The weeks news. A tale of my Railroad days.
It’s been a crazy few weeks up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven in the great northwest.
Since my last update, the lovely wife had to have her gall bladder removed, resulting in a two-night stay in the hospital. She is doing much better now, and recovering nicely.
Winter finally arrived, dumping four feet of snow on us over a three-day period, forcing school to close on Monday and us to spend a few days digging out. A sports trip the lovely wife was supposed to go on was also canceled due to the snow and road conditions.
The puppies are growing, and testing our patience every chance they get. We bought a kennel for them to sleep in at night and stay in during the day when we are gone. This has resulted in less things destroyed here, and we can now clutter up the living room once again, much to our delight.
I have often talked about my childhood in Castine Maine, but I haven’t yet written about the later years living in another small town in New England, or my summer job of working for an old-time steam railroad. We moved to Brookfield, New Hampshire, when I was around twelve, moving into a small house in what was supposed to be a housing development, but had at this point failed.
Around the age of fourteen, a group of rail enthusiasts decided to bring back a long defunct rail line that, in its heyday, ran from, I believe, Boston, Massachusetts, to Sanbornville, New Hampshire, then on to Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, ending near the dock for the Mount Washington, a steam ship that took tourists out onto lake Winnipesauke. They named it the Wolfeboro Railroad, but instead of running from Boston, it would run between Sanbornville and Wolfeboro, a distance of thirteen miles. Back in the day, Sanbornville was quite the rail terminal, having a turntable, complete with a round house and coaling station as well as a water tower for filling the locomotives that came through. Part of one railroad building was still there, cut in half, moved across the road, and turned into apartments. What happened to the rest of the structures is anyone’s guess. My mother had a gift shop in a building near the tracks and sold tickets for the train.
These men restored a few old wooden passenger cars, found and bought a steam locomotive and an old self-propelled car we called #10. I don’t remember the reason for the number, but that’s what it was called, and the number was even painted on it when it was restored. I say “we” because I was fascinated by the whole steam train thing at that age, and went to work on #10 selling candy and postcards soon after it went into service. I will give you a brief history of #10 as I remember it.
It started life as a combine coach on a narrow gage line back in the late 1800’s. A combine coach, for those who don’t know, carries baggage as well as passengers. The first third of the car was an open compartment with sliding doors on both sides for baggage, and the rest of the coach was seats. Sometime in its life it was converted to standard gage and a diesel motor, with the necessary gear to move the coach, added in the baggage compartment, along with controls for its operation. Later, when it served on our line, it had a gas motor. As with all passenger trains, we had a conductor, who would take tickets, and talk about the history of the #10. I had his spiel memorized pretty quickly, and when we would stop for lunch and the engineer and conductor would leave the coach, I would often stay behind because tourists would come by and want to take a look inside, and ask questions. Since I knew the whole story, I often got tips after they left, telling me what a smart kid I was. I worked there for a couple of summers, once even running fire patrol, a nasty job and a tale for another day.
That’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.
