The Home Road
Among my friends who have railroading as an interest of some kind, many have what they recall as the home road.
That being the railroad that ran where there were born or lived at an early age.
For me, this could be considered my version of the home road. Being born in West Germany, courtesy of the US Army in December of 1958, this is as close as it comes.
Today it is called the NTB or Nassau Tourist Railway. Also known as the Aartalbahn, the line was almost 54 kilometers long, traveling the through Aar River Valley north of Wiesebaden to Diez. When I visited in September of 2001, it offered passengers a 26 kilometer ride on selected days to Nassau-Hohenstein and return. A real up and down railroad, too; definitely not flat. It was interesting to see how people living along the line used it as transportation. I saw many families with bicycles who had ridden an earlier train into Wiesbaden-Dotzheim (the southern end of the operation) and took a later train home, having completed shopping or other expeditions.
Regrettably, the line has had some bad luck since that visit. On several occasions, over height trucks have struck a bridge just beyond the station at Wiesbaden-Dotzheim. That made the bridge un-passable and suspended operations further out on the line. Hopefully, it will be repaired soon and operations may resume.
My afternoon’s ride was a great glimpse of life along a branchline railway in Germany. It was not hard to imagine what it might have been like to have made the same journey that year I was born. Here’s hoping that I’ll be back someday soon!
Railroading
Among my many interests is railroading. Or as some folks mights say, trains.
How did it all start? Genetically. That is, family. Specifically on my fathers side.
One of my great grandfathers was born in a mining town (Eureka, Nevada) on October 7th, 1881. At a somewhat young age (12), his father informed him it was time for him to go out and make his own way in the world. That led to 8 years on the back of a horse working at ranches up and down the Pine Valley. His life changed the first time he saw a steam locomotive. He knew that was what he wanted to do. And in December 1900, he started a career with the Southern Pacific Railroad. Never rode a horse again, either. 51 years later, he retired. Number 1 in seniority on the Salt Lake Division. His usual assignment, running the fastest train, the streamliner City of San Francisco between Sparks and Carlin.
My first ride in a locomotive was with him. Not a very long ride, but around the railroad yard there in Sparks. I may have been all of 3 years old at the time, but it was a very special moment for me. Indeed, the start of something big.
Yes, as a child, I had model trains. My own Lionel railroad. And my mother’s father helped, too as he had his own classic Lionel collection. Many happy memories recall times setting up the railroad with him. And in full size trains? Some memorable moments include a ride on that City of San Francisco over Donner Summit on Labor Day of 1963 and several trips on the SP’s commute service between Mountain View and San Francisco. In high school in Walnut Creek, I joined a model railroad club and kept right on going. Was a member there for almost 30 years.
Things really ramped up in the late 70’s with a visit to a railroad museum. Here was the chance to learn about railroading and get involved. Over the next 20 years, I did all kinds of things. Inside and out. Worked on locomotives (steam, electric and diesel), passenger cars, freight cars, electric street cars and interurban cars. Worked on track. Sold tickets and souvenirs at the museum store. And finally, railroad operations. Moving trains of all types.
I got the chance to connect with my heritage as a steam locomotive fireman and engineer. While I wasn’t running the same locomotives or same route as my great grandfather, I was doing much the same thing he had done at a younger age. I did consider a career in railroading, but went to school instead; something that everyone I spoke to about a job on the railroads advised me to do when I graduate high school. Instead of a career, I had a hobby.
That hobby has taken me places that I never would have gone to if not for the interest in railroading. I won’t call it love or passion of railroading, for I know that hard work sometimes is what is called for. Even for a hobby, there is never a free ride. One way or another, those end up being paid for.
So I have a great respect and admiration for the men and women who have made it their careers. Many miles traveled to get passengers and goods over the railroad safely. Often long hours under difficult conditions. But that’s what they were there for and they did it.
Today when I don the uniform for a role such as conductor, I do so in their honor. Sure, it can be fun. But if folks hadn’t done it before, I wouldn’t be doing it today.
Railroading has been and always will be about people. Without people, railroads are just so much cold steel. You cannot enjoy (or understand) the technology with the people who use it.
In a coming post, I’ll share the next phase of my interest in railroading and the direction it has taken. Stay tuned!
Missing something?
