valoise

City parks across American have them, old steam locomotives that retired from use in the 1940s-1960s and were relegated to children's playthings. They sit in silence, slowly rusting while kids climb up into them and pretend to be engineers driving trains across the nation. But these static behemoths rarely get a chance for a second life.

Yesterday the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad ran their first weekend excursion with ninety-year old Santa Fe 3415, lovingly restored over 4 years and 12,000 hours of volunteer labor. There's a romance to trains and while I do like train trips, I wasn't prepared for how much I would be charmed to the locomotive itself or how exciting it was to hear that steam whistle blow, hear the clanging of that big brass bell and see it in action. And I really wasn't prepared for how loud these things are when you're standing right next to them and they let that whistle blow.