Larry Walsh and the Austin MetroRail

My friend, Larry Walsh, and I finally found the time last Tuesday, July 27, to make a visit to Austin’s new commuter rail line, Capital MetroRail.  This is what is hoped to be the first thirty miles of a city wide system.  This first section runs from the city center at 4th and Trinity to Leander, a commuter colony way to the north of Austin itself.

Larry is, to put it mildly, an avid passenger rail enthusiast.  Now in his eighties, this has been his passion for every bit as long.  He served on boards pushing for the extension of passenger service across the north east of the country.  He can expound, at length, on the unlikely success of commuter rail in Los Angeles.  He sees a myriad of opportunities for it here in San Antonio, if only nay-sayers like me would only look beyond our road bound perspective and see the entire picture.  In fact he and I once traded barbs in the op-ed and letter pages on the San Antonio Express News regarding the proposed passenger service between San Antonio and Austin.

While we continue to disagree on that propoal, I actually have a fondness for the type of service which is now in its infancy in Austin.  Anyone who has used urban light rail in other cities will have a good sense of how successful they can be from any number of points of view.  My personal favorite is the Dublin Area Rapid Transit System in Ireland which runs on elevated track.

In Austin, the system mainly runs on track acquired by the City of Austin from the Southern Pacific when it was announced the line as far as Llano was to be abandoned.  While it continues to move a considerable amount of freight, it has been best known by the public, up till now, as the line used by the Hill Country Flyer, between Cedar Park and Burnet.  Ironically, Cedar Park has yet to acquire a MetroRail Stop so its residents can only watch the new service pass through on its way to Leander but may decide to opt in if the rail commuter service becomes popular.

As things stand, there are only six stops along the thirty mile stretch.  From the newly laid tracks on 4^th Street the train head due east under IH 35 until it makes contact with the pre-existing Southern Pacific built line.  It then heads north a while before crossing under the interstate again on its way to Leander.  Rather than give you a blow by blow account of every stop, I think it would be better  to simply give you a link to the MetroRail web site, which is:

 http://allsystemsgo.capmetro.org/capital-metrorail.shtml

 What I can more profitably do however, is provide a consumer’s point of view of what riding the train is like.  First of all, because they are only getting started, the number of trains available is limited only to weekday mornings and evenings.  Because Larry and I were essentially tourists out for a joy ride, we found there was only one train in the evening that would allow us to both ride form downtown and return.  For most commuters this would not be an issue as, presumably, most are coming in from the suburbs in the morning and returning in the evening.  Larry tells me the train ticket is good also for the buses which feed people to and from the rail service.

The train we caught, the 3:45 PM, the first one out, was not at all busy.  Presumably the following five trains would be, assuming most folks don’t get out from work so early.  The last one leaves at 6:40 PM.  Built in Switzerland, the “train” consists of two back to back cars with each having all its seats facing either forward or backwards.  The seats are not really very comfortable.  The padding is thin.  Also the leg space, at least in the seats we chose for an optimal view, was cramped.  The other 52 seats did not look a whole lot better.  But the view was good,  the engine noise level superb, especially for diesel powered rail cars, and the ride very smooth, including station stops and starts.

One of the unexpected benefits of ipods and other MP3 devices is that, unlike boomboxes of the previous generation which used to plague rail cars, the new devices do not cause much, if any, noise pollution.  Smoking is banned on the train and, just to make you feel even more comfortable, a uniformed police officer rides each train.  These also perform crossing guard duties in the event of signal failures but, fortunately, this did not happen on our ride.

A couple of people brought their bicycles on board and utilized some clever hooks to vertically stow them out of the way.  There were only two available with an obvious opportunity for two more to be installed later on if needed.  I don’t know if dogs are allowed.  I forgot to ask and it isn’t mentioned on the official web site.  The trains appear to be ADA compliant, with good ramp access from outside and almost no gap between the platform and the cars, plus set aside space within them.

