Trains magazine is reporting some sad news: Here's the link the full story, which appears to be available to non-subscribers:
Trains Magazine: Dan Ranger, author and tourist railway advocate, 1938-2015

Also, Tom Moungovan posted a remembrance over on the NGDF: Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum: Dan Ranger Passes

I am CERTAINLY sorry to hear about this. The first, and only time, I met Dan was when he was running a Shay on the Bear Creek Central Railroad way back in the 1970's! He autographed a copy of "Pacific Coast Shay" that I had just purchased in the depot's gift shop. A truly one-of-a-kind guy. He will surely be missed!!

Dan will be greatly missed by a lot of us that have worked with him over the years! He was great at helping give young people a start in the industry. I went to work for Dan back in 1991 at Roaring Camp as a machinist right out of college. He took a gamble on a snot nosed kid from Wisconsin that want to work on steam locomotives for a living. Here it is almost 25 years later and I am still at it.
I was able to learn a lot from him over the year of working together. His wealth of knowledge of Shay locomotives and logging railroads will be missed!

Dan and I became friends during his second tour on the C&TS and through his time as Executive Director of the Tourist Railway Association (TRAIN). He would often give me a call asking about some safety requirement or another and then we would get side tracked with stories during his time on the SP. We worked together often over the years organizing joint short line railroad conferences with the FRA and American Short Line Railroad Association and he was always ready with some kind of talk or presentation regarding the importance of safety and compliance on tourist railroads.

As with many others, he was a friend and mentor….Rest In Peace my friend.

I worked for Dan for nearly 10 years when he was at Roaring Camp in the 90's. I am very fortunate to have been mentored by him. Dan was a soft spoken, but very articulate man, a master of the Shay locomotive and a strong believer in giving young up-starts an opportunity to learn the steam railroad trade. Stray cats could always find a bowl of food next to his office. Dan will most certainly be missed.

Paul Boschan

I have a few stories about Dan and some of them are printable here.

Back in 1972, Dan & I both pulled a few trains back to Gus Peterson's mill with the flatcar chucked high with redwood that he had purchased from Simpson. Most of these moves were with the ex-Pickering 3T Heisler 10, but a couple were with the Alco 17, a 2-8-2T. This was about an hour north of Eureka, CA.

Anyway, once Labor Day had passed, the regular tourist train was done for the year except for one October Saturday charter for a group from the SF Bay Area.

Over the winter, Dan was working in the mill for Gus and things got kinda tight as Gus failed to pay on time to Simpson so they stopped selling him logs for awhile. Undeterred, he had Dan fire up the Heisler with the crane and then the flat directly ahead of it. There was no air on the flat, but they went clear up the hill and found some downed redwood logs, skidded them down and had the crane load them on the flat. Things proceeded OK until they passed the summit and the uneven coupler heights caused the loaded flat to take off. One of Gus's mill hands yelled to Dan "go on, catch it, catch it". Dan told me that he jumped off the seat and yelled back that if he wanted it, he could catch it.

They all got off the engine and walked aways down to the top switchback, but no sight of the flat. Somebody noticed that the dirt berm at the end of track was gone and when they peered over to look, all they saw was a wide swath where the car had gone down the hill, taking everything down in its way. I heard it's still there if you can find it.

Wow, it seems like as long as I've been in this now I've had the name Dan Ranger and my own collection of stories.

During the TRAIN Ex. Dir tenure I'd hear from him regularly and like others have said, that was often an excellent pretext to hear one more 'real days on the SP' story. The real deal. When you got a safety lecture, it was usually accompanied by a 'and this is what happened to me when I didn't....' connection.

His dedication to the C&TS, for all the heartache it caused him, was unquestioned. I've met several people that think that a true affection for operating steam narrow gauge railroads is a chronic condition, he'd be on the list for sure.

I'd heard from him a few months ago, and what he was most concerned about was that he had another friend that was thinking of starting up a railroad, and figured I might be the only person to either move it forward or shut it down before they got in too deep. Dan was genuinely more concerned about the people involved than the equipment, and I certainly admired that.

Dan was much more than an "advocate." His roots and influence in the industry are far deeper than even he would acknowledge.

A quiet, self-effacing, humble, very effective and infuential man, father, husband, and mentor.