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

On this episode of Tracks Ahead, we'll visit one of the oldest zoos west of the Mississippi, and home to a very nice railroad.

We'll meet a Lionel collector who is as interested in the stories of the people behind the items, as he is in the items themselves.

We'll explore a trolley museum which offers a trip back in time, along with an opportunity to dine on the rails.

But first, let's look in on one of the last steam logging railroads in the world.

It's located in e of the far valleys of the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, close to the Ukrainian border.

Ancr: The majestic Carpathian Mountains are the strong backbone of the Romanian landscape.

It's in northern Romania, where the Carpathians touch the border of the Ukraine, where you will find the Carpathian Railway.

At first glance, the impressive steam locomotives of the Carpathian, look like something that time forgot.

Something from a time when a steam train was the workhorse of a lumber railroad, and a lumber railroad was the lifeblood of a mountain town.

In this small and wonderful part of the world, that is still the case.

Time didn't forget the Carpathian.

It is guarding it closely.

Loici Ivancuc has memories that have lasted a lifetime.

Loici: I was born here in the Wassertal in the village of Fayna in 1937.

My mother was the cook for the logging foreman and my father had the local bakery where he made all the bread for the village.

It was really nice in this village.

Twenty families lived here in Fayna at that time.

There was also a mill and there was a chapel, built by the Austrians.

So I learned about the forest railway in my early childhood and I have loved it since then.

In Fayna the logging foreman had a deer called "Misch," and the deer had a bell around his neck.

Whenever the train came to Fayna, Misch always ran to the station.

The logging foreman had a real nice house with special rooms for smoking meat and fish.

And the foreman was also in charge of all the hunting activities.

After WW II we had to move to Viseu.

In 1955 I was hired at the logging railway.

First as a fireman.

In the early 1960's I attended the school for locomotive engineers and in 1965 I was promoted to engineer.

I did that job until I retired in 1996.

But after a few years, I came back, because people asked me to come back.

Especially because Michael Schneeberger asked me to help him.

And together, we helped bring this locomotive to the Wassertal.

I still love this job very much.

I am a real railroader.

Ancr: Viseu de Sus is a small town in the most Nordic part of Romania.

It is an adventure in itself.

It's a multicultural community that is picture postcard perfect.

It's a town that is holding onto yesterday, while embracing what today has to offer as well.

This is a home base logging town for the Carpathian Railway.

It's where workers climb on board the trains for the ride deep into the forests.

They leave on a Monday, and won't be back home until the end of the week.

They ride what may be the most remarkable railway heritage attraction in Eastern Europe.

They ride up a beautiful roadless valley on the only access to the small settlements alongside the woodlands.

They ride along the abrupt banks of rivers flowing swiftly next to the tracks.

It is the only remaining working narrow gauge forestry railway of the many that were built to remove timber from these mountains.

It still brings the workers in, and the timber out.

Michael: The problem was after the revolution here in Romania, they closed most of the lines because the economy was changing and it was more economical to build roads into the forests and sell the wood at a better price when people could go into the forests.

Ancr: The railway stock is owned the R.G Holz Company, a Romanian and German partnership.

The line is still owned by the Romanian government.

Schneeberger's group, Wassertalbahn, was formed to help both entities preserve this living technical museum.

To let the world know that this is not only a moving museum, it's a working railroad that provides area residents with a decent living.

The centuries old forests provide the timber, and the railroad and Viseu de Sus provide the tourist attraction.

Michael: This locomotive is not new.

It is from the museum in Bucharest.

It was built in Berlin in 1910.

And there are some other Romanian built Resita type.

They have four of them.

Just one is working.

And behind me is the Strauss loco, built in Austria.

It is also a very old one and we are repairing it.

So we have two locos working and three locos in repair.

On a regular morning we are starting between two and three trains for lumber.

And they are taking on Monday the workers to the forest and they stay there the whole week and come back on Saturday.

They are sleeping in the forest and working there.

A normal day is a about two or three trains, going up in the morning early, and coming back in the afternoon with the lumber.

When I first came here it was 1989.

It was still working as normal in the Communist era and after I saw that more and more tourist were coming here, I thought that tourism could be a future for this town.

Here is Viseu de Sus, it is very important because for this economy.

The people are not working well, and the tourism is going up and up and it is very important that this Romanian group is working for tourism to bring people here and spending money here in Viseu.

Leopold: The railway is so very important both for this region and for this town.

First of all, it's the railway that makes logging possible.

And right now, about 1800 people have jobs in the logging business.

Second, the railway is very important for tourism.

It attracts more and more tourists all the time.

