There's a ton of feedback I could offer on this, but on this sunny Sunday afternoon I'll just share a few quick bits.

Yesterday, I had the honor and joy of bumping into a guy at Latah Creek Bridge in Spokane who was visiting from Bend, Oregon. Seemed a bit younger than me (I'm 48), and he had two younger guys with him, one or both of them being his son(s). Very outdoors-oriented, knew what they were looking for and where and when to find it, the "boys" seemed to know more about current models and road numbers than us dads.

Which is a lot like the relationship I have with my own son. I work full-time in digital prepress and printing. My head is not into railroading 24/7 like it once was. But Sean's head almost is. Well, he's well-rounded with other interests like cross country, music, quirky cartoons, "epic" (his word) movies, etc. But he's really deep into railroading, both current stuff AND the past. More about that in a moment. Anyway, in addition to photography, Sean enjoys this "hobby" a lot through Microsoft Train Simulater. Not simply running the trains. In fact, he spends far more time creating new routes from scratch, or upgrading existing commercially-available sim routes. His computer skills alone are far advanced beyond some college kids because of it. We're talking pulling real-world topographic data through a program that turns a selected region into a 3-D landscape, and then going in and digitally engineering a railroad through it, using GPS coordinates, actual track charts and maps and other source material. He even uses photos he's taken of lineside structures, rock surfaces, rolling stock, anything, and converts them into "textures" to create realistic elements for his simulation.

Back to Sean's interest in history. And this gets to the original point of James' post. I was glad to see that Fred Frailey, in his Trains column, discovered there are indeed younger fans out there, just not all of them dabbling in this hobby in ways he's aware of. But there were comments made by Fred or others in that column which suggested younger fans could care less about things they didn't see growing up. Not so, in all cases, if you ask me. I've seen plenty of railfans young and old who disagree with that view. Me and a lot of guys my age love nothing more than to see good photography or articles on steam-era or even 19th century railroading. My son Sean, age 16, is constantly flipping through my collection of books and magazines for material on railroading that he missed by a good 20 years or more. Among those train simmers, most of whom are in their teens and 20s according to their user profiles at trainsim.com, some of the most popular routes are ones which recreate vintage Donner Pass in the days of Cab Forwards or Marias Pass with GN Fs.

Bottom line, from where I live anyway, some fans are indeed interested in history and railroad "action" which they never experienced personally. Probably explains the popularity of chartered photo freights, and the allure of steam-powered tourist lines where people like our Mr. West are frequently recording scenes that look like they could easily have been taken in the 1940s.