Re: SVR Anniversary

Those were fun times, everything was new and exciting. The uncompleted depot and the unassembled water tower were the only structures on the property, and the track was as Jeff and Tim described it. In October (IIRC) we installed the switch to complete the wye, and promptly derailed on it. The only passenger was a local by the name of Ken Alexander, who was somewhat in his cups and thought the whole affair was hilarious. That winter we assembled our first shop building. We got lucky as the snow didn't come until February, which gave us time to get it up without fighting snow. The gravel floor froze however, and we had to build fires on it to thaw it so we could set the ties.

It was a couple of years before the water tand was in service, and we used a Worthington steam pump to fill the locomotive tank from one of the ponds. This took about 35 or 40 minutes but only needed to be done once a day. After the tower was in service we used a gas powered pump to fill it from the same pond until a few years ago. We finally dug a well and installed an electric pump and float switch.

The Laura Jeff mentioned was Laura Hayse, who was a founder and who usually took new members under her wing and showed them the ropes. She could do any job on the railroad, though she prefered to fire the wood burner. When I first joined, in August 1976, Laura told me; "You had better get up there and learn to run that thing, because these guys are going to go hunting pretty soon". So I got a pair of bibs and went to firing. Sure enough, in a few weeks most of th guys went hunting and I was the engineer. Sadly, Laura passed away about seven weeks ago. Her irreverent sence of humor will be missed.

What we didn't know in those days! I think the reason we succeeded was because we didn't know enough to realize we couldn't. Who in their right mind would presume to build and equip a steam railroad by hand and with no money? Though there have been many people come and go over the years, there have never been more than about ten who were available to work at any one time. Fortunately there were a few "old timers" around in the early days to keep us from hurting ourselves.