And that's good for the hotels, the B&Bs, and other tourism related services.

Music Music Music Music Music Ancr: Whether it's loading firewood, or taking on water from a mountain stream, the railroad is a sight to see.

The towns are incredible visual attractions as well.

It's a living, and steam blowing testament to the benefits of historical preservation.

Spencer: In addition to the Wassertalbahn, Romania was quite a pleasant experience.

It's worth a visit.

If someone named "Mrs. Weisenheimer" said she would sell you some rare trains, you might think she was pulling your leg.

But John Potter's experience with a Mrs. Weisenheimer led him to one of his favorite model trains.and favorite stories.

Ancr: Some collectors own so many trains they can barely remember who they bought them from.

And even if they did remember, the details of their trains' past lives are sketchy at best.

But not John Potter.

The stories behind the trains in his layout are just as colorful to him as the brightly painted trains themselves.

Potter: The story adds the life to the train.

The fact that it was somewhere along the line lovingly played with, misused a little bit and then put away for the next day.

I love to find things through private homes.

Buying through dealers, buying through shows, buying through auctions is always very sterile.

I like to sit down and get to know the people, I like to take and talk to them, I like to figure out if this was their's, if it was something they shared with a brother an aunt.

A woman comes to me - nice little old lady, pleasant, gray haired gal, well into her 80s, she's got a bag, it's all she could do to carry it.

She says, "The name is Mrs Weisenheimer."

Now the two gentlemen sitting on either side of me are Three Stooges fans and immediately see the reference.

and think she's pulling my leg.

Less than two or three weeks later, she calls me and we get together and out of this basement and out of this garage come the Lionel 226, a Marklin long O gauge French car, a 265 steam engine with a set of freights.

These people fled as Hitler closed the doors in Germany.

It's a wonderful story and a wonderful train from Mrs. Weisenheimer.

Ancr: John's love of trains goes back to when he was a kid growing up on a farm in Gray's Lake, Illinois.

He and his Dad enjoyed collecting Lionel 0 gauge models.

Life on the farm meant that you tinkered with things.

Potter: Growing up out on the farm and being somewhat mechanically inclined father figured out immediately that we were cheap labor.

You know, everything from taking apart a piece of farm machinery with a cold chisel to working our way up to disassembling cars and rebuilding them.

Ancr: John's love of tinkering with all kinds of gadgets lead to a career as a contractor and a hobby of collecting vintage pinball machines and jukeboxes.

He also had a collection of Schuco toys from Germany which he played with as a kid.

Potter: I had a fairly large collection of about 35 antique machines, most of them old 1950's pieces that were stored in a barn on my father's farm where I was living in an apartment, and in 1978 the structure caught fire and we lost the collection and basically was burned along with everything I had, save my pants, camera bag, and, ah, myself.

Ancr: Even though recovering from the fire was difficult, John had collecting in his blood and searched for the next new novelty item.

He turned to old die-cast automobiles for a while.

But, in time, John became entranced by the magic of trains once again.

This time, it was pre-war toy trains.a far cry from the realistic looking Lionels he had as a kid.

Potter: The tinplate trains, the design, the art, the function, they're actually rolling pieces of art.

I look at them and realize the level of design that went into them.

The manufacturing is a lost thing.

Even today people are making reproductions of these pieces, but they don't carry the charm, they don't carry the warmth that I think these hand built things did from that era.

The sound that a tinplate train, the rattle trap clatter, bang slam that it makes going down the tracks, it's soothing.

You look at the new LGB trains and they just kind of whoosh by.

Where this thing goes by, you know it went by and you know it's still going down the track, and damn, you know when it crashes.

(laughs) Ancr: John's wife Ena is also very involved with the train room.

With her background as a window display artist and graphic designer, Ena adds an artistic flair to the layout.

Potter: She's just got a great eye for colors.

She brought up five or six different paints, we set out a bunch of accessories on the board, and laid color up against it, just to see how it would complement itself.

We came up with a Georgian brick red color for the layout, which is a little different from what you see on most train boards.

Ancr: John and Ena's coaboration really paid off when it came time to accessorize the layout.

They have rare edions of specialty items, such as this power station with the name Edison on it.

John has so ny accessories that he decided to use some of them for separate displays.

Ena helped him arrange these Lionel 200 turntables into attractive wall art.

They've also turned these 443 Roundhouses into a corner display.

To John Potter, his trains are all about dreams.

Potter: You look at the toy that I had when I was a child and it took me to Arizona and other places.

You look at these toys and their antique value and the fact that these dreams have been dreamt by so many different people enticing the toy and keeping the toy.