My most serious complaint about the service is not about the trains at all.  It is about the lack of seating while waiting for the train down town and, far worse, no public restrooms at the large park & ride facilities.  It so happened we encountered a MetroRail board member on our way back, who seemed phased when I asked him why.  While most people will not be riding there and back in one go, as we did, the outbound trip to Leander lasts an hour and who wants to get into a car with a full bladder or worse?

All in all, I impressed with the service.  It was done with an eye to containing costs, by using existing rail lines which may not run through the most heavily populated areas of the city.  Expansion will most likely occur along the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas right of way which is fully abandoned.  Even so, bringing this into service will be cheap in comparison with establishing and building new rights of way if the system is to fully cover the entire city.

The same situation would apply in San Antonio except there are no city owned or abandoned lines available.  The Union Pacific is running profitable freight service to the quarry just outside Loop 1604 near Camp Bullis and delivering millions of tons of coal to the electrical power stations at Elmendorf.  These are the only two remotely possible stub lines.  All the other trackage is Union Pacific owned and operated mainline which carries well in excess of seventy fully loaded, highly profitable, unsubsidized freight trains all day every day.  It is not legal to operate light and heavy trains on the same track at the same time and “bumping” freight service to night hours only is not even remotely possible.  The cost to upgrade existing tracks to passenger standards, complete with signaling and other amenities would be enormous, not to mention the cost of constructing stations and massive parking lots.

The difference between theory and practice is often where Larry and I diverge on this issue.  Wishful thinking is one thing, but as the old army saying goes, amateurs argue about tactics while professionals discuss logistics.  When all is said and down, we could flood the ciy with buses and subsidize the service almost to the point of providing it free for what it would cost to create passenger rail in San Antonio.  There are other “social benefits” that rail brings with it that bus service does not.  However while it’s important to consider more than immediate economics in regards to commuter rail, it’s equally important that we don’t just ignore the numbers in the belief that social engineering, which is what passenger rail proponents principally rely on to make their case, is worth all the money we can throw at it.

            Recently I became involved in an upcoming PBS documentary on the perhaps unlikely subject of the resurgence of olive cultivation in the old “winter garden” areas between Carrizo Springs and Del Rio.  The story is, however, ripe with fascinating perspectives, including the “eat locally produced food” movement, and the original need for a means to transport the crops being grown in the area, which is where I come in, as the only person around who has spent time researching the history of railroads in the area, which has resulted in voluminous amounts of information on the Texas Transportation Museum web site and two locally published books.

            Over the last five years I have made numerous trips to Uvalde which has, over the past 127 years had the services of no less than four different railroads – the Southern Pacific, the Crystal City & Uvalde which was renamed the San Antonio, Uvalde & Gulf, the Asphalt Belt and the Uvalde & Northern..  Each time I visit the town I learn something new.  When I was there on Friday, the day after the trip by train to Del Rio, I found out exactly how the old SAU&G connected with the SP mainline, plus the exact location of both the SP and SAU&G depots.

            My delight in being invited to be an on camera participant in the documentary should have motivated me to at least try to find out about the railroad in Del Rio as well.  You might be able to understand my discomfort when I could not say for sure exactly when the current masonry depot,  now with a well made, compatible, bus station attached to it, was built.  I certainly knew it was not the original structure, which would have been of wooden construction.  I was in good company.  Representatives of the Del Rio city council, who supplied a bus for our group of eighteen to visit a local olive orchard and grape vinyard, did not know either.  A PBS executive from KLRU in Austin used her iphone to look it up on the web, only to find an absurd site that said not only was the depot the original structure, it was also built in 1876, seven years before the first train arrived.  A city transportation employee, who used to come down to the depot as a girl, and who was able to tell me about the original interior layout of the depot, was able to find a couple of old pictures.  One showed the original depot and the other showed the current structure when it just been completed.  Using the automobiles as a reference, it would appear to have been built in the mid to late 1920s, which is about the same time the entire downtown area was rebuilt, replacing frontier structures with pleasant looking “modern” buildings, to reflect the city’s growing wealth and importance.

