Re: Fred Oster

John Cole Wrote:
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> I met Fred just a few years ago when he & Steve
> Forney came out to So Calif and they stayed at
> the Cole motel (not quite the Narrow Gauge Mo-
> tel but hey, we were free). While they were out we
> were able to show off Orange Empire RR Museum
> to them.


IIRC, that was late March in 2012, John.

I was there too — see [ngdiscussion.net].

Several years ago I first met Steve Forney at Roger's (actually Barbara's) Hotel & Shops in Chama, and during one of our loooong bull sessions about chasing the D&RGW in the late sixties I told him about running into the ditch in The Narrows when the VW in which TRAINS Magazine photographer John Gruber was riding stopped suddenly right in front of me, and the choice was between the certain disaster of rear-ending the VW or the hopefully lesser disaster of getting stuck in the ditch.  I mentioned to Steve that my car probably would have spent the night there, except that two or three young whipper-snappers happened along and the bunch of us were able to muscle it back onto the road.  It seems that Steve had long ago heard a story from his friend Fred about helping a couple of Foamers in a TR-4 out of the ditch in The Narrows a few years previously; he put two and two together, and re-introduced Fred and me after a gap of more than 40 years.  The date that Fred and I met the first time is definite – August 28, 1967 – the date that John Gruber rode the D&RGW from Alamosa to (almost) Chama, and the time can be narrowed down to a few minutes after the next-to-last photo on [ngdiscussion.net] was taken.

In the all too few years since meeting Fred for the second time I was privileged to spend many enjoyable hours with him and Steve, and will miss him a great deal.   Farewell, my Friend!

- Roosso