Let me begin with the memory I most cherish. The bare facts are these: My family lived about five miles east of the Southern Pacific Railroad station in Glendale, California. Those readers familiar with the railroad photography of Richard Steinheimer have probably seen his immortal images of huge Cab-Forwards at night thundering through the Glendale depot platform tracks. This Spanish mission-style station, constructed in 1924, was the last stop for the southbound Coast Daylight before that illustrious train arrived at the downtown Union Station, completing its eight-hour-plus run from San Francisco. My father Harold, a civil engineer who worked for the City of Los Angeles, began work at 7:30 a.m. and was homeward bound by 4:30, arriving about 5:00 p.m. This meant that there was time to scoop up me and my younger brother David and take us to the Glendale depot to await the Daylight.

Picture a lovely old stuccoed, tile-roofed station, with people milling about waiting for their relatives and friends to arrive. The west sun would be flooding across an open field and over the two lines of track, throwing our shadows back against the pavement and the building. We children would watch eagerly toward the north along the rails. Eventually our patience would be rewarded when we saw the distant tell-tale rotation of a brilliant Mars light appear a long way off. Our anticipation grew when we began to detect wisps of steam and smoke rising above the flashing point of light. We saw the locomotive before we heard it, but eventually the sound also came our way, a very distant hissing chug as the train decelerated.

Almost before we realized it, the beautiful GS-class locomotive was only a few hundred feet off; the sound increased rapidly toward what to a child was a roar; the clanging warning bell would be going, and the majestic machine bore down on us who were waiting as close to the white safety line near the tracks as we possibly dared. I experienced a kind of delicious terror as the huge engine's pilot passed me and all that wonderful flashing and gyrating valve gear swept by. The locomotive moved a few car lengths past us, and even before it stopped, we children would be running toward it, oblivious to any of the hustle-bustle of people descending from passenger cars to greet the waiting crowd.

It would be all that I could do to contain my excitement as I stood opposite the firebox and gazed up at the fireman sitting with his arm on the rest of his window. Sometimes I would be rewarded with a smile and a wave, sometimes not. I particularly remember the low pounding roar of the oil burner. By looking just so through the air intakes, I could actually see the orange flames licking upward. There must be something that touches our primitive selves about seeing the actual fire in a locomotive's belly; we are gazing at the source of all the energy that pulls a trainload of people or freight across country at high speed.

The station stop of the Coast Daylight, train number 98, was only ten minutes, and we boys spent it well, walking from end to end of the locomotive and tender, watching a crewman inspect the running gear, wishing so much that we were in his shoes. Then he climbed the high ladder back into the cab, the conductor far down the platform swung his lantern, the locomotive emitted two blasts from its steam whistle (or air horn; I don't remember precisely which), and, almost imperceptibly at first, the great drive wheels began to turn, the cylinder cocks blew clouds of steam onto the platform, and the beautiful orange, red, and black train began to pass by us. We watched until its streamlined observation car with its distinctive Daylight drumhead disappeared around a curve. Then Dad would guide his two dazed little boys back to our 1950 Chevy and we would drive home, one more wonderful train experience engraved in our minds.

A second vivid memory is of a place about halfway between the Glendale and the downtown Union stations: the 'Espee' freight switching yard just where it narrowed down to pass under the Figueroa Street overpass. The virtue of this location was that just above it, to the west, one corner of Elysian Park provided a grandstand seat to watch the trains. Our family had but one car, and my mother Irene didn't drive anyway in those days. So, every so often, she would take me and David on one of the yellow and green streetcars the few miles from Eagle Rock to downtown Los Angeles. We would arrive just about the time my father got off work. He would emerge from the distinctive City Hall building and gather us up in the Chevy. Then we would drive the few blocks to Phillipe's Restaurant, a marvellous old establishment that I only recently learned was a favourite haunt of train crews between shifts as it was only a short walk away from Union Station. As a child, I never really understood why there were thick layers of coarse sawdust scattered over the floor, but as an adult I now realize it was probably the least offensive way to cope with the spitting habits of some of the crew members!

Phillipe's made the best dog-gone beef dip sandwiches that I have ever tasted or hope to taste. They dipped both sides of a sliced giant Kaiser roll into beef broth, then piled on the thinly-sliced well-done roast beef until it was literally falling out of the sides of the roll. One of these filled a small child's stomach like nothing else could, especially when washed down with a glass of the great root beer. Sometimes we would take a booth to eat, sitting bolt upright against the high board dividers that formed the back of the seats. But often we would take the whole meal, wrapped as a picnic, with us up to Elysian Park.

My Dad would unfold the khaki-coloured 'Army blanket', as we called it, and then my mother would set all the foodstuffs and drinks out on it. We would sprawl around the edges of the blanket, half on, and half off onto the coarse park grass, munching our beef dips and watching the show taking place in the rail yards below.