            Not wanting to make the same mistake when I go with the film crew to Crystal City, Carrizo Springs and Asherton, I decided to visit these places the following day.  Accompanied by my good friend and avid railroad enthusiast, Fred Bock, the trip was most successful.  Having spent some time in Uvalde itself, we headed south on Highway 83.  Regrettably there did not seem to be anywhere worth stopping to seek information in La Pryor, the first community created by the Crystal City & Uvalde in 1909, but, contrary to the “warnings” given to me in Uvalde, Crystal City was another story.  Following a pleasant tour of the city, where the railroad once ran bold as brass right down the main street, we went to the city library, followed by the immediately adjacent town hall and county court house.  Every community, I have found, has a keeper of the flame, an individual noted for his or her knowledge of local history.  On this occasion, on a late Friday afternoon, the owner of an abstract company was unavailable.  His mother had passed on an unparallelled collection of early local photographs.  Many are on his office walls and even more are on the walls of the local bank.

            By the time we arrived in Carrizo Springs it was raining cats and dogs.  It was also after 5:00 PM and the library was closed.  Nonetheless, we were able to get the measure of the place for a future visit.  In my experience you hardly ever get much on a first visit, but you do get to sow seeds that usually bear handsome fruit on subsequent trips.  The rain let up while we took a break and a snack in the local Dairy Queen, but the sky looked so ominous we decided to forgo a visit to Asherton and, instead, follow the route of the “Sausage,” the nickname given to the SAU&G, eastward towards Pleasanton.  Because the tracks from the main Missouri Pacific line that still run alongside IH 35 were only pulled up in the 1990s, their evidence is still fairly obvious.  The same cannot be said for some of the communities that sprouted briefly along the line.  Some, like Los Angles, were nothing but a motley collection of dilapidated houses and farm buildings.  Others, such as Hindes, were reduced to a mere sign post.  On the other side of the freeway, towards Charlotte and Pleasanton, finding even a trace of the tracks is all but impossible.  They were removed in the early 1950s, some sixty years ago.  Railroads in general are very benign to the environment and the impact of the right of way is easily erased from the landscape.

            I now feel as though I am in better shape to speak knowledgably about this line.  However, several more expeditions to the area, including one to follow the line of the Asherton & Gulf, which connected with the MOPAC mainline a little further south.  I’m keen to see not only Asherton but Caterina, which was developed by Charles Taft, the brother of then President William Taft.  The local hotel which I believe still exists, supposedly has oversize baths to accommodate the chief executive and, later, Supreme Court judge’s well known girth.

            While a lot of filming for the documentary, which will also include a lot of music, some of it played on instruments originally owned by the Richardson family and kept at their grand mansion in Asherton, has been completed, there is still a good amount still to be done.  Some will occur at the Texas Transportation Museum, where a recreation of thousands of people arriving by train during the heyday of land sales will be filmed in late August.  These land rushes were, in fact, one of the last and largest population migrations in US history, attracting would be farmers from all over America and even Europe to sub-divided ranches.  A group of 160 Mennonites came from Ohio in 1910, to settle in a community called Beachy.  Located near Brundage, itself now not much more than an empty crossroads, the land where the community, which was abndoned in 1914, once stood is now part of an oil field.  It is hard to even begin to put yourselves in their shoes, when both the artesian wells and then the rain dried up and their high hopes turned to dust.

            But hope springs eternal and the humble olive, originally cultivated a hundred years ago, is making a major comeback, bringing with it the possibility of a resurgence of sustainable cash crops that are climate and soil appropriate.  It may just turn out that Asher Richardson and other developers, such as Charles Simmons, who built the Artesian Belt RR which put Poteet, Jourdanton and Christine on the map, were just a century ahead of their time.

Augusta Street bridge, San Antonio

My wife and I spent some five hours out and about on our bikes yesterday, heading downtown from our house near Red McCombs Ford outside Loop 410 to the King William district.  Altogether it came to a trip of 22.35 miles, mostly along San Antonio’s old main thoroughfares, San Pedro Avenue and Fredericksburg Road.  We set of around 8:00 AM, when it was only 80 degrees and got back just before 1:00 PM, when it was well over 90.

