Re: 1971 C&TS Trains

Greg, if you were chasing the C&TS over the Fourth of July weekend in 1971, I wonder if we met unknowingly. That weekend was a significant event for me, not only in regards to the narrow gauge. A few days before this weekend, my girl friend Helen completed her internship at the Purdue University Medical Center in Indianapolis and came west, riding Penn Central's "James Whitcomb Riley"
from Indianapolis to Chicago and the "Denver Zephyr" to Denver, where me met and drove to Chama. My parents came up from Alamogordo with my brother Juergen, and we had a family get together on July 4 riding behind 484 from Chama to Antonito. We also spent a day chasing 484. The slides from that weekend are yet to be scanned. From Chama, I returned with Helen to Richland, Washington, where we married a couple of weeks later. Our first married steam adventure came later that summer: riding behind and on the Flying Scotsman 4-6-2 from Wishram, WA to Bend OR on it's run to San Francisco (I am saying "on" the Flying Scotsman as the tender had a passage way to go from the train to the cab which we were allowed to use). But that is another story.

BTW - just to be correct - both the "James Whitcomb Riley" and the "Denver Zephyr" were operated by AMTRAK by then