Re: Happy 100th Birthday to Ward Kimball

Happy 100 Ward.

Ward personally told me this while we sat in Eureka's cab at Railfair 91. His first choice for a locomotive back in the 1930s was Eureka. He went to Hobart Mills to see it under steam. He liked it but the railroad wanted to much.....$800.00 Still being in the depression and recently married, he had to look elsewhere. So off he went to the Nevada Central at Battle Mountain, Nv. There he picked up the NC #2 for I believe $400.00 or so. He had it shipped back to his home in California, and the rest is Grizzly Flats history.

Whenever I visited Ward at his home or saw him he would tell me that while he had Emma Nevada, he and Walt Disney would go over to Warner Bros. Studios and climb around on Eureka. Had things gone a little different, Eureka could have wound up on the Disney World railroad, or maybe at Disneyland. I don't thing it would have done well at Disneyland because the tunnels are a little low. That is tough on locomotive smokestacks of a regular sized narrow gauge engine.

Anyway, Ward was an inspiration to me and for that I am eternally grateful to him.

Dan Markoff