 The reality is I have all but given up cycling again.  It was not my idea in the first place.  And since, for my wife, cycling is so 2009, our nearly new expensive machines have become, more or less, garage junk.  During the first twelve months I rode just over 20 miles a week.  Most of these were round trips of 24 miles to and from my two jobs.  This year, for several reasons, I am not doing that any more.  Essentially I don’t have the time to extend my commutes from twenty minutes each way to an hour.  Who has two hours to give up just to get to work?  Plus my hours changed at Camp Bullis.  I now quit at 9:00 PM.  Riding at night in any major city is not particularly smart.

 It’s also even more boring than riding during the day.  That is my major issue, truth to tell.  Cycling is just dull hard work.  I’m not the kind of person who marvels at the changing scenery and architecture.  I’m not interested in “raising my performance” as all the bicycle literature is forever exhorting us to do.  Learning how to endure pain in order to go nowhere in particular fractionally faster is a fool’s errand if ever I heard one.

 I did enjoy owning a bike in Aberdeen Scotland.  In fact I did not learn to drive until I was around 26 years old.  But, once I got behind the wheel of an automobile, I found my ability to explore the Grampian countryside an eye opening experience and, before I knew it, my biking days were over.  It was almost a relief when my rather nice touring bike was stolen.

 So, why the trip yesterday?  I am working on adding several additional local transportation history “chapters” on the Texas Transportation Museum web site.  I wanted to take a whole bunch of snaps of roads and bridges to go with the voluminous amount of material I have amassed.  While I could have driven downtown, it occurred to me that going by bicycle would be a lot more convenient plus probably afford a far greater number of photo opportunities.

 I was right, for once.  I was delighted when my wife said she wanted to come along.  Between us we must have taken over four hundred snaps of things like the Augusta Street bridge near the main library and the Arsenal Street bridge in King William, where we encountered tourists on Segways and three wheel bicycles.  The major benefit to digital cameras is that it allows a person to adopt Stalin’s dictum that quantity has a quality all its own.  In other words if you take enough shots one or two are bound to be OK, if only by the law of averages.

 Despite the fact we were pretty wiped out by the time we got back to the house, I am beginning to think there might be a future in using or bicycles in this way in the future.  I can see us taking our bikes and cameras to other towns and just slowly roaming around, making frequent stops and taking a boat load of snaps.

 In conclusion, this was the first time I ever used a bicycle to perform work, as opposed to just getting there.  As an adjunct to spending time in libraries and going through musty records in obscure archives, it has a lot to be said for it.  You can be aware that at the intersection of Fredericksburg Road, and IH10 you have the old railroad to the Hill Country crossing the old main road to the same destination in the shadow of the interstate that has rendered both obsolete, but I don’t think you get to truly appreciate the labor involved any better than when you yourself are providing your own motivation.

UP at TTM

I am delighted to be able to be able to share a positive story about the Union Pacific railroad, an organization which rarely gets much in the way of good press in these parts.  Today the UP came to the rescue at the Texas Transportation Museum here in San Antonio like knights in shining armor.

 Our 1954 Baldwin diesel electric locomotive was suffering from an intractable electrical problem.  The diesel engine was running just fine but somehow the electrical power it was generating was not reaching the electric motors on each of its four axles.  (You could say that the railroads have been using hybrid technology for over seventy years and the automobile industry is only just now catching up if you didn’t know that there actually were hybrids at the very first car show held in New York in 1900.)  Anyhoo, like many electrical system gremlins, this one needed a professional to both find and then fix it.  Our guys, all volunteers, as good as they are, just couldn’t trace the exact point of dysfunction.