A show it was! In those days, around 1952 - 1955, small 0-6-0 'Harriman standard' steam switchers were still used. I distinctly remember how quickly they could start and stop. It was almost comical to watch a little engine race up toward a cut of cars, come to a halt just a foot away and inch up to make the coupling. Then it would reverse or proceed forward as the case might be, shoving the cars onto the correct track. The brakeman seemed like a hero to us, hanging with one arm onto the nearest boxcar ladder, ready to jump down to uncouple the cars, throw switches, and race back to a perch on the pilot beam just as the engine started off in another direction. We also saw a fair share of the early diesel switchers working the yards. They were nowhere as exciting to watch as the little steamers, but they got the job done just as effectively. I do not have any photographs from that period showing the steamers in action, but when we visited my grandmother in Fresno, two hundred miles to the north, a trip was often in order to Roeding Park, where a Union Pacific 0-6-0 of the same Harriman Standard design, No. 1238, lived on in static display. Of it I have several photos to recapture the memory, such as the one on page 25.

Speaking of Elysian Park now brings me to tell about Traveltown. Only a couple of miles to the north of the yards where we watched the switchers at work, a larger park named Griffith Park held pride of place in the Los Angeles park system. It sported a zoo, a beautiful carousel, and also a place of utter enchantment for me: Traveltown. Formally dedicated on December 14, 1952, this seven-acre site located on Forest Lawn Drive rapidly grew to hold a number of retired steam locomotives, miscellaneous freight and passenger rolling stock, and some unique early electric and interurban motors as an outdoor museum. From the start it was planned as a place where children could freely gain access to the engines' cabs and play engineer to their hearts' content. I understand from a pamphlet, 'Traveltown', written by G.M. Best in 1956, that the famous Ward Kimball, a close friend of Walt Disney, had the original idea to make the place a child-oriented attraction. Bless him; we took full advantage of the opportunity!

The first locomotive to reach Traveltown was a beautiful 4-4-2 'Atlantic' of the Southern Pacific, number 3025 Narrowly escaping scrapping, she was gussied up and fully repainted by the railroad before being turned over to the L.A. Parks Board for Traveltown 'duty'. No. 3025 had 81" diameter driving wheels; to a small boy standing perhaps four feet tall, these were gargantuan proportions. I have always felt that she was in some sense 'my' engine. Later, in my early teens, when I drew steam engines as other boys drew sports cars, I made an ink drawing of that locomotive which I still have. However, even my own drawing somehow shrank those enormous driving wheels and the drawing fails to communicate the look of a 'speed queen' that this 1904 Alco-built specimen projected .

In the early days, the engines in Traveltown had their original bell clappers in place. Residents several miles away soon complained of the constant clamour, and rubber clappers took their place, a most disappointing event, but still nothing like what has apparently happened since then: now the bells seem to be completely inoperable. In a visit to Traveltown in 1994, I was saddened to see the way in which the locomotives, which formerly had much space around them, were all crowded together, and most, if not all had chain link fencing across the back of the cabs, preventing children and adults from enjoying what I had taken for granted, the opportunity to sit in the very same seat that the old-time hoggers had occupied and imagine oneself racing across a continent at eighty miles per. It must be another sad sign of the times, and I'm not sure I will return again to experience the same sense of melancholy. But to end this section on a happier note, I will always keep bright in my memory those warm summer afternoons when, accompanied by my parents, I and my brother would race from engine to engine, sampling all of the wonders of what was a truly special place.

Speaking of Traveltown reminds me of the Los Angeles Live Steamers' club that operated next door. To a boy, these real operating steam locomotives, small as they were, carried with them much of the same romance that their full size cousins displayed. I would hang about near one of the lucky owners, watching him service his engine, then seat himself on the tender, give two toots on the whistle, crack the throttle, and move off up the line.

I hoped that someday I too would have one of these marvellous machines, and, having recently joined the B.C. Society of Model Engineers, I am now saving my nickels and dimes to acquire one, having concluded that life is too short for me to build an engine from scratch and still 'have a life' in other regards like, say, a family and a career! Time will tell on this subject.

Griffith Park had one more railroad attraction, which was what we today call a Minirail. Located near the zoo, it consisted of a beautifully painted 'Daylight' train and engine, this last regrettably not steam powered. This train was a must-see and must-ride when our family visited the zoo. A treasured photograph shows me and David seated in a car during a station stop. Whenever I now operate the minirail in Squamish, I recall those early days and see them echoed in the delighted young folk my train carries.

One last memory connected with this territory, and then I will move on out of Los Angeles. The Espee yards ran alongside San Fernando Road, a busy thoroughfare that took one downtown in the days before the ubiquitous freeways went everywhere. One evening, just around sunset, we were driving south on this street, and suddenly off to my right, beyond a chain link fence, the most amazing sight met my eyes. It was one of the enormous Cab-Forward articulated locomotives, travelling light and slowly, coming in the opposite direction toward us. What I remember most clearly about it was that the combined effect of its two sets of valve gear ponderously turning over and over put me in mind of a huge prehistoric beast, head forward, crawling along the ground! Too, the quantity of steam and smoke belching from its stack was quite impressive. Dad slowed the car down, but we soon reached and passed the monster, and that is my one and only clear memory of seeing one of the Espee's most unique locomotives in action.