When I was about eight, my folks took my four sisters and I on an extended western trip, where Dad took us out into a a lot of the Indian country, where he had worked for the forest service in the summers while he was in undergraduate school studying Forestry .
We made a side trip to Durango, and rode the Silverton branch when it was still run buy bu the D & R G W I was doing ok riding on the man made ledges through the gorge until I noticed the old rails in the river 180 feet below. I later learned that that rail was down there from washouts, but it made the whole proposition seem rather precarious to my 8 year old mind. That , along with my dad pushing the 3 point suspension on his model T as far as it would go at the end of the long down hill driveway ; (thoroughly safe if you understand the mechanics as I now do, but terrifying to the 8 year old mind, as the front of the car is kicked over to 45 degrees off center as my Dad whips the model T on to the main road. I used to think "This guy is going to kill me." I'm sure if I had a model T I wouldn't push it that hard, but Dad's first car was a Model T, and it seemed normal to him. Likewise he didn't tell me that the rail down in the river of lost souls (el rio de las animas perditas) were down there from a washout upstream 50 years before, and not from last years disaster.
Narrow gauge isn't scary to the adult mind, some of those guys survived1
Nelson