 The Texas Transportation Museum is lucky to enjoy a very good relationship with the Union Pacific.  Following the arrival of Brian Gorton in 2005, the UP has been supportive of the museum’s endeavors in a number of significant ways, including the donation of almost half a mile’s worth of “gently” used railroad ties a few years ago.  When our almost sixty year old locomotive needs professional help, when the problem is beyond our amateur skills and facilities, the UP has been kind enough to send over a staff member or two who have yet to fail to get the “4035, an ex-army switcher, back in business.

 What made today a little unusual was that the folks we normally call were unavailable for one reason or another.  So museum curator Jared Davis decided to call the main UP HQ in Omaha, Nebraska.  After a little bit of explaining he was forwarded to staff here in San Antonio.  Before long Robert arrived and began doing his thing.  If you think finding a discontinuity in an automobile is tough, just try doing it on a make and model of a locomotive with which you are totally unfamiliar, one that came out in your grandfather’s time.  So it took a while, over an hour, but, by golly, the job got done.  The problem was in the electrical cabinet within the cab.  It looked just fine, but that’s the thing with electrical connections: the problem can be right before your eyes but totally invisible at the same time.

 So, even though it was midday on a hot Saturday, the Union Pacific came though for us, once again, in spades, just in time for an influx of afternoon visitors.  It was a good day, all in all.  Work to restore the exterior of our burnt out party caboose is almost complete.  Much needed yard work at the garden railroad was done.  A little bit of road maintenance too, to take out a bad bump experienced during the first fire truck ride of the day.  There were around fourteen volunteers all told, and every part of the museum was up and running.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

The main road to Corpus Christi, circa 1910

A wee trip to the coast, a fine way to spend a hot and hazy Sunday.  While I’m still stuck in bachelor mode – decide to go, jump in the car and away – my wife needs, shall, we say, a little more, um, preparation.  Providing my ipod is loaded and charged, I am sorted.  She, on the other hand, loaded our vehicle like the old days when we were carrying a baby.  Blankets, pillows, books, a lap top for heaven’s sake, towels, changes of clothes, the works.

 I chose our route.  Down Highway 181 on the way there and IH 37 on the way back.  The distance is just about the same but I prefer to meander on the way there and haul boogie on the way back.  You get to see more of the small towns and countryside on 181.  It follows the long gone tracks of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass, from Elmendorf through Floresville, Poth, Falls City, Karnes City, Kenedy, Beeville, Skidmore, Sinton, Gregory and Portland before crossing the causeway to Corpus Christi.  Each of these communities was created by the railroad back in the 1880s.

 IH 37 follows, more or less, the route of the old San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf.  Finished in 1914, the last railroad built in our area, this railroad, too, helped found a few towns and move a few county seats, but they lack the charm of the earlier era.  No more squares and handsome civic buildings, unless you count George West.  Just utilitarian structures strung along the old main drag, now rendered obsolete by the interstate.  From experience, many of these places look better at 3 AM than they do at 3 PM.  Here you set cruise control and barrel through nondescript landscape.  These are miles to be endured, not savored.

 Some years ago a friend and I did the same route far more thoroughly, doing our best to find every remaining trace of the old SA & AP.  Like most local railroad enthusiasts, to him the SAU&G, often refereed to as the “Sausage,” is just chopped liver, a Johnny Come Latelyupstart.  The fact that the “SAP” was a failure in every measurable way somehow adds, apparently, to its romantic allure.  I was obliged to go solo through Three Rivers, Campbelton and Pleasanton on another day.  And it isn’t chasing ghosts either.  The “Sausage” is alive and well and was part of the reason the Toyota factory is where it is.

 Click this link for the web pages referring to these ventures

 http://www.txtransportationmuseum.org/RAMBLE2.htm

 Going to the coast a hundred years ago would have be a fine trip indeed, requiring an overnight stay if you wanted to get the most benefit out of it.  Arriving at the station early in the morning to ride in cars without air-conditioning for seven hours would make a person appreciate the shore all the more.  Of course Corpus Christi was a different place then.  No deep water port and vulgarly intrusive freeway slashing its way through the heart of the old town, of which most traces have gone, perhaps as a result of storms, who knows.  Now you can leave the parking lot at the Lexington and be home in less than two and a half hours without breaking any laws, carrying enough baggage to fill the old aircraft carrier, in comfortable A/C, and listening to your own personal play list.  It’s a good trade.

