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(Horn) The Model Railroad Division of the Hobby Manufacturers Association.

Helping hobbyists design and build their own miniature railroad empires inside or outside, big or small.

(Whistle) Music Spencer: Hi, I'm Spencer Christian.

On this episode of Tracks Ahead, we'll visit a high rail layout in California that incorporates some movie magic, go into the hills of West Virginia to meet a man who literally saved a town with a railroad, and visit a husband and wife who restored and operate a piece of western history.

For true railfans, one of the most beautiful locomotives ever built was the Alco PA. A first generation diesel, designed and built in the 1940's, the Alco PA was a powerful, and some say beautiful, monster of a locomotive.

It's a locomotive th's long gone.but, on it's way back !

Ancr: Introduced in 1946, the Alco-PA, was one of the post World War Two diesel locomotives designed for high speed passenger service.

Not the only diesel built in America, but it was certainly one of the most distinctive and most powerful.

Alco, was short for the American Locomotive Company in Schenectady, New York.

The "PA" meant it was a locomotive with a cab unit, and was built to pull passenger trains.

General Electric, a partner in the manufacturing process, supplied the electrical equipment.

It was a partnership playing catch-up in the diesel locomotive business.

Steam trains, Alco's bread and butter, were dying.

So, the Alco PA diesel was quick to jump from concept and design, to rolling down the track.

Jim Boyd is an author, and an Alco expert.

Jim: Diesels primarily replaced steam locomotives on one primary factor - manpower.

Steam locomotives were the standard of the era, but they required a lot of people to keep them going.

Not just twice as many men on the crew, they required a lot of surface support, coaling towers, water facilities, all of which had to be manned.

Huge back shops.

It was pure and simple manpower.

Actually, the PA was not a unique design.

It was in truth, based on the Fairbanks Morse Erie built that was being constructed on the floor of the GE plant in Erie, Pennsylvania.

When Alco came to GE with this big new 16 cylinder turbocharged engine of the same horsepower, they needed a package they could put that new engine in and do it in a hurry.

The war was ramping down, they were ready to go into production, they couldn't spend two years hiring some high priced industrial designer like Raymond Loewy or Henry Dreyfuss or something like that, so they had to come up with something really quick.

Since the Erie built was the same general size and proportions and weight, it was the perfect package.

So General Electric brought in a man named Ray Patton from their appliance division.

Now appliances are not heavy electrical stuff.

Appliances are like toasters.

And if you look at the details on a PA, like the grilled headlight, it looks like something you would have seen on a World War 2 era GE toaster.

There's a reason behind that.

It's because the guy that designed the toaster, also designed the locomotive.

Ancr: There were three different models, built over a seven year period.

More than sixty-five feet long, fourteen feet high, and eleven feet wide, the PA, with it's smooth curves, dominated the track.

Used by more than a dozen different railroads, the PA's could cruise at one-hundred miles an hour.

It was fuel injected and turbo-charged.

It weighed more than three-hundred-thousand pounds, and could generate more than two-thousand-horsepower.

It was so popular, that in 1947, it was chosen to head The Freedom Train, which carried some of the nation's most cherished documents on a year long, 200 city tour.

Alco designed the PA around the concept of their single, powerful, 244 engine, which had been developed during the war.

Alco was quick to point out that a single engine meant fewer working parts, and thus lower maintenance.

But engine technology advanced rapidly.

General Electric became an Alco competitor, and General Motors already was, so the last PA was built in the early 1950's.

Jim: The first 244 was put into a customer's locomotive before the prototype has even gone through a 600 hour teardown test.

So they never even tested this engine before they put it in a customer's locomotive.

The 244 engine was a pretty good engine until it started to wear, which usually took 2 to 3 years.

Within 2 to 3 years, Alco had sold a whole bunch of engines.

And then the plague struck railroading, called 244itis.

Where suddenly all the 244s started failing at once.

The General Motors locomotives of that era were all powered by two, thousand horsepower, twelve cylinder engines.

