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

On this episode of Tracks Ahead, we'll take a ride on the Reading to discover the sights of Pennsylvania come to life in miniature.

We'll take a five minute railroad trip between Tacoma and the Stampede Pass, and we'll head to eastern Oregon where a dedicated group of volunteers is preserving the steam heritage of the gold fields.

If you're one of the millions of people who plan on visiting the Grand Canyon in the not too distant future, I'm sure you're aware of the breath taking beauty that awaits you.

But, you might not know that there are a number of historic and opulent old railroad hotels nearby, that are stunningly beautiful as well.

Let's take a look.

Ancr: Willams, Arizona is home to the historic Grand Canyon Railway.

Established as a mining railroad more than one-hundred-years ago, it soon evolved into a passenger train line, and was reborn as a tourist railroad in the late 1980's.

Once again, it's mission is to carry visitors back and forth to the nearby Grand Canyon.

For many years, visitors to Williams would stay in the old Fray Marcos Hotel, which now houses the railway offices.

When it opened it 1908, it was also called a Harvey House Hotel.

It was one of the first, of what would be many.

Al: The Fray Marcos Hotel was one of the original Harvey Houses that were built in conjunction with the Santa Fe Railroad and the Fred Harvey Company.

Santa Fe built them, Fred Harvey managed them.

It was a very good relationship that lasted for a long period of time.

The same situation existed here at the Fray Marcos in Williams, as it did at the Grand Canyon.

All those hotels and facilities that were built at the south rim were built by the railroad.

All the facilities here in Williams dealing with the hotel and it's support structure was built by the railroad, and Fred Harvey managed these hotels.

Originally when the railroads were running along the vast expanse of the west, they had to set up at regular spaced intervals places where the trains could stop and the passengers could eat.

They did not have on board train service in the early days, so they had eating houses spaced regularly along the railroad.

And the trains would stop, the passengers would deboard, go into the restaurant, feed, and in very short order they would be whistled back to the train, jump onboard, and go on to their destination.

A lot of them, like the Fray Marcos here, were at a junction for an added destination, like the El Tovar or the Bright Angel, at the Grand Canyon.

But many of them were at junction points of the railway.

The trains would come in, the people would deboard, get off and get on another train that would take them to their destination.

These were overnight stops, when they became hotels.

(sot full) Ancr: The old Fray Marcos stands with the grace and dignity of an elder statesman, adjacent to a beautiful new Fray Marcos Hotel, also owned by the railroad.

Visitors get twenty-first century amenities.

On board the trains of the Grand Canyon Railway, you take a sixty mile trip through the ponderosa pines of a national forest, enroute to Grand Canyon National Park.

277 miles long, and up to ten miles wide, The Grand Canyon is breathtaking.

And on the edge of the southern rim, another hotel built by the railroad and run by Fred Harvey, an incredibly beautiful El Tovar.

Henry: The hotel was commissioned by the Santa Fe Railroad in 1902, and construction actually began in late 1902 and was completed and opened on January the 14th, 1905.

With the coming of the railroad here in September, 1901, folks were clamoring to visit, and we needed a nice place for nice folks.

And the Santa Fe Railroad decided to have Charles Whittlessey, a noted architect at the time, design a hotel and build it up here, the odd thing being that the hotel was designed before anybody knew exactly where we were going to put it.

Consequentially, it's situated - one might say - precariously at the head of Garden Creek here.

It looks Norwegian or Swedish, or European in general.

It's beautiful, that's for sure.

The logs that were used to face the hotel and the major ones that were used on the inside all came from Oregon.

The Kaibab limestone, of course, is local.

When the hotel was completed, remember this is 1905, it boasted telephones in every room, some rooms even had bathrooms, not all of them, and it had what they called then, electroliers, which was all the rage.

It was probably the most luxurious hotel outside of San Francisco in the west at the time.

Ancr: Not far from the Grand Canyon, in Winslow, Arizona, you'll see another reminder of how important the railroad, and railroad hotels, were to the turn of the century growth and development of the southwest.

La Posada Hotel, described as Arizona's grandest estate, looks as elegant now, as she did when she opened in 1930.

It would be the last of the great Harvey Hotels.

And, it too, has undergone a renovation, restoration and rejuvenation.

Dan: First and foremost, Mary Coulter designed it.

It was her largest project, and the one that was closest to her heart.

Mary Coulter was a woman architect in the 1930s, working for the railroad.

This is unheard of.

And she was essentially so go at what she did, that by the time she was building this hotel, she had free rein.

She was in her 60s when she was building this hotel.

Coulter was ahead of her time in a number of ways.

Whereas most architecture engineers out here really didn't think of the Southwest as having a culture, Coulter pretty much imbued every one of her buildings with the culture of the area.

