Steampunk and where my love of it started
Steampunk and where my love of it started…
It was the summer of 1993. I’d been hired on by Cedar Point to work at their amusement park. I’d been very clear on my application form and during my entrance interview that I do not like heights and would not work on a roller coaster. I show up for my first day of work to find they’d put me on the Magnum Roller Coaster (which at the time was the largest coaster in the world). I laughed… long and hard and said, thanks but I’ll find a different job. They quickly moved to the Gemini, a smaller wooden coaster. Not small enough for my liking. After one week it became clear I could not, not just would not, work on a coaster. Cedar Point moved me to the train.
Bit about the train at Cedar Point—it’s a 2-foot-gauge steam-powered railroad. It’s fully functioning. While riding it visitors are treated to animated scenes set up to look like Ghost Towns of the old west with skeletons dressed in period outfits. It’s a “ride” but it’s not. It’s more of an experience. I had to dress the part as a “train girl”, with overalls, red bandana around my neck and red shirt under the overalls. I’d see people on and off it, read the spiel you all hear when visiting amusement parks, jump on and off it while it was moving and entering/leaving the platform and ride on the back end, carefully watching all was well and that the indicator lights for the approaching stations were right. I worked at the crossing gates.
I got asked about a million times by children if they could place a penny on the track to see if the train would derail—I placed many said pennies on the tracks for the kids and gave them to them as keepsakes. I hung out with the men who operated the train, learning about it. It was a good time for all and it started me on my interest in something else, something old, something interesting and something that had once helped to shape this nation—trains.
I’m not talking new ones. They hold no interest for me. I’m talking old ones.
This of course spiraled into my interest in all things related and easily lent itself to a love of Steampunk—but when I started in it the genre didn’t really have a name.
Cowboys & Supernaturals Series
