Oh, and the mosquitoes continue to be a nightmare. DNR traps that this time of year normally collect 50 mosquitoes overnight are getting 3500. That is not a misprint: thirty-five hundred.
Yesterday was a reasonably typical summer weekend day in the life of the railroad.
I headed over about 6:30 am to get the grass trimmed at Hyde Park Station before the visitors started showing up. Our first concern at the railroad is safety, and trimmers and lawnmowers can kick up stones and sticks, tossing them quite a distance.
I trimmed the fences, hills and "triangles" (the areas where Dave can't mow with the Yazoo mower), cleaned up the edges around the turntables and trees, and cut the hills in the area of the main station.
Bernie, meanwhile, arrived at 7 am and started setting up Number 98, the steam engine that would be used during the day to pull the passenger trains.
The railroad's steam engines take about two and a half hours to set up in running condition. The boilers have to be brought into service gently. Bernie starts with newspaper and oak kindling, adds more substantial pieces of oak, and, eventually coal, to bring the boilers into operating condition.
Meanwhile he oils, greases and polishes the engine to a high finish, so that it looks like a jewel. The Sandley engines are generally considered the best 15 inch steam engines ever made in this country, and we want our engines to look it.
At 8 am, Jack showed up. He cleaned the bathrooms, and then we pulled the passenger cars out of the barn to the station.
We decoupled the diesel and went on patrol, stopping to pick up a couple of hoppers off the work siding.
We patrol the tracks every morning to make sure that the tracks are in order and in safe condition. The steam engines afford limited visibility, so we use the diesel to patrol before the steam engine is put into operation.
We look at every switch to make sure that it is clean, in the correct position and properly locked, and we look at every inch of track to make sure that it is clean. At fifteen inch gauge, even a half-inch stick laying across the track can be a problem.
Jack and I dropped a mower and a gallon of gas at the Camp siding, so that I could use it later in the morning to cut the track sides. I dropped Jack and the hoppers off at milepost 13 so that he could load them with brush, and continued the patrol out to Western Springs.
I picked up Jack and the hoppers on the way back, and we dumped the brush for burning in the fall.
We got back about 9 am. While we were out patrolling, Gary had pulled the caboose -- a newly restored car that needs to be fitted with air brakes before we can put it into service -- out onto one of the sidings for the visitors to enjoy.
Michael arrived to set up the gift shop. He vacuums every morning, gets the inventory sorted out from the day before, and sets up the cash registers -- we use two, one for ticket sales and one for inventory sales -- and opens at 9:30 am.
Our visitors started showing up around 9:30 am. The early birds get a special treat, because someone -- yesterday it was me -- will take them into the yard to watch Bernie do the final set up on the steam engine -- checking it over, coaling it and watering it.
If we have kids of the right age whose parents are willing, we'll let the kids help water the engine. The kids don't do much -- we let them, under our supervision and parental supervision, help pull the handle that allows the water to flow from the tank to the engine -- but the kids just love it, and it is quite a photo opportunity for the parents.
Our first train runs at 10 am, and we run on the hour, more or less, after that. Our last train runs at 5 pm, so we run eight trains a day.
I hitched a ride out to the Camp siding on the first train, and spent the rest of the morning trimming the track sides.
Our track runs along the original road bed of the Chicago to Minneapolis line, and it is quite beautiful, with 150-year old fills across deep ravines feeding into the Wisconsin River, and cuts through "dells", the rock formations which give our area its name.
We need to keep the track side clear for a minimum of four feet from the track for safety reasons, and we try keep it trimmed and looking neat all the way, too. Grass, weeds and brush are our enemy, because they detract from the natural beauty of the area.
We have been talking about doing a controlled burn this fall, to try to clear up the brush a bit farther away from the track. I don't know if we will, or not, but if we don't, then we'll do some brush chopping later in the year.
While I was out trimming the track side, Jim got the Iron Horse, our cafeteria, open and ready for business. We've been operating the Iron Horse only on the weekends so far this year, but the family that operates it during the summer arrived yesterday, and so we'll probably be open during on at least some week days from now through Labor Day.
I got back about 12:30 am, and went to lunch with John and his son Matthew, who was helping put price stickers on new inventory in the gift shop.
When we got back about 1:15 pm, a large family was in the picnic area, celebrating a kid's birthday, with a train ride on the two o'clock run. Lots of other families were around, too, and kids were all over the place, as usual on a Saturday.
John asked if I would help do some chain saw work out at milepost 23, where we still have a large tree down and not yet reduced to logs, so we loaded the chainsaw, gas and bar oil into my truck, and headed out to Western Springs.
We parked, unloaded and walked down to the tree.
That's when the fun began.
A small but fierce thunderstorm was headed our way. Michael, who acts as dispatcher as well as gift shop operator, keeps a computer going with the local radar map on screen. He radioed out about the approaching storm, coordinating the two o'clock run so that the train would return to Hyde Park Station before the storm hit.
John and I heard the warning, and groaned. We were all set up and ready to go. We looked at each other, each making a decision between "I'm a guy ..." and "I'd just as soon not get caught out here ...", and both said "This is crazy ...". Common sense, for once, won out over maleness. We picked up and headed back to the truck, and Hyde Park Station.
We got back, as did the train, a few minutes before the storm hit. John helped Bernie get the train under cover in the car barn, and I helped Jim and Jack scoot the visitors into various buildings and out of the way of the storm.
The storm was short but it hit with a fury about 2:30 pm, knocking out the power at the railroad and over much of the area.
At 2:45 pm, it was past, and Jack, John and I loaded the chainsaw into the diesel for a patrol, just to make sure that the track was clear. We found one small tree down out near Western Springs, spent five minutes clearing it, and returned to Hyde Park Station, getting back a few minutes after three o'clock.
Bernie and Jack, by that time, had the Number 98 three o'clock train ready to roll and loaded. The passenger train headed out about 3:10 pm, and things got back to normal, more or less.
The more or less was the power, which kept the dispatcher's radio from operating, so we handled communications via a hand held radio. Michael was busy trying to run the gift shop without power, so I took over the dispatcher role for the run.
The train and the power, both arrived back shortly before 4 pm, and the rest of the day was uneventful.
The four and five o'clock trains ran on schedule. We put the railroad to bed -- Bernie put Number 98 back in the roundhouse, Jack and John put the diesel and the cars in the car barn, Gary and I put away the caboose and locked up the yard buildings, Jim closed up the Iron Horse and the station, and Michael closed the gift shop -- by six o'clock and headed home.
Today looks bright and sunny, with no dire weather forecast. I'll spend a few hours at the railroad, trimming up the hills and the areas around the car barn, but I plan to be home by noon. I've got a lot of grass to cut around here, too, and the storm took down a couple of poplars, which need to be cleaned up.
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