PUNCH YOUR TICKET WEST!

WESTERN HERITAGE RAILWAYS AND RAILROAD MUSEUMS ARE OPEN AND READY FOR PASSENGERS AND GUESTS.

- STUART ROSEBROOK

All aboard!! ” shouts the conductor. Do you remember the first time you heard those thrilling words before your first railroad adventure began? I do. It was at Union Station in Los Angeles in 1975, and my parents, my sister and I were departing on a cross-country Amtrak vacation from L.A. to Washington, D.C., via Chicago on the Southwest Limited. The adventure was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and I’ve been hooked on rail travel and trains ever since.

The next summer I rode on my first heritage railway, the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. It was August of America’s Bicentennial and I rode with 125 fellow Orme Summer Camp campers and counselors. They were from all over the country and even the world, and we sat in awe in the cool, mountain morning hours as the steam train pulled us up the grade into the Animas River Canyon of the San Juan Mountains. There was still snow on the highest fourteeners and the ride through the narrow canyons, over high-trestle bridges clinging to cliffs over rushing streams of snowmelt, remain thrilling and unforgettable moments. Arriving in the old mining town of Silverton, it seemed as if we had stepped back a century, or living an old Western movie. I’ve never forgotten either of those rail trips and whenever I have had the opportunity to take a train trip with my family—and share the thrill and power of the locomotive, the leisure of the shared adventure and the beauty of nature as it passes outside the window—I’ve done so. And I highly recommend you consider doing the same.