Still, even today, you know, I wonder what it would be like to be, you know, in one of these little trains running around.

The dreams are kind of a continuance of the dreams I had as a child.

I mean, all of us remember wanting to be somewhere else.

Spencer: John's daughters said that often times their dates end up extremely interested in their father's collection.

The next time you head out to Portland, Oregon, hop on the light rail and ride about five-minutes west of the city.

That's where you'll find the tall and beautiful evergreen forests of Washington Park.

And in the park, the Oregon Zoo, the oldest zoo west of the Mississippi.

It's Oregon's leading paid attraction because of the leopards, the tigers, the bears.and the hippest little railway in Portland.

We'll go there in a minute...but first, trolleys and interurban lines once dotted the countryside.

They were a mode of transportation responsible for initially opening up vast areas of the urban landscape, but eventually, gave way to the automobile.

You can still visit the past, in southeastern Wisconsin.

Ancr: At the start of the 20th century, transportation options were limited.

The lucky people had a horse that could be ridden from place to place.

But most people just walked.

To get from East Troy, Wisconsin, to Milwaukee, a distance of about 30 miles, required a half days travel by horse.

That all changed with the coming of the interurban and trolley system.

Now people could be whisked over the same distance in about an hour and a half.

Not only did these trolleys carry passengers to work, beaches, and amusement parks, they also carried freight, mail, produce, general merchandise, and over 8,000 gallons a milk each day.

Eventually, the automobile virtually eliminated the trolley from the American landscape.

But at the East Troy Electric Railroad Museum, you can still capture the past, today.

Conductor: All Aboard Ancr : Whether you come here for nostalgia or curiosity, the sounds and motion of the old days are very much alive.

It all started almost a hundred years ago, back in 1907.

Franklin : The history of the East Troy Electric Railway is one of the electric company building a line out here in 1907.

It started out as most interurban lines did at the turn of the century as a passenger operation.

Later on it evolved into a freight carrier and now of course, is a tourist operation carrying passengers mostly.

Ancr: While you might think that the link to regular trolley avel has been broken, a group thought that this line was to important a piece of the past to be ignored.

Franklin; The line was preserved in 1939 by the village of East Troy which purchased it from the electric company making it the first municipally owned railroad in the United States.

In 1972 museum operations started on the line.

Our group started as a number of volunteers who assembled to preserve the history of electric railroading in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest and began actually in North Prairie but later came down here in 1984 to take over the operation at East Troy.

The line has been in constant use since 1907.

Ancr : The line travels through the Southeastern Wisconsin countryside between East Troy and Mukwonago.

Along the way you'll get a feel for slower times.

It's a place where history is on display and rolling down the tracks.

It takes a lot to keep these cars in operation, and even to get them back on the tracks in the first place.

The trolleys are lovingly restored to grandeur.

They're from a time when attention to detail and to beauty held the hand of utility.

Ancr : Trolleys like this 1920 Milwaukee streetcar ushered in a whole new age, an age that showed people that trolleys were the way to get around.

It's not the only car you'll see operating here in East Troy.

Franklin: The Sheboygan car is a wooden interurban car built by the Cincinnati Car Company in 1907.

It served as a cottage on the shores of Lake Michigan from 1938 until the early 70's.

The family that preserved this car as a cottage decided they'd like to see it restored and run again.

The car has been lovingly restored and all the woodwork and the windows; the mechanicals have yet to be done and will be done and completed sometime this year.

The car should be operating by next year.

Minneapolis Street Car was built for the Twin Cities Rapid Transit Company in Minneapolis St Paul in 1912.

Ran until the early 50's.

Then it became an office.

Our group acquired it in the 1980's, restored it, and now it is our Jolly Trolley, and a favorite with a lot of the passengers.

This open car that you're sitting in was built in 1975 to the plans and patterns of a 1895 Milwaukee streetcar.

Open cars didn't last very long in Milwaukee; as you know the climate is not to conducive to running something like this all year round so all the open cars disappeared.

So we decided that we would like to have a nice little open car for people to enjoy riding through the countryside.

Chicago Elevated cars were built in 1924 by the Cincinnati Car Company and ran in Chicago until 1973.

A lot of them traveled all over the system and people who come up to visit us, they recognize them because they are from Chicago and they see something that is familiar to them.

Ancr: These cars are great examples of older craftsmanship.

And it takes a lot of work to get them back onto the rails.

Franklin : To restore a streetcar is a big job because the climate does not treat them very well.

A lot of them have wooden parts which rot away, the steel rusts, so when we get in a candidate for restoration, it is generally from the ground up.

