FORTY-FOUR YEARS AGO, in August of 1979, I made a trip up to British Columbia and Alberta to chase and photograph trains. I was joined by my good friend Ron Davis, a Canadian who grew up in southern California but made frequent visits to Canada. Ron managed to befriend a Mr. W. S. Paffard, who happened to be the Assistant Superintendent in Revelstoke for the Canadian Pacific Railway, which, at the time, wanted to be known simply as "CP Rail". Mr. Paffard was gracious enough to type up some letters of introduction for Ron and me (I still have mine packed away in a storage box somewhere) and these magical pieces of paper, when presented to train and engine crews, allowed us to have cab or caboose rides basically anywhere in the territory he governed. We "exercised the option" for either cab or caboose rides on "The Canadian" from Field to Lake Louise, a local that served the Ossoyoos Subdivision from Penticton to Okanagan Falls (now abandoned); a local freight that served the Princeton Subdivision from Spences Bridge to Penticton (now abandoned) with the business car "Van Horne" attached to the rear; and a smattering of general merchandise and coal trains from Golden to North Bend.

I wasn't able to stay in the area as long as Ron and, when it was time for me to return to the U.S., I rode a westbound CPR coal train on August 08 from Revelstoke to Kamloops, where, the following day, I caught a 737 of the now-fallen-flag Pacific Western Airlines to Vancouver, connecting to a couple of 727'S of the now-fallen-flag Western Airlines to get me back to Las Vegas, NV, which is where I was living at the time.

The photo shows Toby Brocollo, who was our engineer and who had many years of experience on the Canadian Pacific. He worked trains on the Kettle Valley Subdivision, a line that has now been abandoned. He hired out around the time that diesels were replacing steam engines and he may have worked steam, but I'm not sure. Toby passed on quite a few years ago. This photo was taken when an opposing train was passing our train at Clanwilliam siding and the black blur you see in the background is a coal hopper passing us at speed.

1979 was a different era, where a non-railroader such as myself (I was working for the now-fallen-flag Trans World Airlines at the time) could ride in the cab or caboose of a freight train without government regulatory and national security agencies and corporate legal departments totally freaking out over the prospect.