This building has a fictional history behind it.

It's meant to be a grand hacienda for a wealthy Spanish family, a cattle baron.

That history is played out through the entire hotel.

Even though the building was built in one year, in 1930, it's designed to look like it evolved over 200 years.

Ancr: La Posada was another part of Fred Harvey's small empire.

An empire which lasted until the 1950's.

He was a man whose only mission was to provide rail travelers, with the best hotels, best restaurants, and best waitresses they would find anywhere a train whistle blew.

Waitresses, not waiters.

They were called, the Harvey Girls.

Marie: They were on time, they didn't drink, and they were hard workers.

And so that was the beginning of the birth of the Harvey Girls.

And then it went on to where they went back to Kansas City, Missouri, and put ads in the paper "Wanted, young women, 18-30 years old, of good charactoer, no experience necessary, room and board provided."

Their pay was $17.50 a month, and the tips were liberal.

And that was the birth of the Harvey Girls.

Ruby: Attractive and intelligent Marie: And intelligent.

Attractive and intelligent Dorothy: That taught me how to serve and what to serve, what not to do and what to do.

And I learned many things from that.

Ancr: Arizona is filled with natural beauty, and man made beauty.

Reminders are everywhere that even when your primary mission is to explore the wonders of nature, it has long been the mission of the railroads, to help you do it with comfort and style.

Spencer: All of these hotels have been named to the United States register of historic places.

You can relax, and watch trains at the same time.

Now we're going to take a ride on the Reading to discover how Jerry Strangarity has made the sights of Pennsylvania come to life with his structure modeling.

Ancr: Everyone thinks of model railroading differently.

For some, it's about collecting specific engines and cars.

For others, it's about recreating a particular moment in time.

And for Jerry Strangarity, it's all about the structure modeling.

Jerry has been modeling since he was kid growing up near the Reading railroad in Pennsylvania.

Jerry: They used a lot of Victorian architecture, a lot of gingerbread trim.

And building models of structures like that I find that it is challenging and it's a lot of fun to try to recreate that type of thing.

And another thing I liked about the Reading Railroad was the type of land that it traversed.

It went everywhere from the coal regions in upper Pennsylvania through the hilly areas, the farm areas, the urban areas like Reading, Pennsylvania, and down to Philadelphia where you had the waterfront.

So you have a little bit of everything and from a modeling standpoint, for model railroading, there's a lot there to keep your interest.

Ancr: Jerry's skills at modeling led him to create a version of downtown Philadelphia that's filled with details both large and small.

Since Philadelphia is the biggest city that the Reading services, it makes sense that it takes up such a large amount of Jerry's layout with an area that's 16 feet long by 3 feet wide.

To get there, Jerry's HO scale Reading Railroad rides through a tunnel, passes the Texaco oil refinery, then commercial and residential areas and finally downtown.

One of the most unusual buildings is this two-deck ice plant that the railroad used for refrigeration cars.

Jerry's still working on the Reading Terminal passenger station and its downtown setting.

He likes to add lots of details to make his models look realistic, including barrels and piles of junk.

Most of the buildings are scratch built and based real Philadelphia landmarks.

Not many people can just look at a picture of a building and then model it without first making detailed plans.

But Jerry does this all the time.

He's modeled buildings after pictures in magazines, like this corner bar.

or photographs he's taken himself, this classic wagon works building.

He has even modeled a building based upon stories his grandfather told him.

Jerry: Well, many years ago I was talking to my grandfather about his early days of working as a kid in Reading, Pennsylvania.. And he was telling me he used to work at the Reading Company Car shops.

And he was describing the conditions that he worked under, dirt floors and long hours, and that sort of thing.

And I began to think that this would be neat to build a model of something like that.

So I put all those ideas together in my head and drew up some plans and built a model.

Ancr: But just because Jerry likes to focus on modeling doesn't mean he's ignored the railroad part of his model railroad.

He hand laid most of the layout's tracks and cut tens of thousands of ties.

When it's completed, the layout will represent the Reading Railroad in the 1930s and 1940s.

A fan of the steam era, Jerry has paid particular attention to the signals.

Jerry: The signals, one at each end of the city, are modeled from actual Reading Company blueprints.

And they're an odd sort of signal.

They're called Hall Bajo Signals, and they were used almost exclusively on the Reading.

And the Reading used them up even into the 50's, so they were a common sight on the Reading, and when you see a banjo signal like that, it speaks Reading.

Ancr: Some modelers might think even Jerry's modeling materials and techniques have a touch of nostalgia to them.

Even though so many modelers have changed over to plastic and other manmade materials, Jerry still relies on good old-fashioned card stock.

Jerry: I have people who come here and see the layout asnd tell them that I'm still using card stock, and they look at me like I'm crazy.

