Read
about Walt & Paula
in the February 2008 San
Diego Troubdour
Trails
& Rails adds "...a very nice sound" to Marvin O'Dell's new CD, "Letter to
Molly"
- O.J. Sikes
in
The Western Way - Winter 2007 I
have been extremely fascinated with the music of Paula Strong and Walt Richards
(AKA Trails & Rails), since I heard them in Tucson in 2004. ....They are excellent
pickers and singers....I think you would really enjoy their music... instrumentals,
vocals - both are excellent. Their latest CD, "From Way Out West" is
very highly recommended!
-
Jay Taylor in Country Musical Trails
Less Traveled - January/February 2007 The
acoustic duo Trails & Rails (featuring Walt Richards and Paula Strong) has
a new CD titled, From Way Out West. It's made up of contemporary compositions,
with one traditional instrumental. There's a second instrumental, featuring Ken
Wilcox on acoustic Guitar and Walt on banjo, that's one of my favorite cuts on
the CD! As their name implies, the group looks for both train and Western songs,
and they found a good one that combines both themes for this project, "Night
Train Down the Yellowstone," by Les Buffham & Mike Ley, and another Buffham
collaboration, this time with Mike Fleming, on "Tres Bells of Ol' Gran Boquillas."
It recalls the theme of the popular song "Serenade of the Bells" from
the early 1950s. One of my favorite compositions on the disc, "Night Time
Out on the Range" by Jerry Campbell & Robert Wagoner, opens the album,
and "Echoes of the Trail" is one of my favorite renditions.
-
O.J. Sikes in
The Western Way - Winter 2007 
Thousands
enjoy
2006 Poway Train Festival By:
ANDREW PETERSON
For the North County Times
October 11, 2006 POWAY
---- Shots rang out in Old Poway Park at midmorning Saturday, when the infamous
Shadow River Regulators gang forced the Poway-Midland steam train to a stop, its
cars full of women and children. "Throw down the gold!" shouted one of the robbers,
brandishing a pistol. Luckily a U.S. Army regiment appeared and confronted the
assailants. A tense standoff ensued. Finally Army Captain William Schurmann brought
matters to a head. "I don't think you want the gold," he said, aiming his gun.
"I think you just want the lead!" With that, a lethal volley of Army gunfire dispatched
the Regulators ---- to the cheers and applause of passengers and onlookers.
"It's only make-believe," said a mother
to her young child as the train whistle blew. Meanwhile, the absence of Army casualties
was yet another reminder of the deplorable state of bandit marksmanship.
"We were the U.S. Army ---- protecting
the payroll," David Powell, of the Frontier Army of the West civil war re-enactment
unit, said after the smoke had cleared. "And they were the bad guys, trying to
rob the payroll. We put an end to that." The
mock holdup was one of the more colorful presentations at Poway's ninth annual
Train Song Festival, which drew an estimated 2,000 train enthusiasts of all ages
with a smorgasbord of locomotive lore that entertained and informed. The
Poway Station Model Railroad Club was a crowd pleaser. It featured a room-filling
model railroad display, complete with meticulously detailed electric trains and
elaborate scenery. Three generations of the Edwards family were among the admiring
audience ---- grandmother Maggie of Ocean Beach, her son Chris, and Chris' son
Van, who at the age of 3 was already a big model-train fan. "I
like that long tunnel," he said, pointing at the scenery from his father's arms.
"When I lived in Kansas I could hear 'em at night," Maggie Edwards said. "You
think about all the trains crisscrossing the country, all the time, night and
day, bringing us what we need from wherever it was before." The
musical trio Trails and Rails entertained an appreciative, toe-tapping audience
under a massive oak tree at the Green Park Stage, with train-themed hobo songs
and classics like "Sentimental Journey." Guitarists Paula Strong and Walt Richards
took turns singing lead, with Richards using both a banjo and a mandolin to great
effect, and bassist Bruce Huntington, a genial giant, ably supplying rhythm and
bass harmony. At the Poway
Historical Society, Docent Lucille Dalbey offered explanations of archival photographs
---- dusty images of Poway's first school, and a dirt trail that became one of
Poway's main thoroughfares: Pomerado Road. "That's
the old Crosthwaite Adobe," Dalbey said, pointing to a grainy photo of a ramshackle
house long vanished in Poway's past. "That's where Creekside (Shopping Center)
is now." Outside in the
warm sunlight of October 2006, Linda Umsted's young daughter Lyndsey ran her fingertips
over the steel strings of a hammer dulcimer at the Musical Instrument Petting
Zoo. "I think (we've enjoyed) riding the train and watching the robbers the most,"
said Umsted, a physical therapist. Behind
the zoo, the Poway-Midland train had pulled up. As one group of passengers exited
to make room for the next, train engineer Laura Johnson, a park volunteer, snacked
on a pickle, while her father Gary Steinweg oiled the locomotive's big wheels
and tended the restored 1907 Baldwin steam engine. "We've
been having problems with bandits," she smiled. "They stole the train the first
time out." It wasn't long before her break was over, and the train ---- fully
loaded again ---- pulled away from the station to make another circuit around
the half-mile track encircling Old Poway Park. Bruce
Huntington had already packed away his bass when he sat down for a brief interview
by the Hamburger Factory. "When I was a kid, I used to go to San Diego from Oceanside
on trains," he said. "And I remember going back and forth across the United States
to see our family in the south. As a kid I was always fascinated by trains, there's
something kind of magical about them. To hear that lonesome train whistle." | 
