This video is dedicated to anybody who loves trains as much as I do, and the video includes various trains I saw and/or rode on durin’ my recent wonderful motorcycle trip around the Southwest. As a kid my family and I rode on trains cross country quite a bit, and the trips were always magical journeys for kids. I particularly loved waking up while it was still dark outside and then gradually watching as the approaching sunlight slowly began to light up the beautiful desert scenes outside the windows :) We also knew that at that point, pancakes in the dining car were going to be served in the not TOO distant future LOL.
Trains included in the video are a long freight train along Route 66 in Arizona; two of the Amtrak Coast Starlight trains that often times meet each other in San Luis Obispo, California; the new “FrontRunner” just recently opened between Salt Lake City and Ogden Utah; one of the old locomotives, which is one of the various engines on display at the Ogden Railroad Museum; the Grand Canyon Railway train as it departs Williams, Arizona for Grand Canyon Village at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon (I also have vid footage of the train AT Grand Canyon Village, but this YouTube video is ALREADY 9.5 minutes long so I didn’t add that footage as well! LOL); and finally, the video shows the Sacramento Southern Railroad train that visitors to Old Town Sacramento can ride on. That train is typically pulled by a steam locomotive, but unfortunately that engine is down for repairs at the moment, so the train is pulled by a more modern engine for now. As I get older it’s funny to me that the old “vintage railroad cars” on that train are some of the type I remember riding in as a kid when they were still in service on various railroad lines around the USA, so yeah “Tempus Fugits”!! When I was a kid, in the days before the “safetycrats” destroyed much of the FUN!! of life, I vividly remember being allowed to ride for HOURS at a time on the open platforms of such cars at the rear of the train, as the train raced across the deserts at high speeds. Now on most “new” trains, you can’t even open a window, let alone stand out where you might get hurt if you’re dumb enough not to hold on, and it’s become almost impossible to walk around the inside of modern train cars without finding LOTS of safety warning stickers plastered everywhere, with a seemingly never-ending dissertation of the Dos and Don’ts while you’re on board! I miss the old days, when you still got credit for having a brain and common sense! LOL
The song for the video is “Catch That Train” by Billy Ray Hatley and The Show Dogs.
Rating: User: LifeJourneyGuy 2008-06-22T01:20:45.57Z
Tags:
LifeJourneyGuy | Trains | Locomotive | Coast | Starlight | Amtrak | Sacramento | Southern | Railroad | Grand | Canyon | Railway | TRAX | FrontRunner | Ogden | Utah |