But then they're intrigued and want to know a lot more about it.

Back in the 50's, card stock was the mainstay of model building, in the days before styrene and other materials came on board.

Card stock is, well for one thing, it's cheap.

And when I started modeling, well of course I was a kid and we didn't have a lot of money to go buy trains.

So if I wanted something, I had to build it.

And card stock is also easy to work with.

It's easy to cut window opening and so forth out of with a knife.

And it's just a versatile, easy material to work with.

Ancr: Now that the Philadelphia modeling is almost complete, Jerry is looking forward to finishing up the rest of the layout.

He's planning on creating a large area that will depict the Pennsylvania coal mining country.

Jerry: I'm looking forward to that because I've been spending quite a few years building just city with lots of buildings and now I want to build some mountains.

So I think the coal regions will be my next project.

Spencer: I don't know if you noticed the camelback locomotives on Jerry's layout.

These were an unusual design, and common to the Reading Railroad.

In a minute, we'll visit a remnant of the Sumpter Valley Railroad that ran from Prairie City to Baker City, Oregon, hauling first lumber and then gold.

It ceased operation in 1947, but in 1971, a dedicated group of volunteers started to bring it back to life.

First, let's go to Tacoma, Washington, and back to the 1950's.

We'll take a trip between Tacoma and the Stampede Pass.

Ancr: How would you like to take a train from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington?

Or better, yet, how about a trip through the spectacular mountains of Southwestern Washington down to Tacoma?

Don't have a lot of time?

That's alright.

The trip only takes a few minutes here at on Level 5 of the Washington State History Museum, in Tacoma.

This is where the Puget Sound Model Railroad Engineers have built an incredibly detailed HO gauge railroad reality from the 1950s.

Bill: Well, there is a trip between Portland and Seattle, but that's a small part of it.

Our real trip is from Stampede Pass down through Tacoma, up to the Asarco smelter.

I think the thing that's most unique about it is that we are probably more authentic for the scale and what we have here than almost any other exhibit in the country.

I think a lot of the fun part of it was to put it together in a nice condensed area that still represented the whole 90 miles from Stampede Pass into Tacoma.

And to represent that as it was in the 1950s in a very authentic manner.

Ancr: Begun in 1996, this unique project was built entirely by volunteers.

Bill: Our biggest challenge was finding the right kind of guys, to do the right kind of work, at the right kind of time.

And we were very fortunate in doing that because we had an architect who could lay this out, we had a modeler who did the whole design scheme very well, and then we had a construction type fellow who did the basic work.

We have a man with a lot of track experience to do track.

We had a mechanical engineer who does our equipment work and on down the line.

So we have a specialist in each area.

The museum purchases four trains including all of the rolling stock, the engines, the cars and the cabooses.

And then each member of our club must contribute 6 pieces of rolling stock or they can contribute one engine in lieu of three pieces of rolling stock.

And that must stay on the layout.

If they have to repair it and take it home, they have to have a replacement here so that we have that on hand all the time.

Ancr: A layout this complex certainly presents some control challenges.

The club has overlooked no detail in creating a state of the art digital control strategy that satisfies both the members and the visitors.

Bill: We control this for the general public with an automatic loop.

So when people come in and push a button, one train starts and when it clears a block, a second train goes, and when it clears, a third, and then a fourth.

And this is just automatic for the general public when none of us are here.

When we're here operating, we use a Digitrax control system, and we have throttles so that we control these trains individually.

We also control them as they were in the 1950's on a 1950's schedule.

We have a dispatcher who is in another room, and as each engineer is ready to roll his train, he calls in for clearance to clear the yard and to move.

The dispatcher gives him that clearance and permission to go.

Ancr: As we can see plainly, the aesthetics of this miniature marvel are rivaled only by the technology.

Joe Lechter: What's unique about this layout is that we've taken full advantage of the Digitrax technology here.

Here's a control panel in one of the areas on the layout.

What we've done is replace our existing control system control panels with a lot of wires on them, down to a very simple panel like this with only one single LocoNet cable.

And so I can demonstrate this.

By pressing a single button, the light on the control panel should blink which means that a message is going out to the device.

When the switch machine throws, it sends a message back which stops the blinking, and that tells us that we've got a good switch throw.

Ancr: And what's the bottom line for these hard working volunteers?

Bill: We're here to build, maintain, and operate this layout for the general public and particularly for the children, we like to think, and show them what the railroads did to service this area in the 1950's.

Ancr: So, if you ever find yourself actually on a trip between Portland and Seattle, take the time to stop off in Tacoma and visit the Washington State History Museum to see what the area really looked like by rail, some fifty years ago.

Music Ancr: It hardly seems possible.

We almost have to pinch ourselves to remember we are still living in the twenty-first century.