A lot of times components such as wheels, motors, and wiring has disappeared because it was used for scrap.

So you wind up with a shell.

This is what we have to work with.

Restoration projects can take several years to finish and a lot of money.

Ancr : But a day time ride is not all you can expect at the museum.

Throughout the Summer and Fall, a popular attraction is the dinner train.

Hosted on two Art Deco style cars which originally operated on the South Shore Line, the dinner train has proven to be a popular and sought after event.

Franklin: These two cars were built in 1927 and modified heavily over the years in their daily service between Chicago and South Bend, Indiana.

When we got them they were just very tired, weary, old commuter coaches.

We gutted the interiors of the cars, added air conditioning, a bar, bathrooms, and seating and a little galley area, and made dining cars out of them.

The train service is all by reservation in advance and we offer catered, we don't do any cooking on site.

The wait staff prepares each plate and brings out a plat dinner to each of our guests.

Ancr: And when you come to the end of your ride, you'll find that the past is still alive, here in Southeastern Wisconsin.

Music Ancr: Portland's Washington Park is one of the oldest, well-used, and most ved parks in the state of Oregon.

It is home to the international rose test garden, where you can see countless versions of the beautiful flower that has captivated gardners, photographers, and lovers, for centuries.

It's home to some breathtaking views of both Portland and Mount Hood.

It's home to the calming serenity of formal Japanese gardens.

And, it's home to the Oregon zoo.

The zoo attracts more than a million visitors a year.

Many come to ride the Washington Park & Zoo Railway, which climbs through evergreens and steep hills as you wind your way through the zoo and around the park.

Honeyman: Well, when the city decided to build a new zoo in the early 50's, of course at that time zoos were a lot more amusement than they are now, the mission and roles of zoos have changed considerably.

But part of the new zoo and along that genre was a train.

And it was originally designed to be a little kiddie train and a member of the zoo commission named John Giard said, "A kiddie train is beneath the dignity of the new Portland Zoo."

And it turned out with that comment he discovered that there were several rail buffs who were part of the zoo commission, and as they say, "The rest is history."

It kind of got out of control, and this what we have.

The ride on the zoo train is really not a zoo tour.

Because of the extension to Washington Park it's actually more of a nice relaxing ride down through the woods and the southwest hills of Portland.

The whole route is 4 miles and takes about 35 minutes to do.

Ancr: The railway was built to scale, five-sixths the size of the old narrow gauge railways.

The trains are picture perfect.

There's the diesel powered Zooliner , a train that looks both retro and futuristic.

The Steamer, an old oil-fired iron horse reminiscent of the 1800's.

And, the Oregon Express.

Honeyman: The Zooliner was the first train here.

At the time the zoo was built General Motors was touring the country with the Aerotrain, touting it as the train that would save passenger service so when they polled school kids to decide what they wanted to do they decided they needed a fancy new streamliner.

So hence the Zooliner was born in 1958.

As the zoo railroad expanded, they looked for ways to fund it, and that lead to a three quarter mile operation out at the Oregon Centennial.

And that's what brought us the steam train.

So the old train is actually newer than the new train.

The summer of 59 was when the zoo opened here, so a third train was built called the circus train.

And that has been changed over the years and that is now, remnants of it make up our third train which we call the Oregon Express.

Ancr: Until the 1970's, most mail in the United States was carried on trains.

While in transit, mail was canceled using rubber stamps with the mark of that railroad.

The Washington Park & Zoo Railway is the last operating United States railroad to continously offer mail service, with its own authorized railway postal cancellation.

Honeyman: One of the things that railroads were well noted for back in the 50's was the railway post office.

We don't have a railway post office but we are an agency of the post office.

The postal service pays us a dollar a year to carry mail.

We have mailboxes located on the zoo grounds and in the door of the locomotive, the Zooliner, behind me.

When we receive that mail we take it and cancel it with a Washington Park and Zoo Railway cancellation stamp, put it in a special envelope and then send it on it's way.

It's really become a collectors item.

We do get mail from all over the world from people that want that stamp.

Ancr: If you visit, be sure to send home a memory.

And maybe you could include a few pictures... Of a perfect rose....

The majesty of nature... Heavenly scenery.... And, your memorable ride on one of the countries most relaxing narrow gauge railways.

Train Noise Train Noise Spencer: The East Troy Electric Railroad Museum operates a full schedule between mid June to mid August, and is open on weekends from late May through mid September.

Dinner trains operate mid June through mid October.

Check the web for their complete schedule.

That's it for this episode.

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