My wife and I took a side trip on our “Vegas vacation” and spent the weekend in Ely last week. It was my first visit to a real RR museum and it overshadowed anything that we did in Vegas.
I got a crash-course in railroading and took the opportunity to take No. 93, 1909 Alco 2-8-0 out for a spin. What a great experience! And it gave me a lot of insight that I will put into the layout that I am building.
The photos we took during our visit do not compare to some of the professional ones of the NNRR that are easy to find with a quick search, but you might find our little video interesting. My wife managed to catch a bit of my training session before shutting down the camera to enjoy the ride. http://youtu.be/7gGC4jNAP-E
The guys out there were great and treated us like part of the “family”. Well off the beaten path but what a cool place!
I often wonder if these steam excursions/historical societies/museums ever have problems getting enough qualified people to run their steamers. I read an article a few years ago about a twenty something girl that got qualified to drive steam engines, just so she could run the local excursion.
I wonder how it compares to say getting your commercial pilots license? I did that a few years back for kicks. Maybe I should move on to steam engines for a retirement project. I could be driving the Royal Hudson in no time! Ya, in my dreams.[(-D]
Glad to hear that folks are enjoying my little video.
I don’t think the problem is finding engineers, but running steam obviously takes a lot of other support. They told me that the crew needed to be at the engine house at 5:00 AM to warm up the boiler and get the engine prepped for the 10:30 excursion. We boarded right after the excursion returned, and then spent at least an hour switching and moving the cars all around before getting on the mainline. So I got a better appreciation for what that is all about too.
Surprisingly we met several young women that are hands-on members, even a fireman (firegirl?), and that looks to be a pretty demanding job.
The written test that you need to pass just to rent the engine as a “student engineer” was tougher than I thought it would be, and a lot of it reminded me of aviation requirements (no I never got a pilot’s license but played around with airplanes in the past so know what its about). I don’t know how the NNRR manages engineer certification but I imagine they are pretty careful about it.
If it wasn’t for the 2000+ miles between home and Ely I would consider becoming an active member. If you have an opportunity nearby then you should at least look into it. Just be prepared for some hard, dirty work [:D]
Brent, when a very experienced commercial helicopter pilot and air accident investigator, acquaintance of mine, got his “Steam ticket” he was over the moon. I too, did my commercial pilots licence exams some years ago, but saw the “light” and went engineering instead, which involved, and still involves from time to time, a whole set of new exams. [sigh] That said, looking at the syllabus on this site makes my brain hurt…