As we hitch a ride in the cab of this wood burning, steam locomotive, it almost seems like we've misplaced a hundred years somewhere.

But the fact is today we are riding on the Sumpter Valley Railway, through the mountains of eastern Oregon.

This marvel of reconstructed history is headquartered about twenty-six miles southeast of Baker City, on U.S. highway 7.

Maybe we can get some help solving our riddle from Taylor Rush, the railroad's Head Depot Agent & Historian.

Taylor: Sumpter Valley Railroad today is essentially the culmination of about 30 years effort on the part of an almost entirely volunteer crew.

It started in 1971 essentially with a group of concerned citizens who didn't want to see the railroad's history pretty much fade into oblivion.

The railroad's been, I think, in full time operation now for, we're going on our 28th year, and it's just a labor of love.

The purpose of the railroad is essentially to take people back in time, to see just what it used to be like traveling through the 1920s, through the '40s, you know, on pretty much the golden era of railroad travel.

And the whole history of the area from logging to mining and everything that made Sumpter what it is.

Ancr: But just what kind of history has been rebuilt here?

Taylor: The original railroad was started in 1890 by David Eccles with essentially the purpose of bringing lumber to his Oregon Lumber Company sawmill in Baker City.

It slowly built it's way over the mountains just following the timber lines as it went.

Where we're standing now was actually the end of the line for quite a few years.

In 1896, though, the gold mines around Sumpter really opened up, and the railroad had pretty much an incentive to push forward into the hills and that's when the big building started.

They shoved on into Sumpter and then went crazy after that.

The railroad eventually stretched over 80 miles from Baker City to Prairie City and there were over 1600 miles of logging lines out in the woods that fed into the main trunk.

The main purpose was lumber but it hauled just about everything else in between from cattle to people to gold, machinery, oil, all that.

If it could haul it, it would.

Ancr: The restoration of this old workhorse of a railroad is a most amazing story.

Although the road bed and track is mostly on the railroad's original right-of-way, the original track had been scrapped in 1947, and nearly all of the original road bed had eroded away.

With an unbelievably dedicated, all volunteer work force, the Sumpter Valley Railway has rebuilt over 7 miles of track, and is still growing.

And let's not forget the ongoing effort of restoring the trains themselves.

Taylor: Just about anything you see here has been restored or is on the verge of restoration.

One of our major ones right now though, is Sumpter Valley caboose number 3.

It's one of the only surviving cars from the original railroad and saw service not only on our line, but also on the White Pass and Yukon in Alaska.

She was brought back in the early 90's and restoration's were started on it last year.

Another one of our more interesting pieces would be Sumpter Valley coach number 20.

She was built in 1880 for the Utah and Northern and was one of the original pieces ever acquired by the actual railroad in 1890.

She saw service through about 1918 when she was set aside as a bunkhouse at Austin.

She suffered a fire there and had just about every little bit of iron or interior work stripped out of it.

And in 1947 when the railroad shut down, a private company actually bought it over in the Willamete Valley of Oregon, had it cut in half and shipped over there.

In 1990 the surviving daughter of David Eccles, the original founder, Miss M. Eccles Jones, gave a very substantial donation for the restoration of the car, the acquisition and restoration.

And in her honor, the coach is named after her.

The M. Eccles Jones, or the number 20 as she is more commonly known, has been in service with the railroad since about 1992 and is 124 years and is going strong.

Ancr: And what lies ahead for this ongoing labor of love?

Taylor: The future plans for Sumpter Valley include actually, we're in the process right now of a 5 mile extension down to the Union Creek campground and Phillips Reservoir, which would just about double our main line trackage.

We built a brand new depot up in Sumpter and right now the tracks are being built towards it, still have a few hundred feet to go.

Kinda got built in reverse, usually it's tracks first, then depot, but we did it the other way.

And we have a loop track going in.

We've got the restoration of number 20, is planned, we've got new coaches on line, new engines, we've got a lot of ambitious projects, you know.

We're not sure if we're going to get to do 'em all, but if you ever rationalize something, you'll never get it done.

Ancr: Over a quarter century since the restoration's humble beginnings, the Sumpter Valley railroad is alive and well.

The ever growing collection of railway artifacts encompasses a large part of this country's narrow gauge past, with cars from as far away as Pennsylvania and Alaska.

So, our feeling of being lost in time is not without cause, and would not have been possible without the dedication of the intrepid crew of Sumpter Valley volunteers.

Spencer: If you visit the club and the Washington State Historical Society, be sure to visit the Chuhuly glass works, which is right across the street.

Well, that's all for this episode.

Be sure to join us next time for more, Tracks Ahead.

Music Ancr: Tracks Ahead.

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(Whistle) Music