interest in the newly acquired franchise by bringing it from theaters into theme parks. I think they could do better by creating a new theme park that focuses on the universe that is Star Wars. Something in a gate all its own, something perhaps not even located near Katela Avenue and Harbor Blvd. Why tax the overcrowded infrastructure there with something designed to bring more people and more cars there? With Disneyland reaching capacity more often than it ever used to, going for something new somewhere else makes far too much sense from this corner of the Internet.
Not to mention Florida, where the company does have plenty of space for expansion. Why not an all Star Wars gate somewhere on property? It is no secret that the Boy Wizard is stealing customers there (and will shortly do so in California). A theme park from a galaxy, far, far away seems just the thing to compete.
Yet… It is moments for me such as walking through the turnstiles at Disneyland, only to have a train arrive at the Main Street station; drawing guests aboard for that Grand Circle Tour of Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom. It is the start of a great adventure for the day ahead. And it only gets better as the day goes along.
Perhaps what makes it special is that it is not something that I experience every day. It is not the usual, not the same thrill experienced catching the train into work five days a week. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Even Walt did not spend all his time at the Park. With the apartment above the Firehouse or if the apartment above New Orleans Square had been completed, they were places for the occasional visit. Maybe a chance to get away from everything outside the berm. Now that I can understand. But you can’t hide from life that way. It goes on outside no matter what we might like.
If I never went to a Disney theme park again, my life would not be over. I have great memories to look back upon; photos and videos to enjoy; souvenirs to tie special moments to a particular visit – but all with family and friends. That is the real treasure. What Walt wanted us to take away most.
Works for me.