Unlike the earlier post of a couple weeks back where I asked what was your favorite locomotive ride, this one asks for your favorite train ride or rides. Again, please add what made it so memorable.
Mine was over Labor Day Weekend of 1971 when the PLA ran chartered trips over the Sierra Ry, nearby Westside & Cherry Valley and the newly opened Sugar Pine Ry. (former Pickering Lbr. Corp. logging line from Middle Camp near Twain Harte to Lyons Dam).
I never did get to see the triple header on the Sierra or the ng Shays in Tuolumne, but spent the 3 day weekend instead as a brakeman and hostler on the Sugar Pine.
On Sunday night after the last passenger train was done, we ran from Middle Camp to Long Siding and either picked up some camp and water cars there or at Tramway. I knew I wasn't
about to get Pete Rogers out of his fireman's seat that evening, so I rode the rooftop of one of the Pickering reefers with Warren Smith who was later to become my best man. As the train wound her way through the curves back to Lyons, Smitty & I watched the Shays headlight as it illuminated the rail ahead. I remember him telling me that we''d never get a chance to do something like that again...and he was right. But we were a part of history that night, as the movement was the last use of steam on Pickering rails. Karl Koenig, engineer; Pete Rogers Sr., fireman; Joe Ward, Conductor; and Chris Collins and myself were the brakeman.