THE 1991 RAIL FAIR

I've been digging through my stack of albums and I ran across my collection of stuff from the 1991 Rail Fair in Sacramento, California. The Rail Fair was a monumental event that occurs only once every ten years, an event attended by many of steam railroading's most avid fans.

It was a place where you could gawk and talk to your heart's content with like-minded folks from just about everywhere.

An operating replica of the "Strobridge Lion" was there.



An operating replica of the "Tom Thumb" was there.



Even the American Freedom train, Southern Pacific's 4449 in her "Daylight" colors, was there.



That long line you see in the picture was of folks waiting for their chance to tour the cab of this massive locomotive. There is a fabulous true story as to how this locomotive survived the years of rusting away on a city park to become a symbol of America during our national 1976 fourth of July celebration. I just might tell it one of these days.

There were even genuine honest-to-goodness locomotive engineers there, representing the Brotherhood of Locomotives.



I spent two weekends there and never got around to seeing everything.
I now recall that I was planning to attend the 2001 Rail Fair, but the dismal fact that I had to work for a living got in the way. I'm pretty certain I missed a good time.