From Sonja Howle

"Christmas 2004 - The Iron Horse Express (Amtrak's Southwest Chief) leaves Kansas City's Union Station.  On board will be fellow Wizard of Ads partner Sonja Howle, author of Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Southwest, The Power of Vision, reporting in on her weblog, www.IronHorses.us ... featuring the historic scenes and sites from her book along the way.

Sonja's mother, Twila Smith, will join her on the adventure west to Los Angeles.  In 1903, Twila's mother and Sonja's Grandmother, Rose (Liberto) Pfeifer, boarded a train from New York.  She was barely three years old when she traveled west into the unknown, with her little cardboard suitcase, on the Orphan Train.  In Kansas a German couple chose her to be their daughter.  Her adoptive father and his brothers worked for the Santa Fe Railway in Topeka.   

Sonja's book, Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Southwest (available from www.Amazon.com or www.wizardacademypress.com), is a tribute to the Iron Horse Spirit of the leading men and women of the Santa Fe Railway, and to their innovations in advertising, art, architecture and adventure, still at work in the West today."