Whistle Music Tracks Ahead Brought to you by Kalmbach Publishing Company producers of an online source for rail-related information, where you can discover model trains, toy trains, garden trains and even real trains.

(Horn) Kato Manufacturer of precision railroad models and the Unitrack system.

The Coachyard thin film decals makers of decals and tranfers in multiple scales Music Hi, I'm Spencer Christian.

On this episode on Tracks Ahead we'll see one of the oldest steam railroads in country.

We'll meet a man has both an American Flyer and an HO gauge layout and we'll stop in at the Twin Cities Model Railroad Club in St. Paul.

Now San Francisco is surely one of the most beautiful cities in the world, it's home to the cable cars, one of the most recognizable elements of this beautiful and popular tourist destination.

destination.

Ancr: It's easy to see how you can leave your heart in San Francisco, there's so much to see, so much to do and some absolutely wonderful ways to get where you're going.

The beautiful cable cars seem to slide with an effortless motion up and down the steep hills.

They're the only cable cars in the world still operating and it's just not tourists who ride these things.

They are indeed utilitarian.

Mike: We do carry about a million people a year to their jobs.

The California line is almost all commuters that go downtown to work everyday; you get to know your customers very well.

Ancr: The cable cars are just one piece of the San Francisco Public Transportation System, a system which is as sharlooking, as it is efficient.

There's also a unique collection of historic streetcars, there are electric trolley car buses and diesel buses and there's a modern subway and surface light rail system, it's called the San Francisco Municipal Railway System or "Muni" for short.

It's used by nearly 700,000 passengers on an average weekday; let's take another look at the stars.

Lot's of people confuse trolley's and cable cars.

Both run on tracks in the street, both have bells.

Both are a big part of San Francisco's history.

So here's what makes them different.

Trolley's, which are also called streetcars use a long pole, called a pantograph to draw electricity from an overhead wire to the cars motors, which propels them along the tracks.

Streetcars have been used in cities all over the world; many of those have been transplanted to San Francisco and are painted up in the colors of their original hometowns.

Cable cars were invented in the late 1800's specifically to climb the hills of San Francisco.

They're powered by machinery at a central plant, which pulls an underground steel cable through a trench between the tracks.

A vice-like grip on the car grabs the cable to pull the car up the hill.

Chris: We have an inch and a quarter diameter wire rope that spliced into a continuous loop that runs through the streets of San Francisco about a foot below the ground above the street level.

This all powered from a central point, here at the location we're at now, Washington Mason Powerhouse.

These cables are running at nine and half miles an hour and the cable cars with a grip device, which is a lever on the car, that you can pull back on this lever and it will grab the cable in a gripping type motion.

You think of a pair of pliers grabbing a wire and they squeeze down on this cable and as they attach to the cable the car moves forward.

That allows the operator to control the forward motion and to release the cable when he needs to at an intersection or to pick up passengers.

Ancr: Some of the cable cars are antiques.

There's constant renovation and restoration and some of the cars are brand new.

Mike: The oldest one currently is in service and was built in 1888 by the Mahoney brothers and that's car 28.

We make new cars from the ground up, we start out laying a keel just like a ship with two steel I-beams and proceed out from there.

It takes about 18 months to build a car.

Ancr: It was the trolley car in the early 1900's that helped triggered explosive urban and suburban growth in America bringing easy mobility to America for the first time.

In the US alone there were nearly 100,000 trolley cars.

But the trolley declined in popularity when America fell in love with the automobile.

But San Francisco remains passionate about the trolley.

It's an appreciation for history and the tenacious attention to efficiency and safety that keeps this system running so well.

And it's a system with dedicated drivers who are in ways like artists in motion.

Chris: When you watch how the actually operate it requires them to do about 15 things at once.

Standing up on a brake, releasing the grip, pulling the track stick, swiveling their head communicating with people around them, and looking for the traffic.

It's a real art form not everyone can do it.

The cable car system is America's first moving national historic landmark and what better place to have such a museum in motion than in one of America's most wonderful cities.

