Remembering my mentor, Dan Ranger

All of us have a mentor. This is about a man who influenced my life. He is a man who deserves a lot of credit for developing my love of railroading. Indirectly, he helped to put me on the path to becoming editor of Trains magazine. His name is Dan Ranger, and he passed away Friday at age 77.

Dan Ranger

I met Dan in 1973. I was 12, and Dan, at age 35 was already a seasoned veteran of the Southern Pacific and a bunch of California tourist railroads. He loved steam and had just gone to work as the general manager of a short line near my home in Western North Carolina. Through two difficult years, Dan and a group of folks revived the Graham County Railroad, famous for its long-lived Shay locomotives, 6 percent grades, and gorgeous mountain scenery.

My parents had given me a copy of Dan’s book Pacific Coast Shay, as a birthday gift, and after realizing that Dan was the author, I had the impulse to get him to autograph it for me. Dan did so with pleasure on a bench in the depot, and he followed up with the invitation to my first cab ride in a coal burning, standard gauge locomotive, No. 1925. I joined Dan, standing in the gangway, watching him masterfully control the geared engine, and watching with amazement as fireman Howard Herd lobbed coal at the open firedoor on the bouncing gangway. I hung on for dear life, afraid of falling out (or more like being pitched out), but enjoying every second.

Dan was a gracious host, welcoming me on monthly visits to the railroad, inviting me into the cab, and showing me a world of railroading that I’d only read about before. Over lunch, he spun stories of working on SP steam, running Pacific Coast Shay No. 11 on a tourist line, and with every word and photo, bringing me deeper into the fraternity. But the excitement came every day when No. 1925 would liftoff from a dead stop on the 6 percent grade with a caboose and two open-air cars ahead of it on a cliff overlooking the Nantahala Gorge. Dan would delicately start steam into the cylinders, release the train line, and gradually back off the independent brake until the wheels began to move. No slips, no lurching, nothing but good handling. It was a smooth start in a difficult spot. From a perch on the back of the caboose, planted on No. 1925’s nose, I could see it all in a state of wonder.

When the railroad failed in 1975, I was heartbroken. I had wanted to go to work for the railroad as a summer employee when I turned 16. I had wanted to fire the engine for Dan. That was not to be. I still showed up for the last trip in June, riding one last time behind Dan as No. 1925 faithfully made its last journey. As the day came to a close and it was time for me to leave, something made me turn to Dan before I left the cab. “Keep looking for me beside the tracks,” I said to him. “One day I will be there. Keep looking for me.” I had no reason to think that I would ever see this man again — Dan was headed to run a railroad in Hawaii, and I was still a kid in a small town in Western North Carolina — but for some reason I thought it would be so.

Besides Hawaii, Dan’s career took him to tourist railroads in New Mexico and California, notably the Cumbres & Toltec and Roaring Camp lines. It wasn’t until 1997 that we were able to cross paths once more. The occasion was the meeting of the Tourist Railroad Association, and as fate would have it, I was there to accept an award from Dan as a volunteer the North Carolina Transportation Museum for the restoration of the very locomotive that had begun our relationship almost a quarter century before. We had found each other “trackside” once more, and there were many good times ahead together that I could have never dreamed of.

In 2001, as host of a Tourist Railroad Association meeting in Spencer, N.C., I got to fire No. 1925 for Dan, fulfilling my youthful wish to wield the scoop while Dan worked the throttle. It was a short trip of just three miles on relatively flat land, but in my mind it was the entire 12-miles of the Graham County in the mountains.

When I got the Trains magazine editor’s job in 2004, one of the first people I called to share the news was Dan. His encouragement and support over the years had meant so much to me, and I wanted him to share in the good news.  

So this is for my mentor, a good man who encouraged me as a kid and never stopped in his support of my railroad endeavors. I will miss him, but I know in my heart that I will see him down the tracks.