Boyz will be boyz...

Well, that time of year is getting close, so thought I would be the first to wish you all the best for the holiday season! Sit back and have a good laugh...
Grumps


Boyz will be Boyz
starring
Grumps, Phil, Karl, Oilcan & Cookie

To check out another one of these shorts featuring the PCRR gang, go here

Don't mess with Grumps...

So I am not big on this Halloween thing, but here is a scary story for those of you who are...

A man is walking home alone late one foggy night...

when behind him he hears:


Bump...




BUMP...




BUMP...





Walking faster, he looks back and through the fog he makes out the image of an upright casket banging its way down the middle of the street toward him.




BUMP...





BUMP...





BUMP...






Terrified, the man begins to run toward his home, the casket bouncing quickly behind him





FASTER...





FASTER...






BUMP...







BUMP...




BUMP...





He runs up to his door, fumbles with his keys, opens the door, rushes in, slams and locks the door behind him.








However, the casket crashes through his door, with the lid of the casket clapping










clappity-BUMP...




clappity-BUMP...






clappity-BUMP...





on his heels, the terrified man runs.





Rushing upstairs to the bathroom, the man locks himself in. His heart is pounding; his head is reeling; his breath is coming in sobbing gasps..


With a loud CRASH the casket breaks down the door.









Bumping and clapping toward him.





The man screams and reaches for something, anything, but all he can find is a bottle of cough syrup!









Desperate, he throws the cough syrup at the casket...
















and,

















(hopefully you're ready for this!!!)





The coffin stops

Marking Up at the Hillcrest & Wahtoke

One of my favorite scale railroads has to be the Hillcrest & Wahtoke located in Reedley, CA. Before I moved to the coast, I lived on a farm near the Hillcrest and when I heard they were putting in a steam train, well you couldn't keep me away from that. I only had a couple of opportunities to go there before I moved, but have stayed in touch with Sean and the gang over the years.

This year, I qualified and am now an engineer for the line, running some of the most gorgeous 5" scale 15" gauge locomotives anywhere. October is the start of the Pumpkin Patch at Hillcrest Farms and to kick it off, they host the Reedley Railfest. I arrived on Tuesday the 7th and proceeded to help out where ever needed. On Thursday the 9th, we had media day and the local NBC affiliate was there to do a live feed for the morning show and to tape for a promo that played throughout the weekend.
KSEE 24 News Reedley Railfest

Here I am with PCRR Zen Master Phil Reader as we are in a reverse move to make up the long train before dinner. On the front were the NPC #12 from CSRM & Glenwood #5. Cut in the middle was Redwood Valley #11 and I brought up the rear with Glenwood #13.





A section of three foot gauge track is in place and also visiting from the CSRM in Sacramento was the Mattole Lumber #1 formerly owned and operated by Henry Sorenson of McKinleyville, CA. He was an early steam preservationist and restored many locomotives up along the north coast. This locomotive is rarely seen and even more than that it hasn't been steamed in 7 years. I spent many an hour on this old wood burner and it was a blast!



The grand finale for the day was a re-enactment of the "Driving of the Golden Spike" ala Marie E. and Mattole Lumber standing in for UP 119 and CP "Jupiter" We spotted the loco's on the apex of the curve and nosed them in. John Lasseter had a copy of the original photo of the "Great Event" from May 10, 1869, and we all just gathered around and watched while Curtis Ferrington snapped off shots with a dozen or so cameras. Thanks to Al DiPaolo for sending me a copy that he reversed and made black and white. If your looking for "Grumps" he's up on the "Mattole" trying to get the cinders out of his eyes.


John Lasseter owner of the Marie E. shakes the hand of Al DiPaolo of the CSRM and caretaker of the Mattole Lumber #1.

Well that's all for now. A big thanks to Mojave Mike & Phil Reader for the pictures. You can view Mike's photo album here

For more info on the Hillcrest & Wahtoke, you can go here


Grumps - Out

Catching up...

Well I survived another camp this year. While overall full time attendance was down about 200 or so, weekends, especially the last one swelled to nearly 12,000 people.
For those of you who may not be aware, I am the facilities manager for the Seventh-day Adventist Conference Grounds in Santa Cruz County. The nearly 100 acres that I live and work on becomes its own little city for two weeks each year in July. Here is a picture from an advertisement showing an overhead shot taken from an airplane.



We have 500+ RV sites, 400 tents that we pitch each year (14X14), 70 guest cabins that sleep up to 280 persons, and an 18 room guest dormitory. Yep its big alright!

After camp finished and we got most of it packed away and picked up alot of the trash, it was time to head south and play choo choo at Karl Hovanitz' Bitter Creek & Western Railroad in Arroyo Grande. Each year Karl hosts a large meet for live steam locomotives of the narrow gauge persuasion.

This year I had the chance to double head with one of my old locomotives that is now owned by Roger Frimeyer of Bakersfield. We dubbed this event "Hackfest 2008" as both locomotives have Hackworth Valve Gear.



More pictures from the Narrow Gauge Meet can be seen here...

Saturday Night was spent over at the Pacific Coast Railroad running the #1 Caroline and a small freight for the attendees.

Here is yours truly oiling around.


Phil Reader, the CMO has really gone the extra mile to make this engine steam and operate better, and it was evident each time I pulled the throttle. She is quite a performer.

I will post some video of the runs we took as soon as I can get them off the camera. So stay tuned...

The "Stang"

My nephew is in 7th Heaven with the delivery of his 1966 Mustang just in time for graduation. The car turned out really nice and I am pleased with the outcome. Take care of her Gregg!