In passenger service, the railroads liked the twin engines.

If you had a major failure with one engine, you're dead on the road.

If you have a major failure with two engines, your likelihood is you can still have the engine drag the train in.

In the early 50's, Alco actually proposed a PA4, containing a 251 engine.

But because the market was dying for passenger power at that time, Amtrak was on the verge, everybody was trying to get out of the passenger business, there was simply no market left for a new passenger diesel.

Ancr: By the late 1960's, most of the Alco PA's were gone.

Today, only a few are known to exist worldwide.

One belongs to restoration expert, and Alco lover Doyle McCormack, who we first met back in 2000 when he acquired the rusted out remains.

He told us then, the rebuild would be the realization of a lifelong dream, and a memorial to his father.

Doyle: What you're looking at here is the remains of probably one of the classiest diesel locomotives ever built.

This is an Alco PA, or I can say, the remains thereof.

And my intention is to make this look as good as the day it come out of the factory eventually.

I've put my heart and soul into it, and most of my bank account too.

The PAs hold a special place in my heart, if you want to call it that.

Like I said, my Dad worked for the Nickel Plate and got me hooked on trains at an early age.

In 1955 he made a trip to New York City and took me with him.

And we went down to the depot to get on the train, and he took me up and we rode the engine of Nickel Plate number 8, from Conway out to Buffalo which is 116 miles.

The engine on that train was Nickel Plate number 190.

That was the first diesel locomotive I ever rode.

And from that point on, that became a special engine in my, you know, my passion.

If you look at the lines of these, the architecture and design, they just say, "Speed. "

You know, the curves.

You just don't see curves in industrial equipment today.

Everything's boxed, square corners.

These have the nice lines and the curves.

They're sleek.

They've got a long wheelbase trucks under them.

They just look like something that wants to get out and run at 100 miles an hour.

They have a face on them that only a mother could love, I guess.

To a lot of the rail fans, these are the epitome of the diesel locomotive.

Ancr: It has been a slow and painstaking process, but today the rebirth of a legend is well underway.

She is now painted in the bluebird color scheme of the old Nickel Plate Railroad.

And bolt by bolt, he's trying to get her track ready.

Doyle: What do you do with it?

If it never runs, so be it.

The object of this game is to preserve it and restore it.

And when I get it done, on a nice day like this, I'll pull it outside, get my lawn chair, my cooler with a six pack of Pepsi, and umbrella, and just sit there and watch it all day long.

Just look at it, and admire it.

That's the object of the exercise here, is the restoration.

Life is way to short.

If you have a dream, chase it.

You can't get old and say "I wish I had. "

You've got to get old and say, "I'm glad I did. "

Ancr: The Alco is a reminder of a time not so long ago, when diesel replaced steam.

A time when a young Doyle McCormack, rode in the cab of the Nickel Plate with his father.

Spencer: On Doyle's to do list is the refurbishing of a second PA for the Smithsonian.

It's planned that this one will have the famous Santa Fe warbonnet paint scheme.

Now, Californians are used to seeing Hollywood movies being shot wherever they go.

Let's go meet Eric Michaelson, who can recreate that experience every day in his own backyard.

Ancr: The director yells "ACTION."

.a stunt man crashes a car into a gas station which explodes upon impact.

Then it's on to the next scene.

This isn't a rehearsal for the next Arnold Schwartzenegger action movie.

It's just one of many wacky animated scenes in Eric Michaelson's backyard train station.

And, if you look closely enough, you'll spot Arnold dancing the tango with someone who looks suspiciously like Jamie Lee Curtis.

Eric's love of trains goes back to his first Lionel set, which his grandfather gave him when he was only one month old.

Eric: Throughout my childhood I enjoyed track to try to crash them, running them as fast as you can, of course.

They'd go flying off the tracks.

That train still runs today.

Ancr: Eric has always gone to extreme measures to enhance his layout, even when he was a kid working on his original HO models.

Sometimes, things got a little out of hand.

