Re: CRRM Handcar Question----More Trivia

Stan Rhine originally got the small pop car running long ago using the Pump House as a shop one winter. He painted it, cleaned the fuel system and a probably a new spark plug, not sure when the GC&SJ lettering appeared. Remember it as having a useable weathered wood top deck made of milled lumber, not the solid plywood appearing surface in this thread. I vaguely recall ?) it may have used a old wood sided Model T coil for the spark plug. Yes it was fast and fun, ran it several times. Before the track was a continuous loop, the trick was reversing the pop car engine without stalling it to avoid manual re-cranking again. Bob Jensen made a short B&W movie of the little pop car running around that might be in the library archives somewhere?

Long ago talked with John Bovinger (sp?) about decking the RR ties and area in front of the pump house for easier positioning the pop car on the rails. He said to wait, the ties weren't tamped yet. After a few months I just nailed down some old thick lumber thinking surely the tamping was done, there was no gravel ballast then, maybe new dirt had appeared? Days later finding John sweating, prying on the lumber with a crowbar, obviously mad, to tamp the ties. The two larger and heavier pop cars had a 2-speed transmission and ran much slower. One I got running that was later coupled with the low sided push car for moving dirt onto the jacked up raised track across the fill when the big dip was corrected. Think there was a photo of the raised track sitting on tie cribbing in the Iron Horse News.

Randy