Re: Exactly what is it that makes YOU,love the D&RGW narrow gauge?

The days around Christmas in the 1950's when my Uncle Bob would come to visit from Colorado for a few days. My Mom (his sister) and he would catch up with eachother on rememberances of growing up in Akron which lead Bob to tell some of his great stories of his early exposure to railroads around Akron. Eventually, he'd update us on the goings-on out in Colorado and out would come some of the photos he had taken and had enlarged. Three photos have always stuck with me. One was a photo he took of himself in 1949 at Cumbres after he had trundled up there following a winter blast. He had set the camera out and used the timer to get the shot. The second photo that got me was of Cumbres in 1953. The stories of his travels from Alamosa up to Cumbres in post-winter snow storm conditions with nothing but tire-chains, hope for no slides and a lot of silent prayers to capture the last years of these working narrow gauge operations. One year, he told me the story of the final run of 318 to Ouray. He was the lone observer of what appeared as just another day of RGS operations with 318 churning along through a late winter snow. That story always made me sad to think of the dedicated crew who would no longer see work on that branch and yet carried on stoically and professionally without any malice or nay-saying about their employer. For me, growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, Uncle Bob brought these distant narrow gauge mountain railroads to life in my living room and planted in me this yearning to one day, visit all the places he was seeing track ripped up and depots shuttered over.I still wish that I had been born at an earlier time so I could have experienced trackside views of the RGS and DRGW in their peak of operations.I've been in love with DRG ever since.