Tag: trains

In 2013, I visited Virginia City, Nevada. I had lived there in the 1980s, when I was a student pastor at First Presbyterian Church. Before my time there, a tourist railroad had been established and was reconstructing the famed Virginia and Truckee Railroad. The big news when I was there, was the train crossing the highway into Gold Hill. Since then, thanks to generous grants, the train now runs to the outskirts of Carson City. It is a crooked grade as the train climbs up the east flank of the Virginia Mountains. I wanted to ride this train and see what it was like in earlier days. But they had sold out of the tickets for the weekend I was to be in Virginia City. Telling this to a friend who at the time was also the bookkeeper for the railroad, she said she’d make a call and see what she could do.  When I got to town, she asked if I’d like to ride in the cab of the train. Of course, I would! It was the ride of a lifetime. I wrote this piece almost ten years ago and have polished it up a bit for posting here. 

I arrive at the V&T shops a little after 7 AM.  As they prepare the engine ready for the day’s run, I walk around the machine shop where the Virginia and Truckee has the capability of repairing and rebuilding old locomotives. Maintaining a steam locomotive requires a lot of work and a shop is a necessity as parts often have to be fashioned to replace those that have worn out. The complexity of a steam engine led to their demise as it is much easier to maintain diesel-electric locomotives. Today’s locomotives may be efficient and easier to maintain, but they lack the romance and the “life-like character” of a “breathing steam engine.”

Our run today is aboard a ninety-ton Baldwin locomotive built in 1914 for a logging operation. The locomotive features smaller wheels and a large boiler, which also made it a perfect engine to pull trains up a steep line that snakes around the Virginia Range as it climbs from the Carson River to Virginia City. In its “working life,” this locomotive hauled logs for the McCloud Logging Railroad which ran around Mt. Shasta in Northern California. Today, she hauls tourists to the Comstock Lode and has been trucked offsite (she is the largest locomotive capable of being trucked) for movie appearances. Some of the guys from the V&T ran her in the movie, “Water for Elephants,” and have a photo in the shop with Reese Witherspoon, one of the stars in the film. 

At about 7:30, Tim, who serves as conductor and brakeman, tells me to hope aboard. He introduces me to the crew, Brian and Ed, and gives me some instructions such as watching my feet so that I don’t ruin my shoes or injure myself by being pinched by rotating the sheet metal flooring between the tender and the locomotive. While we wait for the signal, the iron horse hisses. A few times every minute, there’s a booming sound which I learn are the air pumps keeping a nice draft in the fire box. When we get the “all clear,” I find a comfortable place to stand and hold on as Brian, the engineer moves the throttle into position and releases the brakes. We’re off, pulling three empty passenger cars. Because there is no longer a working turntable, we’ll pull the cars down the grade with the tender in the lead. At Moundhouse (Carson Eastgate), where we’ll pick up passengers, we can drop the cars, move the engine to the front as in a normal train, and the pull the cars back up hill.   

It’s cool in the morning, but it promises to be a warm day.  Because the grade steepness, the descent must be controlled. I watch Ed, the fireman, as he maintains the boiler, making sure there is enough steam for both movement and brakes.  Ed learned to fire a locomotive on a miniature (5 ton) steam trains in California. Brian jokes that he has the easy job and Ed agrees. Oil fires this locomotive. Coal would require shoveling, but the fireman is free of that task. However, watching the boiller requires constant vigilance, especially on a grade like the V&T which has a few places that you might be going down, only to find yourself heading uphill for a short stretch. Besides keeping enough steam so that Brian can operate the train, he must make sure the water level remains high enough to cover the plates within the boiler. On level ground, this is easy, but when the locomotive is pointed uphill, the water runs into the back of the boiler. When it goes over a hump and points downhill, the water moves to the front of the locomotive. The danger of this sloshing around is that the metal might be exposed to air and the fire without the water to cool it down. This would risk spraying those of us in the cab with steam and seriously damaging the boiler.

