Harriett and Bryan came down for the weekend for the sole purpose of riding the New Hope Valley Railway, which runs once a
month so that train enthusiasts and their mostly willing family members can get a taste of the classic mode of transportation.
This was the main engine of the train we would be riding. For the record it was oil powered not coal powered.
See, "caboose" isn't just a euphamism for the butt. Sometimes it's the last car of a train too.
Old trains that we would not be riding.
The grounds around the train yard was littered with various old trains, train parts, crane trucks, and many other pieces of
heavy machinery.
Inside the mail car. This might havr actually been the best part of the whole thing, I find the act of getting mail around the country
in those days pretty fascinating...picking up mail and dropping it off at stations without ever stopping the trains, just using a series
of hooks.
\Mail destinations.
Bryan and Harriett on the train. It was chilly but still an enjoyable ride.
Too chilly for Chelsea probably. She's a troplical sort, I think her blood might be mostly coconut milk.
Oh yeah, the train leaves (and returns) from the community of Bonsal, NC. This and a closed run down store is all that is there,
outside a couple of houses.
So you ride down the track til it ends, then the engine unhooks, drives around to the front, and pulls you backwards back to the
station. When you ain't got a lot of track (most of the track got submerged under a man made lake), you do what you gotta do.
It runs through some nice piedmont pine forest. There's probably a bigfoot or two out there somewhere.
Sunlight filtered through train smoke.
