Shannon Phillips

Robin and Sam and I went down to Niles Canyon today for their Spring Steam Weekend, and we got to ride behind their Southern Pacific No. 2472 steam engine from Sunol to Niles and back. I was about to describe this locomotive to you as “a very serious piece of engineering,” but then I suddenly had qualms: maybe I was just so impressed by this hulking, churning collection of wheels and pistons and smoke because I’m a train novice, and anybody who was really serious about steam engines would say oh that’s nothing?

So I asked Sam, hey, how would you describe the SP 2472?

“As a big black smoking monster of a machine that rumbled down the track like Zeus himself was driving it,” Sam said, immediately.

So there you go. Here’s another picture, with a human in it for scale:

They had a restored Pullman car for the first-class passengers, but our family rode coach, in one of the open-air cars. The scenery was lovely, although I was too busy keeping an eagle eye on Robin to take many pictures. I got this one when we were going through the yard:

Afterwards the boy got to clamber around on some of the cars that were parked on a side track:

“Look,” I said when Robin grabbed the wheel-thingy, “he’s driving the train!”

“Yeah, not from that end,” said Sam. “That’s a caboose.”

Then it got late, so we went home. Robin passed out in the car. It was a long day for a little engineer!