Like most people here, I was also interested in trains from a relatively early age. However living in Los Alamos New Mexico, we had almost no opportunity for interaction with railroads, narrow gauge or otherwise. As a result, my interest at that time was focused mainly on SG models and books.
All that changed in 1975 when the Santa Fe Opera Guild (in which my Dad was and is very active) chartered two trains one weekend on the recently opened C&TS. Being a loyal Guild member he decided to support both my interest and his by buying us a set of tickets. As has been mentioned, in those days, all trains ran through from either Antonito or from Chama with a lunch stop at the converted section house in Osier and a run-by somewhere. We were riding out of Chama that day and the train was double headed, 487 as helper, 483 as the road engine. The coaches were, of course, the box car conversions and there was an attendant in each car (who, amongst other things, pointed out to us that she had the best seat in the car - on top of the trash can). It was somewhere around the narrows with 487 and 483 working at full capacity that I was completely caught. The thunder of a double header echoing off the cañon walls, and the billowing plumes of and smell of the coal smoke mingling with the faint scent of the aspens completely ensnared me. My Dad's comment many years later was that I was mesmerized by the spectacle. I was absolutely beside myself when we stopped at Big Horn for a photo run-by. Passengers were let off and told to stand behind a line of white rocks to the west of the tracks and take pictures from there. Most people have probably seen a photo I took that day, 483 smoking it up with El Coke's Rio Grande Southern sunburst style C&TS logo on the tender.
Since then, it's been a family tradition to ride the C&TS at least once per year. We've taken a trip or two on the D&S, however the D&S always seemed, to me anyway, like it was missing something, that it was too commercial. I also became less interested in modeling (without the smell and the smoke, it just doesn't seem complete to me), and more interested in the history and mechanics of steam engines. I began collecting books on the NG, and while I'd readily deny being any sort of an expert on the NG, I do have a nice collection of well thumbed books.
Anyway, moving away from railroads a little, In 1994 my Dad gave me a gift membership to the Friends of the C&TS, at around the same time, I began to fool around with coding HTML. I decided it was kind of fun and began to look for a way to combine my new interest in web page creation with my interest in NG railroading. As a result, I created a crude prototype web page for the Friends which I hosted on my personal web space. I then contacted Terri and Howard about whether they would be interested in my continuing with it, obviously they were. That first web presence went public sometime in early 1995.
The NGDF came into being a few years later in, I believe, 1998 when John West e-mailed me asking whether I had ever given any thought to creating a NG discussion forum. I looked around at the services available and before I even realized it, I had created the Narrow Gauge Discussion Group. John paid to have the annoying banner ads removed, and we went happily along - with one major problem, old posts were scrolling off and being lost. To solve this problem, I decided to get a little more sophisticated and create the NGDF, and that is how we came to be here today.
My memories of those early years on the C&TS are still very clear, and I have to admit that I'll miss the sight of unballasted track, of sagebrush sticking up between the ties, I also miss the flat sopapillas that were a part of lunches in those days, and the dark crowded conditions inside the section house. But what's really important, what matters most is the sight, today, of the little train that in spite of everything, did, and does.
The below photo is of me (as engineer - of course, I'm older) and my brother in the cab of 488. I'm not sure what year it was taken, sometime in the '70's, but obviously 488 has seen better times since then (and hopefully it will again - soon).