Eric: I needed lighting on my layout because it just wasn't right.

I put the roads in and few buildings.

I didn't have any electrical expertise yet, so I took birthday candles and I put them all over the layout and lit them.

I was so pleased that when my father came home I ran him out to the garage to see how this was all lit in candles.

He about had a heart attack, because he was storing gasoline, paint thinners, and all kinds of explosives in the garage that I had no idea about.

Ancr: Well, that explains the stunt car driver.

Growing up in Southern California must have had a big influence on Eric.

From the moment you step into his backyard, you wonder if you're in Disneyland or Knotsberry Farm or even a Hollywood movie set.

And the Duke himself is there to greet you.

The trains start out in Burbank, go over the San Gabriel Mountains, through the San Fernando Valley, down to San Diego, passed Catalina Island, up to Santa Monica and then back up to Burbank.

Along the way, they pass recognized landmarks and some features that only Eric knows, such as the house he grew up in.

or a tongue-in-cheek tribute to a commodities broker he once worked with!

Eric: Couple of friends and I paid tremendous commissions to a particular commodities broker and we figured the way to get even was to hang him off the building.

So that has a lot of meaning for me.

I've often said that regarding my sense of humor, particularly in the layout, if you are conservative minded, you'll appreciate all my humor.

If you're more to the liberal side, you'll have to tolerate my humor.

We have the Blue Diamond Match Factory, where we have O scale people making full sized matches.

I enjoy the animation primarily because it's a challenge to create the standalone dioramas that tell a story in and of themselves.

I enjoy the mechanical aspects of the animation more so really than running trains.

The trains basically tie in from animation to animation.

Ancr: With everything going on here, how does Eric direct a viewer's attention from one crazy animation to the next?

He does it with sound .

There are six audio cassette players hard-wired into the layout with speakers placed at different locations.

Eric can fade the sounds in and out, depending on what he wants his visitors' to focus on.

Eric: I would say the most rewarding part of the whole layout is the general reaction people get when they first see the buildings outside and once they walk in side and I've obviously set up the whole scene.

They enter as a night scene and they see all the lights and the trains running and all the animation.

They get all excited.

And then past that point when they start seeing all the little details and they start reading signs that they may have been here four of five times before they realize that sign was ever there and they start busting a gut about it.

Ancr: Sometimes guests of the train station have to look up to get another surprise.

Eric takes photos of people and creates banners for a remote control airplane to pull along a track, high above the trains.

This one is his nod to Tracks Ahead.

Spencer: Eric has replaced his audio cassette units with a state of the art sound system.

In a moment, we'll meet with Dan and Ditty Markoff, who have created a new chapter for both themselves and the wild west legends they admire, with their loving restoration of the Eureka steam locomotive.

but right now, let's escape the hustle and bustle of city life and take in the serenity of the majestic Allegheny mountains of West Virginia.

Here you'll find some of the finest scenery in America.

Mountains, forests, lakes.and the trains of the wonderful Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad.

Ancr: Here in the mountains of West Virginia, you'll find some of the most breathtaking scenery in America.

Hundreds of thousands of acres of unspoiled wilderness.

Waterfalls cascade in densely forested canyons.

Some of the most isolated and picturesque views you'll ever encounter.

Durbin is nestled in the Allegheny Mountain range in Pocahontas County, West Virginia.

Railroad history is in the bloodline of this town.

Frank Proud: The railroad really made the major impact 100 years ago in 1902 when the first train came to town.

It came to the depot, it was a steam engine, of course, and the town shifted back around from where the Western and Maryland is now, to where the main street is here.

So the railroad had first dibs and the town revolved around the railroad.

Ancr: For years the railroad gave life to this town, but after nearly a century, it was the town, with financial assistance from the state, that would breathe new life into the abandoned line of a dying railroad.

John Smith : It was determined that a small tourist operation could be started here if somebody was interested.

And my wife Kathy and I decided that we might be interested.

So as ex-truck drivers we sold our truck and formed the Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad, Incorporated.

