Re: How I caught the bug!!!!!!!!

I've been interested in trains since my very beginning. My maternal grandfather was an engineman on the Pennsylvania, and bought a Lionel train for me while my mother was still pregnant.
In '67 when I was 7 we moved to Los Alamos and I almost immediately noticed the remains of Ottowi bridge. I began watching for signs of roadbed during family trips to Espanola, and up the Rio Grande valley to Embudo where I first noticed the water tank and station. Why, you could even see the roadbed hugging the base of Buckman Mesa from the overlook in White Rock. Around '69 we popped in to Chama while on a family jeep outing. My Dad informed me of the effort to save the collection of antiques. I thought I'd been through heaven. It was that first sight of the Chama yard crammed with steam locomotives and wooded cars that cemented my love of narrow gauge trains.
My first ride was in '71 on a trip from Antonito to Cumbres and return. What a great day that was. I was 11 years old and couldn't get enough.
Around that time we would go on fishing trips to Navajo lake, I always watched and hoped, in vane, to encounter a train somewhere on one of those grade crossings between Chama and Durango. I was so sad when we came back a couple of years later and those tracks west of Chama were gone.