trinkets and trains

Just before the train pulled into Albuquerque, we were told - there was a half hour stop, and there would be vendors on the platform selling jewelry and trinkets.  Imagine!  it must have been just like this a hundred years ago, when the Southwest Chief - or whatever the Santa Fe Railroad main daily train was called them - pulled in.  And there would also, too, have been the urban cowboy getting off the train for a smoke (check out those leather trousers, and leather studded wristbands, and leather hat, and - yes - those are platform soled shoes).   

I decided that I'd take the train back from Los Angeles (this was planned some time ago, and certainly before I found out that there's such a huge storm supposedly coming in that we're heading back to Los Angeles tomorrow, so as to avoid the risk of being snowbound on Monday, and not making our flight to England).  It was huge fun - though weird, since it only occasionally could be said to feel like unfamiliar territory, since for a lot of the route the line runs very close to I-40, down which we drove only last weekend - so one's seeing familiar landmarks from different angles.   The mountains round Flagstaff - very snowy - at 5.30 in the morning, with lights on in little cabins, could have been any European mountain town.  And it was so very excellent to get off at Lamy, just five miles down the road from our house, and the old stop for Santa Fe - D. H. Lawrence, for example, arrived here ...