I greatly enjoyed the “flanger” snow-plowing tourist train story. Let’s have more local-train stories, shall we?

But hold the train – did I read correctly in the story that crew members’ breath was “illuminated by battery-powered lanterns?” Modern-day battery powered, not traditional kerosene oil lanterns?

I suspect my grandfather, an engineer of the New York Central’s 20th Century Limited, once referred to as the world’s greatest train, just rolled over in his 70-some-years grave. And my father, once a coal-passer on a train in the 1930s, who died some 50 years ago, also twisted a bit. I recall my dad, once a stocky former football player, saying coal-passing was, when he worked in his early 20s, the hardest physical job he ever had.

All that said, my oil lanterns are antiques. And even obtaining oil for my own antique glass lamps is difficult, as I found when I visited a local hardware store recently and discovered they had no lamp oil. So I understand why our local railroad crew uses battery-powered lanterns, and I certainly don’t begrudge them using such lanterns.

Still, I long for “real” railroad lanterns such as my grandfather had.

William A. Babcock

Durango