Here is the topic schedule:

Saturday February 20, 9:30 – 11;30 AM – Ox, mule and horse drawn transportation.

Saturday February 20, 1:30 – 3:30 PM – Railroads; 1850 to the present

Saturday February 27, 9:30 – 11:30 AM – Public transportation, streetcars, jitneys and buses

Saturday February 27, 1:30 – 3:30 PM – Private transportation, from the bicycle to the present.

1925 Baldwin steam locomotive at Pearl Brewery

Question:  How do you return a long dormant steam locomotive back to active passenger service in 2010, with all the heightened concerns about safety?  Answer:  Very, very carefully.  This ain’t 1964.  Way back then early Texas Transportation Museum members including one Dave Wallace, acquired the 1925 Baldwin 0-4-0 steam locomotive from New Braunfels where it had sat idled in a shed since being retired around 1928, brought it to San Antonio, placed it on tracks adjacent to Pearl Brewery, simply filled the boiler with water and fired it up.  While it didn’t explode, it sent out enough smuts and soot that those same volunteers ended up cleaning car windshields for several blocks around.

The locomotive, called #1 by the electricity generating power station, was then used regularly for several years before the museum was offered forty acres of the old Northeast Preserve adjacent to the international airport and relocated.  Faced with a green field site, it took museum volunteers time to lay tracks and build structures to accommodate the delightful small steam switcher, specially designed to move and empty one loaded coal car at a time on rails with tight curves and limited access.  Once #1 was brought to the Wetmore Road location it was only run very briefly.  The museum had acquired a 1942 diesel electric switcher which was far easier to operate and maintain and #1 was relegated to that treacherous location, the wish list.

There it languished, staying in the top ten but never making it to the top of our priorities.  In the early 2000s, the museum embarked on a long term rejuvenation program.  Lacking any funding from the city, county, state or federal governments, we would have to rely on our own resources.  We looked hard at our facilities and, working with a small budget to begin with, began to upgrade as much of the museum as circumstances would allow.  The public noticed and each year we attracted more and more visitors.  More visitors meant more revenue which was in invested in further improvements.

We also began attracting new volunteers.  They could not understand why we were ignoring our best asset, the item which had caused the museum to be formed in the first place and the one with the biggest potential to draw in even more visitors, not only from San Antonio but across the state and beyond.  We crunched all the relevant numbers plus began researching what new regulations, restrictions and legal requirements we would have to follow.  It began to appear that the time was finally right to dust off #1 and bring it back to life.

The key thing was finding volunteers not only with enthusiasm but also the necessary skills to make the project happen.  In this we were very fortunate.  Several remarkable men were ready, willing and able to get started.  We also still had Dave Wallace who had acquired #1 for the museum back in the early 1960s, plus access to the volunteers who had operated it in the 1980s.  This was 2004 and things were looking good.  After about a year’s worth of work we even managed to have it move again under its own power for the first time in a long time,

Under pressure, 2004

However, just as with old automobiles with which I am more familiar, you get the thing running in order to find out what’s wrong with it.  It became apparent that 20% of its sixty-four flue tubes would need to be replaced.  Appropriate tubes were ordered from a steel foundry in Pennsylvania and partially installed.  But flaring, sealing and beading the small bore pipes required a very specialized tool and one could not be found.  As a result the project stalled.  Our volunteers were disenchanted with this turn of events not to mention exhausted from almost two years of hard effort and decided to take some time off and focus on other things.