By the way traveler expert, Arthur Frommer picked the San Francisco's Municipal Railway cable car's museum as one of the top 10 free attractions in the world.

Let's go up to the city of St. Paul where we'll find a railroad club that's housed in the former shops of the Milwaukee Road.

There we'll find a great O gauge layout, one that reflects the history area.

Ancr: The night trains are running.

It's a special thing to see here at the Twin Cities Model Railroad Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota where trains run for the public six days a week.

Paul: We're normally open during the day and these trains are really detailed inside and they're also lit, during the day you can't appreciate that.

We were doing some things that just ended up with lights were down and we realized that this turns into a whole different situation Of course at that time there were very few lights in buildings.

As the excitement built, people were busy running around putting lights in everything that didn't move fast.

Ancr: The night trains only run a few months of the year but the museum is open year round.

These O scale trains run along eight miles of track, two lines are for passenger lines, two for freight, each line is two-scale miles long.

The museum is what use to be the St. Paul's Craftsman Hobby Club.

Paul: The club officially formed as a craftsman's club in an abandoned storefront in 1934 on Grand Avenue, they modeled anything; even little gas racecars and what have you.

Then in 1939 the interest had strongly moved to railroading and the Carl M. Gray from the Omaha Railroad asked if we wanted to build a display railroad down at the St. Paul Union Depot, which we did.

It took about a year to get open to the public so we operated down there for 40 years, what they asked that we would have a railroad that would operate for the public.

I think what caught on was the fact the amount of enjoyment you get out of building something and then sharing.

There are some beautiful railroads in basements but no one gets to see it, that's like artwork that never gets to be viewed and it's a shame.

Over the years we've attracted some very good craftsman at recreating this stuff.

Ancr: The recreations can be startling, look around this layout and you start to see things that look familiar, actually more than familiar, it's so real, it's almost scary.

Ray: It's magic, let's start by that steel bridge out front, where Marv Quinn one of our retiree's, spent 23 months cutting and forming over 3,100 pieces of cold rolled steel and then soldering them together to make those two beautiful spans.

There's so accurate that you have a fixed-foot over here, and an expansion and contraction foot over here; it's terrific.

Things like that they just thrill the daylights out of me.

Ancr: Volunteer's like Ray Norton are the heart of this special place.

At a time when some are retiring, and heading to Florida for the sun, the old guys here in the north are basking in the glow of train lights.

Norton: I started in 1984 here, I needed a hobby I don't have enough of them, so I had to join the Twin City Model Railroad Club to do a little of this cosmetic railing work.

An old retired carpenter.

Ray: He calls it a carpenter, but I'll tell you if you look closely, he's more like a cabinetmaker because the work he does it's just beautiful.

Norton: The one thing I am proud of is Jim Hill's Stone Arch Bridge.

The studying I had to do that was just fantastic.

Ray: He's got over 2,500 pieces of wood in that thing.

Ancr: The layout depicts the Minneapolis Milling District that as it looked from 1935 to 1955, a transition era, a time when steam and diesel engines worked side by side.

Here you'll find an ever-changing display of impressive trains, including one Hiawatha that holds a solid place in Ray Norton's heart.

Ray: You see this space back here?

In 1940 I wanted to go from Milwaukee to Chicago, rather rapidly.

My cousin and I we'd been down to the NMRA, National Model Railroad Association Convention, and we wanted to go down and see his dad in Chicago so we were hoboing and as they pulled out of the station they went across the grade crossing.

We ducked under the gate and got on.

I clocked miles as rapidly 34 seconds.

That meant he was running 106 miles an hour.

The driving wheels on that engine were seven feet in diameter and they didn't have to turn over to often to cover a mile.

Then in order to miss any reception committee they may have had, when it got down to about 20 miles an hour, Jack and I jumped off.

It was beautiful and it's something I haven't forgotten.

Ancr: Now that the layout is done it's here for you to visit but don't think just because it's done, you're always going to see the same old stuff.

Ray: The first thing is you mentioned the word "done", and in model railroading there just "ain't no such thing" that's the under statement because they can do a beautiful job on it, they'll just get on another beautiful job and add it or they will make change.

