Gosh -- where do I start? I miss a lot of things --
in no particular orer:

1. The whole SP, and its great people.

2. Rails like Lee B., Tony B., and Gary B., who worked
the SP's Broadway Local on the Peninsula, and Richard
Mitchell (who passed away some years ago) of the Santa
Fe at the old yard office in Richmond, Van C., a towerman
there,and Brad Z., who worked for the WP in their West
Oakland Yard Office, and the late "Low Water" Lynn, a
legendary steam-era SP Western Division hoghead.

3. The Broadway Local, our little local job that worked
the Redwood City harbor and the Heublein plant east
of US 101 in Menlo Park, as well as other places on the SF
Peninsula, and the Geeps that powered it.

4. Stockton Tower, and the area around it the way it was in
the 1980s, with the WP tracks in and used.

5. Redwood Tower.

6. Being able to go just about anywhere near a railroad without
someone calling the RR and/or the cops on you.

7. Freight cars with NO graffiti on them.

8. Searchlight signals.

9. Real bells on grade-crossing signals.

10. The SP depots in Redwood City and Sunnyvale.

11. The Peninsula commuter line being entirely at grade and
with NO fences, with single-side boarding.

12. Caltrain conductors wearing proper SP passenger conductor
uniforms all the time.

13. Visiting the rails we knew -- in the old WP West Oakland
Yard Office, the old Santa Fe yard office in Richmond, and in the SP
depot at Cahill St. in San Jose, and at the Caltrain station in SF.

14. The steam-era crews on Caltrain.

15. The Santa Fe Riverbank station.

16. My old railfan stomping grounds here in northern California
the way they were back in the late 1970s and in the 1980s.

17. A set of many SP SD-45s with a heavy train growing up a stiff grade
in Run 8.

18. SP SDP-45s. What great and very good-looking locomotives --
and the very last locomotives built to pull the SP's "Coast Daylight".

19. The amazing variety of SP diesels in the 1970s and 1980s,
in SP scarlet and grey with proper SP Roman lettering, with their
full light packages and Gyralites or Mars lights.

20. Cabooses.

21. Santa Fe 10-pack "Fuel Foiler" articulated spine flatcar sets.

22. The wonderful variety of railroads and their beautiful and
very interesting paint schemes.

23. The American Freedom Train.

24. Key System Bridge Units.

25. The Key System on the lower deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

26. The late Jack Smith of the Muni, a wonderful man with a
great and quirky sense of humor. who ran the historic streetcars
during the Trolley Festivals in the early 1980sin San Francisco.

27. The Trolley Festivals in the early 1980s in SF.

28. Being able to ride historic streetcars through the Twin
Peaks Tunnel -- and even once the Boat Car!! THAT was AWESOME!!
Thank you, the late Reno Bini of the Muni!

29. The Northern California Railroad Club the way it was in the
1980s, with inexpensive excursions on the Muni and elsewhere.
Got to ride a NorCal excursion on what was them the Eureka Southern
back in 1986 from Willits to Eureka and back, with a run-by.

30. ALL the railroads and interurbans of the first half of the
20th century and their passenger trains. The ability to go may
places almost totally by train, and not to have to drive. The
FOOD on those trains!

31. The UP's smooth-as-glass Wyoming main line in the early 1980s,
as I experienced it in a new Superliner in the "San Francisco Zephyr"
going at least 95 mph!!

32. UP Centennials pulling freights in the mid-1980s.

33. SP's Santa Clara Yard in the late 1970s and in the 1980s.

34. The UP stemn Crew in the late 1970s under the late Frank Acord,
UP's CMO then, including Jim Chval, Bob Marquardt, Fred Emmons,
Jim Duncan, and the Steve Lee Steam Crew 1989-2010: Lynn "Nasty"
Nystrom and his sweet wife Mary, Bob Krieger, and the late Reed Jackson.

35. Being a Car Host on many excursions 1984-2002 on the SP and
the UP, behind the SP 2472, the SP 4449, the UP 844, and the UP 3985,
and the UP E units.

36. BART in the 1970s and 1980s, with the beautiful and very
comfortable blue-patterned cloth seats and the "A" cars that I
always thought looked a bit like caterpillars.

37. The "clickety-ckack" of jointed rail while riding any passenger train.

38. Locomotive air horns the way they sounded on the SP back in
the 1970s and 1980s, and on the UP and on the Santa Fe, too.

39. The chant of the 567 -- and of the 645.

40. The silky sounds of UP diesels in the 1980s.

41. Chasing trains in northern California and main-line steam
in the west.

42. Riding the SP's famed "Coast Daylight" in 1951 behind steam LA-SF.

43. Railfanning in the late 1970s and in the 1980s, and railroading
during that time.

Thanks, Mike Stimpson, for starting this wonderful thread, and for
all the great trips down memory lane your post inspired.