The Flower Train

This story clipped from the March 30, 1903 issue of "The Arizona Republican" creates haunting, evocative images that bounce around my imagination like some Victorian precursor of "The Way We Were."

Visualize 400-600 men and women in their Sunday Best on a special train just to see the flowers.  Hear the sweet violin strains of an eminent local musician strolling from car to car.  Think about a steam engine slowing down in the middle of the Sonoran Desert to allow passengers to spend the day basking with the poppies that covered miles of sand.

We can see the fine millinery and flowing skirts, the gentlemanly suits and bowler hats all mingling together in a colorful sea of splendor. Soak up the notion of a Perfect March 29 Blue Bird Day with gentle breezes and diamonds in the desert forever.

As the writer wisely observed, "It is not every railroad that can run an excursion into the midst of a flower garden and the incident will be a pleasing memory to hundreds who enjoyed it."

Source: https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/digital/collection/sn84020558/id/55581/rec/32

S.F. P. & P. was the Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoenix Railway. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe,_Prescott_and_Phoenix_Railway

We're 99% certain the engine pulling The Flower Train was a Brooks 4-6-0, a workhorse in The Golden Age of Steam.  Chances are pretty good that it was pulling a consist of at least 10 passenger coaches.  From our reseach, it difficult to discern which coaches "might" have been on such an excursion, so we'll err on the high side with 10 cars.  Might have been more but probably not less.

When we Googled 1903 men's and women's fashions this is what we found.
It is mostly consistent with what we expected to find.  Women were heavily dressed.
Men's fashions were basically what they work to work every day. Unless they were miners!