About half of the businesses in town are the original stockholders.

Ancr: The excursion trains of the Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad offer you some absolutely wonderful ways to see what West Virginia has to offer.

Depending on how much time you have, the Durbin and Greenbrier offers you a number of options.

The Durbin Rocket allows you to ease on down into the upper reaches of the Greenbrier River from the base of Cheat Mountain.

The train is powered by old number three, a nearly one-hundred-year-old 55-ton Climax steam locomotive.

It's one of the few operating geared climax logging locomotives which remain.

John Smith: We could start with our steam locomotive, Climax #3.

Climax is the name of the company that built it in Cory, Pennsylvania.

They went out of business in 1929.

They built geared logging locomotives as the, these would be considered, the Volkswagen of geared logging locomotives, as opposed to the Shays, which was the Cadillacs.

So a lot of operations bought them that were low cost and low budget operations, one of which was Moore Keppel Company located over the mountains in Elemore, West Virginia.

Our Climax served there for about 60 years.

We recovered it from a collection in Connecticut and put it back in service.

It's right now one of two that operate.

There's the possibility of five that would operate in the world at any given time and there's about 20 of them left.

So there's not to many of them remaining in the world.

Ancr: Old number three rolls along the free-flowing Greenbrier, and she'll cover the ten mile trip in about two-hours.

Now the Cheat Mountain Salamander is just plain fun.

It covers eighty miles on two routes, without ever leaving its' wilderness home.

It rolls on the highest mainline track east of the Mississippi.

You'll ride through areas of extreme isolation.

You'll bend around some of the tightest mainline curves in the United States.

You'll see the beautiful and inspirational high falls of Cheat Mountain, hidden deep in the river valley, and one of West Virginia's most magnificent waterfalls.

All this while riding a custom built and self propelled rail car.

It's a replica of a 1922 Edwards railway motor car, built just for this rugged mountain service.

Tom Proud: Salamander is a reproduction of an Edwards motorized railcar.

They used them in small communities where they didn't have enough people to warrant a full time passenger train.

But people wanted to travel from town to town and roads weren't to well established.

Rail was a better way to travel, and it was basically a bus that runs on railroad tracks.

Ancr: The smooth riding and mountain climbing New Tygart Flyer offers longer trips, some lasting nearly eight hours.

You journey deep into the wilderness for a pampered, stylish, and climate-controlled ride.

On the agenda are wonderful views of deep canyons, dense forests, and the Tygart Valley River.

John Smith: The New Tygar Flyer is another segment of our tourist operation that operates on another piece of the West Virginia Central.

It operates on about 75 miles of that line.

And it's a streamlined, old fashioned pullman car passenger train.

We feel like we only exist because of the good will of people of West Virginia.

These are lines that are owned by the State of West Virginia.

And some of the funding on the West Virginia Central to keep the lines up comes from the state legislature.

And so this state is able to do things that the surrounding states should be doing but aren't.

So West Virginia in a way, is benefitting because of it's own attitude toward rail lines, and because of people's attitude towards having something like this and preserving rail lines.

There's a tremendous amount of good will that we've enjoyed doing this.

And so it becomes a fun thing to do.

We have 290 stock holders, they're all local people, and they've invested in a railroad that they knew they'd never get a dollar out of, but last year we paid a dividend for the first time and it looks like we're going to do the same thing again.

So something that looked like it was just a lark has turned into a legitimate enterprise and it has a bright future.

Ancr: Every year tens of thousands of visitors make the trek here to ride the trains of the Durbin and Greenbrier.

After a visit, West Virginia might just feel like home, or at least you'll wish it was home.

But one thing is for sure.

When you see beauty like this, you'll definitely want to come back.

Music Ancr: There wouldn't have been a Wild West if it hadn't been for the Railroads.

And for many of us, our images of the West were based on scenes from the movies.

This is the story of the Eureka -- a restored wood-burning engine that played a role in creating both the real and the imaginary frontier.