Meanwhile the rest of the museum was going from strength to strength.  Somehow the temporary delay began to stretch out.  Once again #1 fell from pole position on our wish list.  At a certain point it became apparent that we had successfully undertaken pretty much all the low cost projects we could and now we needed to tackle the big ticket items that would take more in the way of capital investment than hard work by volunteers.  Despite the economic downturn in late 2007 our own resources were in relatively good shape.  It was time to take the plunge and take on serious debt if necessary to bring #1 back into service at last, on the basis that this would be a catalyst for other much desired projects, such as extending our mainline and building a museum quality display building.

Our first piece of major good fortune was finding the Holman Boiler, conveniently located just around the corner from the museum.  This was after checking with at least a dozen other outfits who would hardly give us the time of day.  Holman was not only enthusiastic about working on our steam locomotive they said they had access to the appropriate sized boiler flue beading tool.  Our next piece of luck was in acquiring the museum’s first ever major grant in its forty-six year existence.  This was given by the Brown Foundation out of Houston expressly for the purpose of getting #1 going again.

And so it came to pass last Saturday that I found myself atop the diminutive locomotive tightening bolts on its steam dome along with Ben Bennett, one of the folks instrumental in moving the project to this point, and Bob Owers, who deserves the lion’s share of the credit for where we are today, which is very, very close to a successful hydrostatic test and a state issued boiler certificate.  With these in hand we can get boiler insurance that will allow us to operate the locative in public.  There is still quite a bit of work to be done but the dream is about to become reality: Live steam passenger service is coming back to San Antonio!

1925 Baldwin 0-4-0 steam locomotive

I thought I might take a moment to let y’all know about how things are going at the Texas Transportation Museum here in San Antonio.  Founded on January 1, 1964, TTM is gearing up for its 50^th Anniversary.  There are a number of projects that have the potential to elevate the institution from a relatively small city concern to a statewide attraction.

 The activity with the greatest potential is our ongoing efforts to return our 1925 Baldwin 0-4-0 steam locomotive to service.  This effort has, not insignificantly, brought in the first major grant to TTM in its forty-six year history.  Thanks to the support of the Brown Foundation the remaining work, most of which must be done by accredited professionals, should be finished within two months.  Following the granting of a boiler certificate by the state and volunteer operator training, live steam passenger operations will return to TTM as early as the summer.

 While having live steam will be a big draw in and of itself, the museum experienced 5.3% attendance growth in 2009, not a small achievement in a tough economy.  Our bank balance has never been healthier.  This means that a number of long desired improvements can now be paid for without any need for borrowing, which is fantastic place for any institution to be.  We have been upgrading our facilities slowly but surely over the last few years, especially in terms of ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) compliance.  On a forty acre site with unimproved roads there will always be any number of projects that we would like to undertake but we are also aiming to upgrade a number of our major exhibits as well.  Particular attention is going to be paid to upgrading the interiors of our railroad business and passenger cars which already received huge improvements in 2009.

Ford Model T magneto fly wheel

 Just yesterday I had the opportunity to see our 1924 Ford Model T truck in a state of disassembly.  It’s quite educational to see such a primitive machine reduced to its constituent parts.  We need to get its sixteen large magnets recharged so the magneto can do its thing.  Some babbitt, a relatively soft white metal used in areas of high friction, was found in the oil pan so we are looking to install some new “sleeves” at the same time.  I had the opportunity to see the museum’s 1929 Ford Model A truck similarly stripped a few years ago.  It’s amazing how much more modern of a vehicle the A is compared to the T.

 This, of course, is part of our mission; to maintain and operate old transportation equipment and provide an opportunity for people to learn how our modern vehicles are only the latest stage in a long history of development.  It is often a costly business.  We maintain a certain amount of pride in the fact that we receive no government funding of any kind, be it city, county, state or federal.  We are entirely dependent on the goodwill of our customers and a small number of donors.

 Finally we are adding a fourth show to a pretty crowded calendar of major public events we either host or participate in.  At the museum itself there is a multi evening Christmas show, a two day Ford Model T show in May and a military vehicle show in September.  We also take part in the all three Fiesta parades, the Folklife festival in June and San Antonio Founder’s Day plus put on the city’s biggest train show at the Live Oak Civic Center in the October.  Joining this line up will be a two evening Halloween show.  Holding such an event at TTM has been under discussion for some time but it is now going to happen.  I look forward to sharing details at a later time.  Fir right now, I am just proud to say that the outlook for the future at TTM has never looked better.