But it's never done.

Ancr: As long as the love for model trains lives, you'll find guys like these keeping them going.

Although they might argue what's better, steam or diesel, you just know they're having a grand time.

Norton: Every once in awhile we softened up just for the general public but other than that why we're our old natural selves.

We get in each other's hair as often as we can.

Ancr: The Twin Cities Mono Railroad Museum brings it in visitors from all over, folks for whom a day at the rails is a happy one.

Ray: You can't beat it because it's a railroad that runs well, it looks good and the models are quite accurate, for one who loves model railroading, what more could I ask.

Ambient Sound Ambient Sound There's something that we all admire about dreamers.

People who always wonder about the possibilities.

Shortly we'll meet an Illinois man who's not only a dreamer, but a man with the determination and wherewithal to turn those dreams into reality.

First it's off to it's off to Heber City, Utah.

The first train made it's way up the canyon from Provo more than 100 years ago.

The Heber Valley Railroad line is not only one of the oldest steam railroads in the country, it's one of the best.

Ambient Sound Ancr: Clouds of steam and steel wheels on steel rails only can mean one thing, the trains coming.

Ambient Sound In Utah's Heber Valley, the lonesome whistle is a regular thing to hear.

(train whistle) (train whistle) But these days there's nothing regular about being able to step aboard an old steam train, that's why they come.

Kenneth: They're not making any steam engines anymore.

Railroading is mostly freight hauling except for Amtrak there's very few passenger trains.

Utah is a state that is famous for it's railroads, The Golden Spike in 1869; this railroad is over 100 years old.

It's a matter of not only entertaining people but its preserving history, we preserve what is left because it'll never be again; it's gone forever if we lose it.

Ancr: It would be a shame to lose this.

The place wouldn't be the same without old 75 built by Baldwin in Philadelphia way back in 1907.

John: I like to think of a locomotive similar to a human being.

That it has a style, personality, and it changes from day to day just like we as humans do.

Atmospheric conditions, type of coal, types of water, the type of people you have running a locomotive will cause it to change and act differently than it would be different conditions.

The neat thing about this locomotive is the right conditions; right day, good coal, good atmospheric conditions and a good crew, wonderful engine run.

You get an imbalance somewhere, anyone of the equations, whole day can go straight to nowhere and that's one of those things you work with it and you try to learn what it wants and give it what it wants and then you give the locomotive what it wants, you'll find out that it'll give you what you want.

Ancr: Unlike a human, her heart is made of iron and runs on coal, she's stoked and primed by men who still call railroading their way of life.

Like her, they're living reflections of a different time.

A portion of history and that only lives in on in a few notches in America, spots like here in the Heber valley.

It's a ride to savor and remember.

Engineer: We'll leave Heber City and we'll go across the farmlands of the Heber Valley, there's a number of alpha fields we'll see some cattle out on the fields as well.

Well come around area called, Soldier Hollow, that's the Olympic Venue, cross-country skiing and the biathlons for 2002.

Then we'll follow the lakeshore on Deer Creek Lake for about five miles and along that lake you'll find desert scenery, sage brush and when we get to Deer Creek Dam we'll descend into the canyon on a four percent grade and we'll go into a pine and aspen filled canyon that's absolutely spectacular in the fall, it's nice year-round.

Then will follow the river about five to six miles until we get to Vivian Park, Vivian Park is where we stop and turn around.

That's a trout pond, a pavilion, children's playground area, it's quite nice and people spend about 30 minutes down there before we turn around and come back.

Ambient Sound Ancr: These rails, coaches and 75 are movie stars.

They've been in 31 featured films including "A River Runs Through It" and the TV show, "Touched by An Angel."

Kenneth: For some reason the magic of the railroad is coming back into fashion, they see the commercials.

"Touched by an Angel" has used us a number of times and I just think it's a unique, interesting, something different for the film companies.

Ancr: For a time it looked like this whole line was lost when they turned it into a tourist line, there wasn't much to it.

Kenneth: We started basically with nothing in 1992, we had a 1618 and a MW-2, a diesel locomotive, 1939 diesel and what we've acquired in the last eight years is pretty phenomenal.

