BH-the-boy-who-loved-trains

BH-the-boy-who-loved-trains

FLASHBACK: THE BOY WHO LOVES TRAINS. Now that it is too dark to legally fly Sancho during the dark early morning and late evening times when the freight shakes Wasilla earth while rolling through and summer passenger service has ended, my summer long quest to photograph the train at just about every opportunity is over. This is not quite as bad as it sounds. The Aurora winter passenger train start up Saturday, but will have a limited schedule - going north on Saturdays, south on Sundays - just as the Denali Star summer train did in the final, cut down days of its COVID reduced schedule. I understand that the work train, the only ARR train that still tows a caboose, will pass through Wasilla today. I have no idea what time, but will make a call or two to try to find out.
 
I also have LOTS of Sancho leftovers from the summer I can sift through and post and, scattered all through my archives, iPhone and other photos I took during chance encounters with the train. At one such chance encounter, Kalib, our eldest grandchild, the boy who loves trains, got to wave at sojourners through Wasilla.
 
He heard the whistle blow from up close.
 
Along with his two brothers, Jobe and Lynxton and his mom and dad, Kalib now lives in Arizona on the border of his dad’s White Mountain Apache tribal homeland, not far from the Navajo Nation, where he and his brothers are enrolled tribal members, along with their mother.
Photographs courtesy of Bill Hess