How cool is THAT?? -- you still have Pudge!

It is wonderful that your father was a railfan, and took you to see the action at Lenzen, and perhaps, other plaecs as well. But having a father who is a railfan, and being around trains a lot, is no guarantee that one will turn into a railfan. One must also be susceptible to the "bug," and you certainly were!

I met a man some years ago who was a railfan, and he had several children. He said he tried his best to get them interested in trains, but did not succeed with any of them. Guess they were all resistant!

I, on the other hand, was susceptible from a young age. I remember, way back when I was in grammar schol, riding a lake steamer on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, and absolutely LOVING watching the well-oiled parts of that big engine as they rubbed very smoothly and silently past each other, going around and around. I never got tired of watching that. I can still remember the color of those oily parts -- they gleamed with a sort of a brownish hue.

Back to the subject of this thread -- the SP’s Del Monte passenger train. I never rode it. Did not become a railfan until more than 5 years after it had been discontinued.

DAV --
I am so glad you decided to take the Del Monte back then. That was a very smart thing to do. Why drive and get stuck in traffic when you can take a train?