We now have five locomotives, three diesels, two steam engines; we have railroad cars that were in A River Runs Through It, along with number of other freight cars.

We have our maintenance of way equipment, we have one car called the Molly Brown, it's a wooden coach built in 1890 and reported to be the private coach of the Unsinkable Molly Brown at one time, we can't prove it, but it's a nice story.

Ancr: 75 is rolling up on the century mark, a lot of folks ask how long she'll last.

John says the old 75 has a lot more good years in.

John: I think steam technology is only getting better, not getting worse.

A lot of people will argue that point, the old guy who's been back in the day or dying off, well us new kids that are coming up have some new tricks in the bag and we've learned some new things and we have something's that we can apply to the old locomotives.

That's causing it to last longer and run better.

Ancr: And what better place to run than through Utah's rugged country on a line that moves you forward and takes you back at the same time.

Ambient Sound Ambient Sound Ambient Sound Music Ancr: Like so many of us, Homer Henry fell in love with trains when he was just a boy back in the 1950's.

He would sit on his grandmother's porch in La Follet, Tennessee and watch the cars at the Louisville and Nashville rumble by.

It was no real surprise when Homer Henry began a career with the Santa Fe in California; he went from brake man to Engineer to Manager, to Executive.

But even as a busy Executive Homer Henry found time to pursue his love of model railroading.

He became a master craftsman and modeler and planned for the day when he would build his dream layout.

Finally, and with the help of others, that dream turned real.

In his Illinois home is a magnificent American Flyer S gauge layout created for him by a company called, The Model Train Works.

The Great Smokey Mountain Railway rolls through the Tennessee countryside.

Homer: I had this track plan drawn up for sometime using one of the new computer track making programs that existed in the late 1980's, drew this up at that time.

I was just waiting for the right combination of time and place.

By moving into this location in 1990, I started to look around and found an ad in Model Railroader about this fellow from this Model Train Works, I believe it was called.

It's an interesting story; he had an 800 number, I called it and I had no idea where he was at in the country.

I talked to him on the phone and told him what I wanted to do, he said he normally built the layouts on location and moved up to where the client was.

We talked about for 20 minutes about concept, scenery, no grades, etc.

and finally after 20 minutes of conversation I said, "So where are you located at, I'll look at transportation costs and you can come see where I'm at," he says, "I live in Naperville, Illinois."

It turned out he was five minutes from where I lived.

We hung up and he came over and we started the project about a week or two after that.

Ancr: Homer and his wife also have a 10 by 40 foot HO gauge layout with incredible scenery; this too was assembled with the help of admired professionals.

Dorothy: It's a high degree concentration, creativity, artistic value that goes into the contribution of making it such a fun experience.

Homer: It's interesting though, when people come and look at both layouts that the American Flyer really tends to be more of an interest than all the extreme details in the HO layout because of the noise it makes, the smoke of the engines, the excitement that it brings back of Christmas mornings that we've all had with this hobby of big trains running around in circles.

Then the serious people like to look at the HO, but they all drift back to this one and look at it and admire.

It's very exciting, lot of noise, it's hard to even talk in here when they're all running but the HO is the epic bringing together all the different functions of detail and craftsmanship and all that.

It's two completely separate things.

Ancr: Homer Henry now manages two of his own companies, one that certifies locomotive engineers and a company called, Rail Tech Productions, which helps produce train scenes for television commercials and the movie industry.

Homer: Rail Tech Productions has offices in Chicago, Kansas City and Beverly Hills, California.

That company works with the movie industry, not only for feature films but also commercials, TV shows that require trains.

Anything that has trains in it our company's involved in getting the trains and the Hollywood Production Company together.

Ancr: Homer Henry is a man who's been able to take a childhood love of trains and turn it into both an exciting career and a fulfilling hobby, a fortunate man who's never drifted far from those dreams on his grandmother's porch.

Talk about talent and drive; Homer Henry is also an experienced airplane pilot.

Thanks for being with us, please join us next time for more Tracks Ahead.

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