If we may pose a question to our readers, When do you suppose the picture above was taken? Twenty years ago? Fifty? Or seventy? We confess we hope you make the last choice, because that is the effect the scene hopes to convey, even though the photograph was actually made in August, 1971. It shows a train on the Valley Railroad in Connecticut, its ancient but sturdy steam locomotive and cars painstakingly restored, inside and out, to the high gloss of railroading in the very early years of this century, when steam was king, managements were proud, and the presidents of great systems were sometimes more highly regarded in the United States (as the historian James Bryce observed) than mere governors or even the President in the White House. If some of these lordly figures were scoundrels, they were nonetheless Persons of Importance and enjoyed, besides, the right of riding on every other fellow’s railroad on special passes, which were on occasion made of solid gold.

We go into this last matter in some detail and with twinges of regret, because your editor, when he is not working on the magazine in New York, is president of this little railroad in Connecticut. The prestige of the job has evaporated in our times along with that of America’s railroads themselves, and there are, alas, no more passes; but a little privilege is still there. On this kind of railroad, the president gets to sit near the office pot-bellied stove, and he can schedule special trains, as he has just done for the staff of American Heritage.

What these history enthusiasts saw and what future riders on American Heritage Society tours will witness is an authentic ride through the past. Valley Railroad trains steam out of an old-fashioned station in the old seaport town of Essex, on the thinly settled lower reaches of the Connecticut River. They move slowly north along the rebuilt roadbed through woods, glades, and rocky defiles until they come out on the wetlands and the broad river itself. At the little town of Deep River a connecting steamboat sometimes takes the riders upstream on another turn-of-the-century adventure. The engine switches around the train in a flurry of puffing and bell-ringing, and presently the cars move back again to Essex. The whole railway trip is, so far, only eight miles, but it will be extended in time, as the old overgrown track is cleared and repaired, to the nineteenth-century hamlet of East Haddam, site of Goodspeed’s Opera House, and down to a connection with the Penn Central main line five miles south of Essex at Old Saybrook. In May, 1972, weekend service will resume, and trains will also run daily forty-five-minute trips from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

The present Valley Railroad reopened this past summer on July 29 in a blare of bands, bunting, and oratory. Historians reminded the crowd that it was, by no coincidence, the exact