I attended every one of the EBT's Winter Spectaculars from 1966 to the end. The first one featured M-1 and a combine on the railroad, plus two operating trolleys at the museum. Dave Biles held forth in the lavatory of the combine with a campstove, boiling hotdogs and making coffee and hot chocolate. The next year, #14 was brought out, and in 1968, it became a two-day event.
Over the years, the Winter Spectaculars became *the* February railfan event. Lots of folks from all over the country showed up, and a lot of us became friends. In the early years, there would be an auction on Saturday night after an all-you-can-eat turkey dinner at the fire hall, and then there was the night train, and the day wrapped up with a night photo session.
After a couple of years riding, I found it to be a wonderful experience to chase the night train, especially to walk out across the snowy field to the cut north of the summit. To stand out there under the stars and hear #12 or #14 back its train around the wye at Colgate Grove and then work its way south, the whistle echoing around the valley, was Nirvana! It's something no one could ever capture on film or tape, watching the glow of the headlight sweeping around the curve, the exhaust sharpening as the train came up the grade. Then the engine swept by, and the glow of the fire on the exhaust would illuminate the sky.
The walking tours of the ruins of the Rockhill iron Works and the shop tours were another favorite, and I learned much at the feet of Ralph Miller, a retired machinist who had been hanging around the EBT even before it shut down. In fact, I was allowed to lead tours of the ruins and the shop after I learned Ralph's routine. On Sunday the trains didn't run until noon in respect for the community's religious services, and sometimes a gang would go off to explore Mt. Union or the tunnel at Kimmel or poke around Robertsdale.
The weather varied, from rain and mud to rock-hard frozen, temperatures from the 40's to below zero. Twice the event had to be postponed due to heavy snow since the EBT did not possess a snowplow. However, the trolley museum guys invoked their trolley snow-sweepers to open their line! One year we all went to bed on a starry, starry Saturday night and woke up with about a foot of fresh fluffy snow Sunday. Over the years, all four of the EBT's operable steamers performed, on a couple of memorable though absurd occasions, in quadruple-headers! Even the earliest Plymouth diesels got in the act near the end, and M-1 was out and about every February.
The Fall Spectaculars are fun, don't get me wrong, but the Winter Spectaculars were special.
I wonder if Craft, Gunning and Co. could talk the folks in Rockhill into a reprise.......Sure would be fun to see #14 in the snow again!
