From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

We are here in Lake Tahoe. It was fun sleeping on the train, and it was so cozy being in a berth with a curtain in front of it and a hammock for all your clothes. I loved waking up all the time and seeing men running around outside with lanterns. They were fixing the train, but I felt so sorry because they had to work at night. It can’t be much fun for them to be doing their sleeping in the daytime and if they have any children, it must be hard for them to go around the house whispering and their mother’s always saying Shh, Shh, Shh to them. This morning it was lovely to eat breakfast in the dining car and to see all the things outside the window rushing by. Tiny white houses with roses crawling over the, and yards full of cows, pigs, and chickens and horses and hay and lots of dogs and cats and children and old women sitting under trees with baskets full of fruit or holding buckets. Everyone seemed bright-eyed and busy.

When we got off the big train we transferred to a little one, a really tiny one almost as tiny as the one we ride on at the Zoo. It went along the edge of a big brook in the forest and then, all of a sudden, the Hotel stood in front of us with the huge blue Lake Tahoe on the other side.

I have fond childhood memories of riding the train at the San Francisco Zoo. The photo below was taken in 1948, but gives us an idea of the one Hilda is writing about.