The Eureka is only one of three 4-4-0 wood burning engines in existence today.

One is in the Smithsonian.

This one is in Dan Markoff's backyard.

Built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in the 1870s, she ran between the silver mining town of Eureka and the Central Pacific's mainline connection at Palisade, Nevada until 1901.

At some point, the Eureka was sold for scrap to a Bay Area salvage company and was forgotten for years.until it caught train historian Gerald Best's eye and went to the Warner Brothers film studio.

While Warner Brothers owned the Eureka, she appeared in many Hollywood films and television shows, including John Wayne's last movie, "The Shootist. "

But in the 1970s, the old Hollywood studio system started to die; the Eureka was all but forgotten and sold to the owners of the Old Vegas theme park.

And there she sat waiting for the Next Act in her career.

That's when Dan Markoff came along.

Ditty: Somehow he connected with that wreckage and the next thing I know he walks in the door and he says, "We have a locomotive. "

And I said, "OK, well every boy should have his hobbies. "

Dan: Having known of the history of the locomotive somewhat it was discouraging to see it in such sad condition.

I figured if nobody cared for it, maybe I could and put it back into shape.

So that's what went off in my mind when I saw the thing after it had been burned up.

It was just to preserve a piece of our western history.

Ancr: Dan laid a few hundred feet of track in his backyard and built a special structure to house the Eureka during its renovation.

Luckily, the original Baldwin blueprints were still available and helped Dan avoid a lot of guesswork while he restored the engine.

The Eureka's intricate Victorian adornments were painstakingly recreated.

The wagon-top boiler's whistle, sand box and bell are crowned with acorn finials.

The original decorations, colors and lettering were matched and required a substantial amount of gold leaf.

Ditty: I never thought I'd be living with a train in my backyard.

I always thought I'd have an in-ground pool, instead we have a railroad.

The deal was, I would get a patio if he got the locomotive.

I never thought it would come to this, though.

But I'm pretty proud of him.

Ancr: But it's not enough for the Eureka to sit in the Markoff's backyard.

She's taken real runs at least once a year for the past 13 years.

This year, the Eureka will return to the Durango & Silverton line in Colorado.

(EUREKA's WHISTLE BLOWS) Ancr: Firing up the Eureka with enough wood to handle steep climbs is no small task and requires a lot of teamwork.

But no one is more surprised than Ditty at how much fun it is.

Ditty: I never envisioned this, and it took the first seven years of our marriage, but I'm so proud of this I can not begin to tell you.

It's an extraordinary experience to be able to do this.

I don't think there is any other female in the country who gets to do this, have a date with her husband in a steam locomotive.

Ancr: The engine has also returned to her birthplace in Eureka, Nevada for special occasions.

Dan: We had it up there in 1992, and they brought this very old woman by who was very frail.

They brought her up and we gave her this little ride down the track that we'd built.

And she started crying.

And I asked her what was wrong, and she said as a young girl this locomotive had pulled her and a train to school, and it was bringing back her youth to her.

It was one of the most special moments I've ever had with this locomotive to have that bridge of almost a century there.

Ancr: Seeing how people react to the Eureka is a testament to its beauty and grace.and to the railroad's ability to capture the romance of the Old West.

Ditty: They're inspired, I see tears in their eyes, that inspires me and I appreciate the engine more each time I see that.

They sincerely appreciate history, they appreciate what Dan has done.

Dan: It's better than HG Well's time machine.

It's not only carrying you back into the time of the 1870s and the 1880s of the American West, it's something that's going on today also.

So it's not just it's running in the past that's interesting and learning how they did it then, it's that it's running today in the 21st century also.

Spencer: Dan is continuing to work on additional rolling stock for his railroad.

That's it for this episode.

Thanks for being with us.

and please join us next time for more, Tracks Ahead.

Music Ancr: Tracks Ahead.

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The Model Railroad Division of the Hobby Manufacturers Association.

Helping hobbyists design and build their own miniature railroad empires inside or outside, big or small.

(Whistle) Music