No Ordinary Vaganza

Yeah, I know, you're probably bored with the usual humdrum level of vaganza you get in everyday life -- there's a baseball game here, a political scandal there, maybe there's synchronized swimming every four years... what we need is some extra vaganza! And that's what IRM offers you: the Vintage Transport Extravaganza! And if you missed it today, well, there's always next year!

But first, let's back up to yesterday (Saturday). As mentioned before, I was running the 308 and 309, the 3142 was on the car line, and the coach train was running. And by default, I got to be the dispatcher. Everything went along placidly until a violent storm blew in about 3:00. Thanks to modern technology, it didn't catch us by surprise, and the wood cars were put away well in advance of the rain.

For the 3PM trip, since I was still the dispatcher, I rode along in the cab of the locomotive, with engineer Dan Mulvihill. I hadn't done that for quite a while, and it was quite entertaining. The wind, dust, and rain started on the way back, and I helped put the train back into Barn 9. But on the whole the day went very well.

After the storm blew through, I hung around with some of the rest of the Car Dept. crew; we helped Nick set up some tents for the next day's activities. Here we are checking an incoming guest's credentials. He does look pretty suspicious! And then we went and had supper together.





Today was the annual Vintage Trasport Extravaganza, and I would say it went extremely well. The weather was nice, and we had a bigger than usual crowd of visitors.
I was running the two blue cars again, and Dave Hammer was my conductor. We had four mainline trains, one every 15 minutes, and every trip was nearly full. It was great to be handling the crowds, but I was unfortunately too busy to see much of the antique cars. Or even take the usual crew pictures.

On about the fourth trip, a retriever on the 309 seized up, and so we had to return to the station via the east switch. With the help of several Car Dept. people, it was replaced with one from the 319, and we were able to continue in operation. I was told that after they later took it apart and put it back together again, it worked OK, but we have some time to test it out. In any case, thanks to Rod, Dan M., Dan F., and Greg for helping us make the repairs. And I talked to at least two prospective new members, and we can always use more help. And it's always gratifying to receive compliments from people on the restoration work we've done. Antique car owners are especially qualified to appreciate how much work it takes to restore and maintain old railroad equipment.

On our last trip, the exodus had already started. So I'm approaching Olson Rd., and there's a line of Model A's and Model T's crossing the tracks ahead of me! It's charming, but also rather worrisome. Once I start blowing the whistle, though, they quickly stop. Nobody's going to try racing the train to the crossing in a Model T!