Time to slow down a bit, to ditch the airport security lines and line up for a trip back in time. There are plenty of places around the country with vintage trains. Here are some of them. We’ve omitted those great Colorado mountain trains this time around simply because most don’t operate in the winter. We’ll get to them in a later column. For now, consider:
– Riding the Fillmore & Western Railway Company out in southern California, not far north of Los Angeles. On the first Sunday of every month, from May through September, the railway takes you back in time aboard 1930s vintage passenger and dining cars as they wind their way through century-old citrus and avocado groves in the extraordinary Heritage Valley.
– Seeing the Grand Canyon from the window of a 1950s-era streamliner, the kind with those cool Plexiglas observation domes on top, the kind you used to see in the movies. The two-hour, fifteen-minute ride starts off in Williams. Spend three hours at the Grand Canyon then turn around for the trip back to Williams.
– Making your way through the mountain South aboard the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway. The serpentine, serene train clickty-clacks along the tracks Georgia’s fronting the mystic Toccoa River. The Blue Ridge’s season starts March 17.
No security lines here folks. We told you these conveyances are from another era.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Image: Grand Canyon Railway)
