The past exists

Last night we three, father, mother and daughter, traveled a mini-memory path. We viewed a DVD of historic western rail trips and enjoyed reliving the experience of riding one or two of them. I guess the most memorable to me was our ride on the Durango and Silverton. Alas, this was back in a time when I wasn't keeping a travel diary so exactly when it was I can't tell but she was young enough to enjoy every minute of everything we did. It was, as I recall, an extended Western journey and our single day excursion on the D&S was only one of many highlights. We rode in an open car, the better to enjoy the scenery as the train skirted the river or creek or stream, and oohing and aahing over every turn in the track. There might well have been soot from the locomotive all over us when we returned but none of us would have cared.

The video we watched shows no evidence of a loss of interest in this bit of the past. Passengers, young and old, still get their thrills from the ride that is now more than a hundred years old. Who, back in the days when this was a working railroad, transporting the silver miners back and forth, that their route would be enjoyed by people in no way connected to the work of a railroad, but were just getting their kicks by riding an old narrow-gauge railroad.