Eureka Springs, AR
Today I drove the Atom up to Eureka Springs, AR. I visited the Eureka Springs & North Arkansas Railway, a 2-mile scenic train route. They used to operate steam equipment, but the federal boiler inspectors have become a lot tougher due to an incident elsewhere, so they can only operate diesel equipment now. [I used to work on steam equipment in the summer when I was in High School, so I’m familiar with the enormous time and expense to keep it running.]
This is one of their steam locomotives, and is probably the closest to operable of all of them:
This is the diesel they use to pull the passenger car(s). While this is a very small operation, the engineer has an incredibly good hand with the throttle – the coupling and uncoupling was done perfectly:
Afterwards, I drove the Atom down the Pig Trail, which has some nice twists and turns. It turns out I just missed Willie Nelson in Eureka Springs – he was in a bus in the parking lot of City Hall when I stopped in and asked for directions.
