The WildClickers take the train to the Rainforest. Track 61

clicked

Setanta, good information! Thanks!

Dan, amazing momento! Yep - nice hat.

Hi ya Mags! Glad you and Teeny joined the train travelin' wilclickers!

ehBeth, i've not done much traveling, and really enjoy reading all of ya alls adventures. Sleeping on a bench in a train depot? Now thats a sign of a very serious excursion type of person.

all clicked

Here's the lock I found in CA........



Here's a close up of the T&P RY imprint............


This is my older brothers Joe and Floyd with me (holding camera) - a partial look at the house car where we lived. I don't know who the little girl is..............

This is a publication of the T&P RY from Nov 1948......... Some interesting stories in it.


Here's a typical T&P work train - the engines are much smaller than the big main liners. This one is a 4-6-0 (from the wheel arrangement - from front to rear.)


This is an arrangement of items of interest - belt hanger, a belt button and - ((for the trivia seeker)) a small gold nugget that I found at the site in Alaska where Felix Pedro made the gold strike which started the Alaskan Gold Rush.

Very cool artifacts, Danon! Terrific photos of your family! Thanks!

more photos ~

A safe holding the RR's golden spike



An 1870's photo of the California Street Cable Car



Wow - what a great artifact find!



Finally <ok, a waystation but the structure is a house <sans the foot bridge> Voile'!

Many interesting pictures. My son likes them, too.

What about stories? Any travel stories?



When our children were little I used to make holidays on a farm in Styria.
One of their holiday highlights was a trip with this train. The tracks are in a beautiful landscape, lots of tunnels, turns, and viaducts.
One day we left the station in bright sunshine. When coming into the mountains the sky become dark and suddenly we had a thunder, lightnings and hail. In a blink the landscape was covered with hail, it looked like deep winter. Then the engine had to pull the train up the next mountain. No way, the tracks were full of ice and we were sliding back.
All the men got out, and stared shovelling, and very slowly cho, cho, cho,..the engine went up.
The kids were thrilled.

Great posts here. I'm just clickin and listening. I loved the early photo of Ul on the train. Not Ul, I'm sure, but it looked just like her.

Is there anything more emblematic of America than the railroads? It was not too many years ago when those photos were taken. I rode a train from Oakland CA to Denver in about 1949-1950 and there was a viewing level above the main car with windows from end to end. The sights were glorious and we could barely tear ourselves away to sleep in our pullman chairs below.

Who would spend three days to travel that distance now?

hehehehe..... Sheeze that makes me older than you> I was hoping that at least one person was older than me! I was born in may of the same year and I guess that makes me twins!

Wow, we're all about the same age!

Maggie, 7/14/43 is me

Everyone ~
The insignia photo really great, so I did more research and found an interesting, sad, yet wonderful story regarding the last living member of the Yahi People.

http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_017600_ishi.htm

Ishi <the photo taken in 1914>

Kara, train travel is quite a great way to see the countryside - my excursions as a youngster were local trips to Oakland, San Jose, plus coastal trips. As an adult, there hasn't been an occasion for traveling by rail, although the thought of sitting in the observation area viewing nature sounds pretty good to me. Three days on a train though? Not unless the accomdations are better than a room no bigger than a clothes closet.

or

ehBeth has rented a private rail car with staterooms!

Ul, wow - the train "made the grade" and thankfully you were all safe and sound! Thanks for the photos and story.

When i was just a liddly, we would travel any long distance by train--we had passes because of my grandfather's employment. The porters would always bring us pillows and free sammiches from the club car, and always introduced themselves by asking: "You're Dewey Antrim's boy, aren't you?"

I was his grandson, but of course i said yes. What i did not find out until years later, and after my grandfather's death, was that when a black man was obliged to await a train at the depot, he was in risk of serious harrassment, because town ordinance forbad blacks to remain within the city limits after dark. But my grandfather took no notice, and brought them home for a hot meal, and if overnight, opened a trundle bed for them. No one in that town had anything to say on the subject either--they knew he was not to be trifled with. I've also learned since that the Pulman Car Porters union was the genesis of organized civil rights agitation in this country, because the porters were steadily employed, made good money, and had access to powerful and influential men and women. I had not idea as a small boy exactly the nature of the honor done me, nor the cause.

setanta, we don't realize today the hardships people of color suffered in many parts of the nation when we were youngins.

Born and raised in San Francisco, there was such a great variety of people, there wasn't notice made of what color anyone was <not from me or my friends> until the 60's when civil rights became <what it should have always been> an important issue.