Brian, our engineer for the day, oversees the train itself. He’s a Virginia City native. He graduated from high school on the Comstock in 2000 and that summer went to work for the railroad. He’s been at it ever since. For years, he was seasonal and had to find other employment in the winter, but a few years ago, was hired on full time. In the winter, they make a few runs (last year’s Christmas run was infamous as the snow was heavy and it took them nearly three hours to make the run back up the mountain. Brian and Ed can do each other’s jobs and often switch back and forth. As the engineer, he’s in charge of the operation of the train, but must depend on the fireman to watch the boiler and to provide him the steam needed for a smooth operation. 

A few minutes later, Virginia City is out of sight as we cross the tunnel at the Divide and move toward Gold Hill. Down below us is the Crown Point Mine and Mill site. We cross the highway, by the old station. then the tracks turn south and cross earth fill that once traversed by the Crown Point trestle. They tore the trestle down in 1936. Today, it is widely believed that the trestle continues to live on the Nevada State Seal. However, this is a myth. The seal was designed in 1863 and predates the building of the trestle by five years.  Interestingly, there wasn’t even a train within the boundaries of the Nevada Territory when the seal was designed, so the trestle on the seal expressed a hopeful dream of the artist.      

After Gold Hill, the tracks make a long circle around American Flats.  There is a new mining operation with cyanide leach fields on the north side of the Flats.  Also along this section is a herd of horses.  Ed and Brian seem to know well as they have names for many of the wild animals.  At Scales siding, the halfway point, we stop, and Brain and Tim check the brakes. There is some smoke in one wheel and they are afraid it is overheating, but after checking it, all appears well. We loop around the south side of the Flats, above the old American Flats Mill, which operated up into the 30s. Then the tracks turn south, and we slip into a tunnel.  On the other side of the tunnel, we can see Moundhouse, the site of where the Virginia and Truckee and the Carson and Colorado Narrow Gauge used to connect. The train continues to hug the hillside. The tracks mostly follow the original route except through Moundhouse. Brain, the engineer, tells me that the original tracks went straight through Moundhouse and picked up the Carson River near where today are several brothels. Figuring the whorehouses shouldn’t be disturbed by trains, they relocate the tracks to the west of town. We cross over Highway 50 on a trestle and soon are at the station.  

A full parking lot awaits us as people line up to ride a piece of history. We drop the passenger cars in front of the depot and uncouple the engine. Switching tracks, we take on water. I learn that although the train will only use 300 gallons of oil during the weekend, each trip up and down the mountain will require nearly 8000 gallons of water. Once they fill the water take, we run through a wye and then pull in front front of the passenger cars for the run up the mountain. Before leaving, Brian oils the working parts of the locomotive

As we leave Moundhouse, Ed pours a couple of cans of sand into the firebox. The draft is such that the sand is sucked through the boiler tubes and out the stack, cleaning out any build up on the tubes and hopefully making the train run smoother. As the sand runs through the boiler, or perhaps because of the addition air of having the firebox open, the smoke turns black for a few minutes. Although it was a relaxed trip going down the mountain, running uphill requires more work, especially from Ed, who has to constantly keep checking on the boiler and making sure there is enough steam for running the train. It almost seems he is as much of an artist as a mechanic as he both watches the gauges and adjusts the amount of water going into the boiler or the amount of fuel pumped into the firebox. But it’s not just the gages that he watches; he also keeps an eye on the smoke, occasionally glances into the firebox, and is always listening to the boiler breathing.    

The sun is now high in the sky and it’s getting hot, but I’m not prepared for the experience of the first tunnel. When we enter it, a hot wind blows across the boiler and into the cab and the temperature must have risen by 30 or 40 degrees. Coming down, with the boiler behind us, the tunnels weren’t hot, but with the boiler in front, we feel all the heat. This was the reason the last steam engines built for the Southern Pacific were “cab-forward” varieties. It was harder to build a cab-forward locomotive when the fireman had to shovel coal (or you had to have the fireman and engineer in two different ends of the train which created communication problems).  But once the railroad began using oil, they could move both to the front of the boiler. Not only did this allow better views of the track, it keep the cab more comfortable in long tunnels and the miles and miles of snowsheds the locomotives traveled as they made their way through the Sierras.  

