On Thursday, we took a trip on the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad,
one of the few narrow gauge steam trains still in operation. It doesn't go
very far, but once it helped them clear-cut about 3,000 acres around Yosemite.
I liked the train well enough, but I'm really glad it's just used for tourism
now...
Halfway up the tracks, we paused to take on more water. The wood furnace
now runs on oil, but you still need lots and lots of water to get that much
steam. For those paying attention, you're probably wondering why the engine
is facing the cars. The answer is that the company doesn't have any way to
turn the engine around, so every other trip the engine is hooked up facing
the cars and does the entire journey backwards. The last time we did a moonlight
jaunt on this train, it was facing forwards, so as strange as this sounds,
it's been proven to be true...