[Bon of Babble]

You must have been in awe. I remember my dad speaking of those trains as they crossed the midwest where he lived.

Those old trains were magnificent.

At our county fair, LA county, there is a section where old trains are parked and you can climb all over them. We'd go in them, sit in the engineer's seat and try to imagine what it was like to drive those old trains that were nothing but power.

Our favorite was this one, we climbed all over it, I have a photo of my son, aged four sitting in the engineer's seat. One of our favorite photos.

It was a beast!

It was hauled out of California and sent off to Wyoming to be re-fitted. We met the (young) guys who were getting her ready to be hauled out - they were extremely excited to be working on her and spoke to my son and husband for over an hour.

I was sorry to see it leave California - the young mechanics told us that most of these old beauties had been torn apart for scrap and there were IIRC, only three or four left.

[Paladin2]

http://www.up.com/aboutup/community/inside_track/steam-update-08-25-2017.htm

Wyoming coolness...

[sparklite2]

Riding a steam driven passenger train had its unique moments.

Whereas a modern diesel electric just begins slowly rolling at startup, steam engines would start with taking up the ‘slack’ between car couplings. You could hear it start at the head of the train, chunk, chunk, chunk. Then your car would have its turn, suffering a jolt, then very slowly rolling as you could hear the chunk make its way to the end of the train. Then began another series of chunks, until all the slack was gone and you were moving.