At Scales, we stop for a few minutes and Brian gets out and oils various parts of the engine. We then continue on until the Gold Hill Station where a few people get off in order to have lunch at the Gold Hill Hotel. Most of our passengers continue as the train climbs into Virginia City. There, everyone gets off. They’ll have three hours to tour the town before making the run back south. I skip the ride south but follow the train in my car. Stepping out into the heat, I photograph the train repeatedly as it makes its way down the mountain. Ed, Brian and Tim will leave the train at Moundhouse overnight. The next morning they’ll pick up passengers and run them up to Virginia City. At the end of the day, after dropping the passengers off in Moundhouse, the empty train will be driven back up the mountain to Virginia City. There, it will shuttle tourists around the Comstock between Virginia City and Gold Hill. The steam trains only run between Moundhouse and Virginia City on Saturdays and Sundays.  

A butt-naked boy ran through the crowd. This is the first thing I see as I step into the country, immediately after having my passport stamped. And he wasn’t just a boy, certainly no toddler. He was at least five feet tall and probably 11 or 12 years old. I do not know what was up with him. Thankfully I never saw another kid his age running around in his birthday suit, but he served as a shocking reminder (along with having to learn a new currency and the words for rice and noodles) that I was in another country. Cambodia!  

I’d wanted to see Cambodia since a teenager. As a ham radio operator, I remember reading an article in QST (or maybe it was CQ, both amateur radio magazines in the early 1970s) of a trip made to American ham operator to Cambodia. Before the Khmer Rouge, he met with a few of the operators in the country.  The article had photos of the country’s temples. It all looked exotic.  A few years later, as the war in Southeast Asia intensified and then came to a horrific conclusion in Cambodia, I wondered what happened to the few amateur radio operators in the country. I’d also heard of some of the temples being destroyed. Now is my chance to find the answer to at least one of my questions.

I was catching the train to the border at Bangkok’s Makkasan Station at 6:20 AM.  The train starts at the downtown station at 5:50 AM, but since my hotel was closer to Makkasan, I decided sleep an extra half-hour. But for a while this morning, I wondered if this had been a good idea. I’d asked for a 4:30 AM wake-up call (it came at 5:15, as I was leaving my room). 

Leaving the hotel, I venture out into the darkness and (as the Skyway isn’t running yet) meet the cabthe hotel had called. The driver spoke little English. I showed him where I wanted to go. He agreed and suggested what I assumed was a fair price. I tossed by backpacks into the backseat and climbed in. 

Two blocks later, something strange happened.  A policeman stood in the middle of the road with a blue lighted pointer, indicating for the cab to pull over to the curb. Two other policemen with flashlights shining came over and asked the driver questions as they shined lights into the back of the cab and onto my face and bags. They opened the back door. Pointing at me, he asked in rough English, “where?” Assuming this was where I was heading, I said Cambodia. He looked at me for a moment then, gesturing as if he’s smoking, appeared to ask for cigarettes. I shook my head and said ‘I do not smoke. “Okay,” he said, and waved us on.  I had the feeling these Thai policemen wanted to shake me down for a smoke!  

My next hurdle was getting to the right station. It turns out there are two Makkasan stations, one for the railroad and one a high-speed rail line only runs to the airport.  It was this station that the cab driver insisted must be mine. Having been to the train station to purchase my ticket, I knew it was not the right place. Finally, a Thai man who heard me talking came over and asked in English where I was going. He then gave directions to the cab driver. There were only two dozen or so passengers at Makkasan station, so the cab drivers confusion was justified.

I purchased my ticket for the border a few days earlier. It cost 48 bahts or about $ 1.50. The only option is a non-air-conditioned third-class train for the five-hour trip. At least, early in the morning, the air was damp but cool. 

On the station platform, I spot several old steam engines in a yard across the tracks. I walk over to check them out and to see if I could catch photographs. A guard stops me, saying “No photos.”  I have no idea why, but it isn’t bright enough yet to get a good photo. On the train, I snap a few photos of the old engines, but with the low light, the photos don’t turn out well. After walking around a bit with my pack, I sat down on the platform to wait for the train. It was still 15 minutes away.  