Not by train did we protest - but by marches, fundraisers, concerts, and being from a 'union' family, marching right along side Caesar Chavez when he was organizing the Farm Workers Union.

Recall visiting a friend in Chicago <probably late 70's> and noticing how people treated porters that checked passengers luggage, boarding passes, etc. when they arrived curbside. The mid-west for a girl from CA was truly culture shock. Openly, people were just plain rude to black porters. Not that the north was any haven for civil rights, and I have stories to tell about my own encounters with bigoted jerks, but I found that no matter where a person traveled in the U.S., <I can't speak for other countries> there was an undercurrent of resentment towards blacks and people of color. Just could never figure the mentality of racial bigotry.

Thanks for the story bout your grandfather. One of the good guys.

Set - you've got good genes.

You and your 283 friends have supported 1,924,767.8 square feet!

Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 47,308.9 square feet.
You have supported: (0.0)
Your 283 friends have supported: (47,308.9)

American Prairie habitat supported: 36,139.8 square feet.
You have supported: (10,159.7)
Your 283 friends have supported: (25,980.1)

Rainforest habitat supported: 1,841,319.1 square feet.
You have supported: (161,636.3)
Your 283 friends have supported: (1,679,682.7)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1 Aktbird57 .. 1155 44.183 acres

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Best part about clicking today? that nice lil pic of Brad Pitt

Amtrak has nice room seats and the observation area is great. The only problem with Amtrak is how slow the trip can be. A couple yrs ago I decided to take Amtrak from Pensacola to Orlando which by car is about a 7 hour drive.

We left here about 10:00 am and arrived in Orlando BY BUS the next morning at 4:00 am!

I did not know that Amtrak had to pull over to the side to allow freight trians to pass. We left Pensacola, made it to Crestview which is about 15 miles and parked there for three solid hours for work on a bridge. From that point it went downhill with so many stops that it I lost count.

Finally at about 2 am they announced that our trip was ending about 40 miles north of Orlando! Of course we were in shock wondering what the hay we were supposed to do. They brought in two greyhound buses and packed us in like sardine and we finished the trip via bus. It took just over 18 hours for a trip we could have driven in 7 !

It would not have been bad if the food on Amtrak had not been so expensive. One would have thought we were being served in the Waldorf Astoria if you judged it by the prices!

We really need a good passenger train service in this country again. Amtrak is good but they need their own railroad system.

Hi all,

Good stories,
Stradee, I am reminded of my Mom giving sandwiches to tramps during the late 40's..
There were many tramps then, and my Mom would give them food when they came to the door. I remember one day - a tramp came by and said that my Mom should be careful - that she had a reputation of giving to tramps and she should be aware of certain ones. These were the times after the WWII. I remember seeing those persons. He was warning her of certain guys.

I ran across many men during those days. Sometimes they would be gambling with each other by playing dice - or with cards. They were usually out of sight of anyone walking along streets - or the rail yards. They would be in isolated areas. I remember walking along a concrete wall and - upon coming around the end of it, I saw two men throwing dice. I stood there, they looked at me - and continued to gamble. That's way before I started school.

In those days - there were other men trying to make a living. I remember a man with no arms, sitting on the street, drawing pictures with his toes. After the war, there were many people like that.

Ishi is the saddest person I can think of in history - his family was killed as if they were wild animals. Really sad.

Holy train ride! Too much to do in the last few days and I missed TEN pages! I'll go back to read all later today. In the meantime- still clickety-clacking in every day. Thanks for the new thread, ebeth.

Flickering lights and cable at the moment. I posted in the Ivan category asking someone to click on rainforest for me then realized I was in the wrong thread!!

Will be back asap.... Of course I may luck out and have electricity until late today. Don't expect much after that.

Danon, during the war, my mom prepared food and lunches - my dad brought with him to work <at the ship yards> and there he distributed food to those who were looking for work or lost thier jobs... There were also Sunday dinners prepared for service people my dad and uncles were aquainted with. <both my Uncles fought in Europe during the war>

Growing up, there wearn't many tramps or "hobo's" at the tracks - course if there were, me and the neighborhood kids never met any. There was a wharehouse though, <over the hill from the neighborhood> where hobo's occasionally slept on the backside <or cliffside> of the structure. We knew enough to stay away from the area.

Guess kids, no matter where they live, face dangers and people that live on the fringes - but we were lucky. Thank God.

Danon, Ishi's story is terribly tragic, agreed. What an extrodinary man he was though. Bless his heart.

Maggie, hang in there!