submitted by Ronald Kutch (e-mail)
It's that time again to let everyone know that the 4th annual Tucumcari Mountain Modular Railroaders train show is coming up. This year it will be on July 27 and 28, 2002 at the same place as last year - the Tucumcari Convention Center. The set-up will begin on Friday the 26th in the afternoon (time to be announced). Tables are $10.00 each. The club has a new web page and it is updated every weekend and has all the information on the show for this year. The new web site is at www.tmmr.org.
We hope all of you can make plans to attend this year for all the fun. You can e-mail us at tmmrusa@netscape.net or if you need to call me you can call 1 505 461-461-1400 between 8:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. Monday through Friday or 1 505 487-6608 anytime.
Gregg Carnefix
Don't forget to vote for the directors at large for the LSR. Those of you who are members should already have received your ballet. There is no vote this year for the Division 5 (that's us) chairman, but we can vote for the directors at large.
Our speaker at last month's meeting encourages the membership to get involved in TXARP - Texas Association of Rail Passengers. They are a lobby group to encourage and promote the development of rail service in Texas. Their motto is "How can you help to promote, improve, and expand intercity rail passenger service in Texas." Their address is 2205 Marvin Gardens, Arlington, TX 76011. The phone number is 817 792-3833. Their web site is www.txarp.org. Regular membership is $12 per year, and there are other types of membership opportunities. I have a copy of their membership application and I will bring it to the May meeting.
By Bill Marvel as published in the Dallas Morning News (concluded)
A few months ago, Mr. Zimmerman opened one of the trailers and found the material perfectly preserved. Recently, he offered several of the items for sale on eBay. A track foreman's logbook - "I guess you'd call it that; he recorded his daily activities such as braking ice off a switch" - went for $6. Two annual reports went for $12.50 each.
Now a banker in Cashion, OK, Mr. Zimmerman would like to clear the Chouteau property for real estate development. Unfortunately the trailers are in no condition to be moved. And selling the contents off one or two pieces at a time, even on eBay, seems a slow way to empty them.
He has offered "first viewing rights" to the entire collection over eBay. The winning bid was $20.50, he says, but the deal fell through. "The guy thought he was bidding to buy the collection." "It would be nice if some museum would sift through this stuff," Mr. Zimmerman says. "The Katy was a Texas company and somebody in the heart of Texas needs to pick this up. I've contacted every museum I can think of. They'll say they're interested in looking at it, then they never show up."
"I think what scares people is there's just too much volume." "We've heard about the trailers," says Kay Bost, curator at Southern Methodist University's DeGolyer Library. The DeGolyer has one of the largest collections of railroad material in the country.
"Who knows what's in them," Ms. Bost says of the trailers. "I believe it's a lot of payroll and bookkeeping. But there may be some good stuff." The problem, she says, is it's all packed in boxes on pallets. "It's a physical impossibility for me to go through them. I can't unload three trailers by myself." There is, however, one light gleaming in the tunnel. The Sante Fe No. 3417 Historical Foundation, a nonprofit organization to promote the railroad history and heritage of Cleburne, Texas has expressed interest in the collection. The Katy is one of five railroads that once served that city, and the foundation plans to "purchase these records very heavily for a planned museum," says Shane Hopkins, a foundation trustee.
Though he declines to estimate how much it might cost to buy the records and truck them to Cleburne, "it's a substantial sum. And it takes a miracle to find somebody who has the money." Are the records worth it? "From the pictures I've seen so far, yeah," Mr. Hopkins says.
Thee for my recitative1,
Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining,
Thee in thy panoply2, thy measur'd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,
Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides,
Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,
Thy great protruding hear-light fix'd in front,
Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,
The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smokestack,
Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels,
Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,
Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering;
Type of the modern - emblem of motion and power - pulse of the continent,
For once come serve the Muse3 and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,
With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,
By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,
By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.
Fierce-throated beauty
Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night,
Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all,
Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding,
(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)
Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd,
Launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes,
To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1977), p. 417.
1 speechThe Marker Lamp, Spring, 2002, p. 11
After several million cuts on the "Chopper," the Masonite base starts to have a huge hole caused by the razor blade. To fix this without buying a new Chopper or replacing the Masonite, Take SuperGlue, fill the hole, and sand smooth, The ACC will create a good hard cutting surface for the razor blade that will last another trillion cuts. [You can also use two-part epoxy glue the same way, ed.] Solder makes an excellent hose. It comes in many diameters. Just pick out one that looks best in your scale. Take a piece of solder, coil it up, and paint it a tan color. This looks like a rolled up canvas hose. You can also smash the solder with a hammer and string it out flat. This looks like a hose without any pressure. This adds a nice detail to fire trucks. [You can also strip wire and use the plastic covering to represent hose, ed]
Need that new vest altered (i.e., made bigger?). Call Jo Ann at 298-4061. She does good work and is not expensive
You won't want to miss the clinic at the May meeting. Entitled "Peter and David's Excellent Adventure" you will learn the low down on the Dallas Children's Hospital "Train scape."