While waiting, a Thai woman came up and began to talk to me. Her name is Niranya. She’s a travel agent whose customers are primarily Indian, so she speaks to them in English. She was heading back to her family home near the Cambodian border where she had to attend to some business. We talked until the train arrived, then sat by each other on the train. She was getting off the stop before me. Traveling with her is enlightening. Having grown up on a farm, she shares about the various crops grown along with showing where fields are being converted from rice and other food crops to fast growing trees used for pulp. These trees harmed the land because they used so much water. Much of the land in eastern Thailand is dependent on the rainy season for water as there is not enough for irrigation. Such trees, she complain, steals water which could be used to grow rice. But the high demand tempts farmers to plant such trees that require less work than keeping up rice paddies. Another crop that is in demand is tapioca, which also tends to rob the soil of nutrients.  

I’m amazed at the number of rail lines running into Bangkok from the east.  At places, as many as eight set of tracks parallel each other as they run into the city.  As it was early morning, the trains coming in were all packed with passengers.    

Our train, heading the opposite direction, slowly filled. This was a slow train and we stopped at every station, where an agent would step out dressed like a general or war hero, to meet us. We also stopped at other places requested by passengers. At one of these “nowhere places,” a woman stepped off the train and stepped into the jungle, disappearing as she headed to her home as the train moved on. After a while, we were well into the country. After passing Chachoengsao Junction and Khlong Sipkao Junction, where lines split off heading north and south, we were on a single-track line running through a flat countryside, occasionally pulling over to sidings to wait for east bound trains to pass.  

As the sun rose higher in the sky, the car became warm, and everyone began to sleep. There was little movement, only the occasional seller passing by with drinks and snacks. At one stop, a bunch of women boarded at one town, coming from the market. They’d taken an earlier train into town and were heading back with baskets of produce and stables like cooking oil. The train was so crowded that there weren’t enough places for people to sit. I offered my seat to a couple of the older women, thinking that standing a bit wouldn’t do me any harm. They refused, but my act of kindness caught the attention of one of the women, who looked to be in her 30s.  She asked Niranya, whom she’d seen talking to me, if she was my wife. Of course, I didn’t know what had been said. Niranya laughed, and told her no, that we’d just met that morning while waiting on the train. The woman then asked Niranya if I was available! She said she told her that I was married. This led into a conversation about how Thai women seek out American and Western husbands as a way of escaping the hard life, especially smaller villages. I had certainly seen many Western men with Thai women, generally women that were half their age.

The women coming from the market only rode for about 30 minutes before getting off at a small village. Niranya got off Watthana Nakhon. By then, the train had mostly cleared except for those of us heading to the border. The train was mainly filled with tourist and Cambodians returning home, such as a man who sat across from us and had drank at least a six-pack of beer during the trip that ended around noon!  He was coming back home after having surgery done on his nose in Bangkok. The train pulled into Aranyaprathet, at the end of the line, a little after noon, about 30 minutes late. As there are at most places, there were a host of tuk-tuk drivers wanting to take us to the border. The prices quoted was what I was expecting and soon I was whisked away toward the border, feeling like I was in a chariot race with each driver vying to get their passenger there first. The drivers also tried to encourage us to book rooms through them in Siem Reap (they all seemed to have a cousin or brother there), but I’d already had my reservations made.  

The border crossing was hassle free (except for seeing more than I’d wanted to see). I had lunch (rice and ginger chicken) and then got on the bus for Siem Reap. The Cambodian countryside appears as flat as a pancake. The occasional hill seems out of place. These are called Phnom (as in Phnom Penh), which is named for the hill upon which it sits. I am surprised by the large sizes of the fields. The road is now modern (a few years ago, I heard this was a rode that would jar the fillings out of one’s teeth) and we moved along in air-conditioned comfort. We stopped once, for a bathroom break and to let the engine cool (while waiting the driver sprayed water on the overheated engine!). The bus needed more fuel and the driver pulled up to a garage looking place and they brought out two 5-gallon jerry cans and dumped them into the fuel tank.  From the bus station was on the edge of Siem Reap and I hired a driver to take me to the Golden Banana, where I had reservations for three nights.  After seeing the Cambodian countryside, the modern style of Siem Reap appears out of place. In the evening, I head into town and have red curry for dinner. Then, it’s off to bed. I plan to get up early to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. 

Other train adventures:

“The International (Butterworth, Malaysia to Bangkok)

The Jungle Train (Singapore to Kota Bharu, Malaysia)

Coming home on the Southwest Chief

Morning train from Masan to Seoul