@GG1 4877 posted:Tom your layout is always a joy to look at, but I find your writing to be truly inspired. The stories that go behind the trains give so much insight to how your railroad operates, and its management is to be highly commended for excellent operations.
Thanks, Jonathan. We are part of the Santa Fe and have high standards to meet. 
And I do enjoy writing a story to go with a photo, trying to give readers a taste of life and railroading on the Texas plains.
For me, it is a way to wind back the clock to a time when, well, first, when there still was a Santa Fe Railway (i.e., before 1995). And I don't stop there. I go back to the early 1950's, the transition era when Santa Fe had diesels, but steam was still in service too. I was a little kid then and can let my mind drift back to the sights and sounds that I remember. Fred Gurley was President of Santa Fe then, and it was perhaps in its finest hour. Everything was ship-shape, passenger service was unexcelled by any other railroad, locomotives were washed frequently, and the railroading was the real stuff. My layout is staged in west Texas, and I try to include some real characters that I knew on the railroad, plus some fictional folks who have genuine Texas farm family names. And, finally, I can imagine myself grown up then, and working with them. I knew a lot of railroaders from this era. When I hired out as a Fireman, all of the Engineers on my division had steam experience, most as Engineers, and some only as Firemen. So, really, it's a way to escape into a less complicated way of life, when people interacted with each other and respected traditional masculine virtues -- just for a little while, taking a breather, so to speak.