More from the Roundup

Continuing from the previous post... The first day of the roundup, I was up again at dawn:30 getting the locomotives ready for the day, and coming to assist me was Hot Water LaRose. Both engines still had steam from the previous day and good 'ol Frankenporter had enough pressure to fire up without air. After steam was up, breakfast was served in the tractor shop by Belle Kope from Reedley. MMMMM Tasty! She brought over these mushrooms that were really good.

I was scheduled on the #1 and that put me behind the 8 ball immediately.


The 8 ball is something Phil always mentioned about to me and said would look great on the cylinder cock lever inside the #1. Well I found one at the local autoparts store.


You see, here at the Pacific Coast Railroad Company we have a motto we like to live by... Stay Safe & Have Fun. Well the #1 which had so much trouble the day before due to bad fuel and dirty feed water lines, ran flawlessly! She steamed well and sounded great with that bid ol' six chime SP cab forward whistle.

Take the time to go to the Bitter Creek & Western website to see the fine pictures that Jaime Foster took. He does an excellent job of capturing the personal side of our events.

I took turns in running and firing both the #1 and "Frankenporter" which was also running rather well. At the end of the day we swapped out our train and made up a freight double header. We took one run before dinner, then recreated the Emperor of the North with our own "Shack" GM Brad LaRose defying all rules and regulations to ride the top of the cars.

Russ Sperry photo

"Hot Water" was hog'n the helper with Harry boiling water. High Water Hovanitz and I had the road engine. We did all our communication by whistle signals this time, NO RADIO! What a sight! We had some fun and antics also which I won't mention... well Ok I will mention it. I backed off the throttle and let the helper try to pull the train around the "S" curve grade past the North Yard switch and poor ol' Frankenporter fell flat on its face. We all got a kick seeing the faces of Harry and Hot Water looking back at us with this puzzled look! I got the train started on the hill with just a bit of help from the #3.
Here is the train coming around Vineyard Hill in another Russ Sperry photo.


Here is another Russ Sperry photo of the crossing at Airstrip Station.


Well the fun of the double header came to an end all too soon. And it was time to put the locomotives to bed and get ready for day two.
Here is a timeless shot of a real beauty.


We finished up with a crew photo taken by Mojave Mike.


Looking back now, I don't think we could have asked for a better time at this years roundup. Everything went smoothly. We had an AWESOME crew, and the trains ran the best ever.

I want to thank Phil and Karell Reader for the opportunity to do this, they are special friends. And I really want to thank Cookie & Patti for allowing me to have a place to shower, and relax after a long hard day! I really put Cookie through his paces the next morning as he learned to hostle and fire the locomotives! Also a big thanks to Harry & Mary, Karl, Bryce (A-1 dispatcher), Hot Rod and Belle Kope. Everyone sure takes good care of me when I come to the railroad, and I am very greatful.

Well I will do an update soon again with the final pictures from the last day and of course we will do some backhead cooking with the Iron Horse Chef! Till then...

The Pacific Coast Railroad Roundup

WOW!!! What a week it was down at the PCRR in Santa Margarita. I took a week of vacation to help out again with the 4th annual roundup which benefits the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum and the largest yearly event that takes place at the Ranch. Phil and I started out cleaning up the property of old scrap metal parts and junk vehicles. What a difference that made. Karl Hovanitz from the Bitter Creek & Western showed up later with the first load of 2' gauge track panels for Peter Nott's visiting equipment, which I unloaded using the John Deere.


Here is Karl and Mike bolting the splice bars to the rails.


Later that evening, Bill Rust showed up with his trusty Fairmont S-2 speeder which prompted a run with the MOW crew to grease the inside of the rails to reduce flange wear on the locomotives. However, one of the crew members failed to hear the "INSIDE" part of the statement, and greased the top of the rails. That became a problem when we began to run on Friday.


The next day, I drove down to Jack Bodenmann's shop to help Karl with the rest of the 2' gauge track panels and see the progress on restorations going on there. Peter Nott has quite a collection of locomotives which are going to be restored. Here are just a few of them.


After assembly of the panels back at the ranch, I began grading and laying out a track plan for the 7.5" gauge railroad through the vineyard.


On Thursday, Phil and I took the red-eye to Reedly to check out and sign off on the newly restored Disney Coach #105 the Painted Desert. All I can say is this coach is awesome! The Hillcrest Shops have outdone themselves this time. Truly a museum quality restoration.


Friday was a day for training and certifying the crews. I took my test the night before so I got up early to put a fire in both locomotives so we could make some test runs and have them all warmed up for the weekend. I began my day at 5:00 am. Here is the Harpur #1 at dawn.


By 8:00 am most everyone had shown up for the training class. We had about 25 attendees in the tractor shop.


Earlier in the week we had learned that Judy McEntire, our Chief Operating Officer Jim McEntire's wife, died of cancer. In the true railroad tradition, we had a wreath placed upon our locomotive #1 in honor of her.


Around 10:00 I was looking out towards Highway 101 and saw a bright yellow passenger car on a flatbed truck headed south. 10 minutes later, the Disney coach arrived.


The training class stopped and everyone went out to watch the unloading.


Also arriving that morning was the rest of Peter Nott's 2' gauge equipment which I helped unload. Here is a picture of his locomotive and two riding cars.


Finally we got to running some equipment in the afternoon. We soon found there were some problems with the #1 & #3. Also we had a slippery situation on the railroad where the aforementioned grease job really messed up our ability to pull anything on the tracks. Phil and others went out to degrease the rails, while I did repairs on the #1 which included cleaning out the rust in the water lines, and draining over 50 gallons of bad fuel from the tank.