My day

I guess my day is not as varied or interesting as Tom's. I vacuum the store when I get there. Apparently this is a novel idea and people keep commenting on how they have never seen the place so clean. I guess I picked it up from Daddy vacuuming every morning.

Then I check the money to make sure we have the right amount of cash and all sorts of change, set up the cash registers, straighten up whatever inventory has managed to get moved around, respond to the conductor's radio check and then open up.

From that point on, it is sell tickets, sell stuff, talk to customers, give directions on the telephone, explain a bit of the history of the railway, explain to callers that, no, we do not provide rail service to Florida despite the fact that the Yellow Pages (for unknown reasons) lists us as a passenger and commuter rail service but does not give a listing for Amtrak, although Amtrak does serve Wisconsin Dells. I offer to find the Amtrak listing for them. Soon I will have it by memory.

I explain to callers that, although the GPS system in their rented car wants to send them to some place in Columbus, WI, that is not where we are. Yes, the map that they printed off our web site does show our correct location. How do they get here from where they are? Well, where are they? Passing a farm. Umm, maybe not that helpful. It is, after all, Wisconsin. There are a lot of farms. Somehow we get them on track.

I do a certain amount of babysitting while parents wander around, control the G-scale model train running around the store up near the ceiling to the utter delight of small boys, who stand there moaning, hopping up and down and flapping their hands as if intending to fly up for a closer look. Periodically I go find the missing pieces of the Thomas the Tank Engine train set and put it back together for the next round of kids who run through the door screaming.

I relay messages from the conductor and any work crews out on the line-- or just repeat the messages they send -- via the radio in the store, and (God forbid!) am prepared to call 911 in case the sparks from the steam engine start a fire in the woods. So far, the summer has been so damp there has been little danger.

When trains depart, if I am free to do so, I always go wave goodbye to the children on the train when it passes by the shop. Kids love to wave, and the parents laugh when I encourage them to write when they get to the other end and to send money if they find work. I am starring fleetingly on home videos all over the Midwest, even as we speak. (If I could get copies of all the photos they take of me, I could probably find a decent one for Cynthia.)

In between rushes, I sneak rest room breaks, eat a protein bar and sip some cold coffee for lunch, try to make sure I am keeping the records of the ticket sales up-to-date. After the 5:00 o'clock train departs, I close up, count the money, run the reports for cash and credit cards, sort coupons, put the end results into bags or staple it onto registers and then set up the money bags for the next day. I straighten up the Thomas the Tank Engine train set one last time.

I stay until the final train has returned, in order to man the radio and also in case someone suddenly realizes that they have to go back into the store and buy that engineer's cap they saw. This happens only occasionally, but I have to admit I prefer days when everyone just leaves. By this time I have been at work for eight-and-a-half hours without a real break, trying to be polite, informative and entertaining. I have had five or six kids screaming at the train table while I am trying to talk on the telephone and a model train is rattling over my head, and parents calmly ignore the noise. I have watched parents and grandparents reduced to begging a two-and-a-half year old to please, please, please go with them when it is time to leave. I have (not so patiently) endured long contests between adults and their parents or in-laws over whose credit card I will run through my little machine. I have assured large women that they will fit comfortably into the coaches of the train, and wondered whether some of the large men -- who never seem to wonder themselves -- will manage or not.

Then I get to go home, eat whatever wonderful meal Tom has put on the table, and just relax.

Oh, after petting the cats, of course. First things first.

A day in the life

Tom posted this (below) about his day at the railroad yesterday. I thought you might be interested in how things go out there, and maybe one day I'll post something more detailed about one of my days. They can be very entertaining, although my days don't include chainsaws and such. My main excitement yesterday was trying to sell tickets and merchandise in the dark without any registers. The power outage didn't affect the trains -- they run on steam, after all -- and people still wanted to ride them. We sold over $200 worth of tickets during the hour and a half we lacked power. My big surprise came at the end of the day when both registers came out right.

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.

Single

A visitor told us that when he and his family were out on the wagon tour at Lost Canyon, swatting futilely at all the bugs swarming around them, the driver calmly announced that they should not worry.

"I assure you," he said, "there's not a single mosquito in Wisconsin Dells."

Puzzled and angry looks were exchanged by the itching passengers.

The driver turned back and looked over his shoulder. "They're all married."

"And," our visitor ruefully remarked, "with large families."

Georgia tale

I found the following this morning about Buford Dam and Lake Lanier in Georgia, near where I was born.

Having grown up near the Ohio River, water has always been a part of my life. If we weren't down at the park by the river, we were at one of the many lakes in Kentucky swimming and camping. So when I moved to Georgia 25 years ago one of the first things I did was "find" the Chattahoochee River, and Lake Lanier.

The first time I drove across Buford Dam, looking out on the lake I was hooked. If it's possible to fall in love with a lake then I did. From then on one of my dreams was to retire and live on Lake Lanier. So last year when we bought a house there I was thrilled. Even though we don't have direct access, we are only two miles from a nice park and boat ramp. Every evening after supper Phil and I would drive to the little park and walk or he was up early and fishing in the morning. But all of that was before the drought started.

At first it was no big deal, but then it started not being so funny. By July of 2007 the boat ramps started closing, ours included. Then old roads started showing up that had been closed off in the 50s when the lake was built. Then old towns, buildings and even a race track. All had been under water, and some of it had been forgotten about. One of the oddest "finds" were the car motors, hundreds of them. Our nightly excursions became a drought watch, to see what else would show up, as the water receded.

But the day we drove down the boat ramp and out in the middle of the lake on dry ground I was stunned. Phil had gone out fishing that morning, and came back to the house to get me. Our island by then had become a land bridge to the other side of the lake. By September people began "driving" across the lake on the old roads. We like everyone else would just drive to the ramps and stare in disbelief.

I don't know how to describe the emptiness that you feel inside. Its like feeling a part of your soul dry up and yet you can do nothing about it.

2008 got off to a promising start but this week they have already started the lake alerts. We went last night to launch our boat, at one of the 4 ramps they now have open. You have to drive half way across the lake on extended ramps to reach water deep enough. That is one scary feeling to look out and have water all around you and be so far from shore.

I can only hope that we will get some of the rains that usually blow into Georgia when hurricane season starts. Just the rains not another Katrina, or Rita. I still love "my lake" and I hate to see her looking so forlorn, and empty. Maybe we will get lucky and not spend another year exploring the bottom of the lake, without scuba gear!

With all the flooding up here and throughout much of the midwest, we forget the droughts elsewhere.

But, um, what's the deal with the hundreds of car engines, y'all?