 Click http://www.txtransportationmuseum.org/SHD.htm for more information about “Santa’s Railroad Wonderland.”

The event is going well.  Attendance over the first weekend was the highest we have ever had.  This could be, in part, due to the media attention we received following a significant fire that gutted our party caboose.  While this looked like a traditional red caboose on the outside, its interior was converted to a party room capable of seating thirty people.  With heat and A/C, it was a significant revenue maker for us until the fire, caused by smoldering insulation material lit by welding repairs, took off in the wee hours last week.

The good news is that work to refurbish it has already begun.  This, along with the museum’s first ever significant grant towards the restoration to working condition of our 1925 Baldwin 0-4-0 steam locomotive, means both the museum and I will be very busy and even more successful in 2010.

 Passenger rail enthusiasts are a die hard breed.  Despite a lack of demand and the total impossibility of kicking the Union Pacific off its own property, still they dream of restoring passenger rail service even though it makes absolutely no sense.  Even at the peak of passenger rail travel in the USA around 1920, there were never more than six trains a day to Austin, three on the Missouri Pacific and three provided by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas.  None terminated in Austin.  As the roads and automobiles improved, automobiles became the method of choice with frequent buses a good second option.  What is supposed to be so different now?

 Before I go any further I should state that I am a rail enthusiast, only I favor the approach of Warren Buffet who recently purchased the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the nation’s second largest freight railroad.  I have had a chance to look at the balance sheets of all the railroads serving San Antonio back in the 1920s and the disparity in revenue and costs between freight and passengers was enormous even then.  No wonder the railroads paid a fortune to the government and gave them their passenger equipment for free into the bargain to be able to ditch their common carrier passenger obligations.  Not one single railroad has made a single penny profit carrying passengers since the end of World War Two.

 Now, if Warren Buffet, or indeed any other investor, is not about to invest a dime into trying to create commuter service between San Antonio and Austin, why should I, as a taxpayer, feel good about it.  Why should my return on investment be pouring more good money after bad into a useless scheme?  I attended a number of public meetings almost five years ago when the scheme was still called the Austin San Antonio Intermunicipal Rail District.  I asked how many people regularly travel between the two cities every day?  They said they didn’t know.  I made phone calls and sent e-mails asking the same basic question.  To this day I have yet to get any sort of answer.

 In commuting terms, folks in New Braunfels come to San Antonio and those living in San Marcos go to Austin.  So many people from the latter community travel daily to Austin, the city is part of CARTS, the Capital Area Rural Transportation System.  They are also served by the Bobcat Tram which, operated by First Transit, provides buses to San Antonio via New Braunfels.  Greyhound offers twelve buses a day, just about one every hour between 10 AM and 10 PM.

 Ignoring the impossibility of building new tracks for the UP’s for just a moment, can somebody tell me who is going to use the service?  I have not been to Austin since 2007, and that was to do research for a book.  Who are the people who travel between San Antonio and Austin five days a week and how many of them are there?  The longest bus Greyhound takes one hour forty-five minutes but the stop in Austin is supposedly very badly situated.  Of course, as with any train service, I have to get to the bus and then to my final destination from the Austin terminus.  Or I can be on 6^th Street from my house, eighty-one miles in one hour twenty three minutes according to Google.  At 25 MPG, the 164 mile round trip will cost me $6.48, at $2.50 a gallon.  What regular traveler is going to pay more for slower, more expensive, infinitely more cumbersome public transportation when he or she can get into his or her own car, listen to music, avoid possibly less than pleasant fellow passengers plus have the option to make additional stops at the grocery store or pick up dry cleaning, along the way?

There are many good reasons why long distance commuter trains in our area are still as far away as ever despite twelve years of desultory effort.  A new name changes nothing.  Nothing at all.