After the challenge to blog this month, it got me to thinking on things that I haven’t done in a while. Things that I used to do frequently, if not everyday.
Take the image above for one. When was the last time you wrote someone a letter? Not an e-mail, but an actual pen on paper letter.
Perhaps a “thank-you” note for a fine gift? Or maybe to express sympathy on the passing of a loved one?
Those crickets are getting pretty loud out here.
Okay, I’ll even accept a post card to Mom on that last real vacation.
Times have changed haven’t they? Now, you can text someone or check-in on Facebook or Instagram to let everyone know the latest. And if it is really urgent, well that is why cell phones were invented. You can actually speak to someone right now!
Is it just me or have we lost something? Writing a letter, with you own hand, one had to compose thoughts and put pen to paper. And when done, an envelope and stamp sent that little missive on it’s merry way. Trusted to the United States Postal Service to make the journey safe to the hand of another to open and read.
Same goes for conversation. Riding the train to work, one cannot help but overhear people. Listening as they chat back and forth. I find it all too amusing as one person says something and then another replies off on a completely different tangent. No give and take. No statement and response. And don’t get me started on vocabulary. What vocabulary?
If we don’t get “expletive deleted” this and “expletive deleted” that and a few colorful metaphors relating to one’s heritage, we feel absolutely cheated!
Personal communication is a wonderful thing. Maybe with some luck, that next big thing in technology will bring it back to us. With the style and elocution we deserve, maybe? PLEASE!!!
And don’t get me started about entertainment… Television? Oy! 57 channels and nothing on was never truer than it is today.
Photous Miscellaneous
Going to start a new item today for the Blue Parrot!
Once a week, I’ll share a somewhat random image. It may lead into another story or it may be the story all by it’s lonesome.
So here ya go!
Check back tomorrow and see where or what this leads to!
Who?
Or in which we learn who is Roger and why should we be reading these Ruminations?
A very good question.
I’ve been online since the Dark Ages. Back before the Internet even. Yes, when dinosaurs walked online. My first computer experiences were in the early 70’s at the Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley. If you have ever seen Colosuss: The Forbin Project, that’s the LHS buildings. Everything from games (especially Lunar Lander, at which I eventually became quite good at safely landing with enough fuel to take off again) and printing ASCII photos. Using a teletype terminal (printing on yellow rolled paper) and if you really got good at things, you could save your work on paper tape. Later I moved on programming in Basic to an early HP mainframe at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, CA. Unlike others, I never punched cards or learned Fortran or Cobol or any of those other programming languages.
My first exposure to home computers came in the form of the Radio Shack TRS-80. A friend had an Apple ][e, I bought used from him. My first product purchased directly from Cupertino was an Apple][si (with a color monitor, the really big step forward) paid for with the Apple Credit card. That led me online to local bulletin board systems using a dial up connection. Somewhere stored away, I still have that 300, 600, 1200 baud modem from those days.
I charged into the online world thanks to a friend who had joined the new America Online service – then only for Apple computers, no PC’s! An experience with online chatting (anyone from those days remember the Best Little Chathouse?) got me to sign on and eventually lead to a volunteer role hosting a weekly chat for fans of the Quantum Leap television series. I also had accounts on GEnie and eWorld (Apple’s stumble into and out of the online world). My first Macintosh came in the form of a Mac SE with a Seagate 40 meg external hard drive. Hooked I was…
My role with AOL shifted as I became part of their Remote Staff, managing the Television Viewer Community. What started as one simple chat room grew to encompass message boards, file libraries and multiple chat rooms. And we added lots of content including Soap Opera, Star Trek and X Files viewers communities. Compensation was in the form of royalties. A percentage of all of the hours spent by AOL users online; back in the days when AOL charged customers by the hour. AOL was a mighty interesting place in those days before the Internet. But with the arrival of online communities and web sites that you could use for free, AOL was bound to change. Folks like myself found things moving in a different direction that did not include us.
My Disney fandom? Online, that goes way back to the first Internet communities. Officially, rec.arts.disney was where it all began. I got to know some good folks online and met a few of them in person from time to time. But when web sites started to spring up, I joined in the discussion there and grew an even wider circle of friends all sharing the same interest. After one experience at Disneyland, I wrote a piece and submitted it to a site hoping to go on board as one of their writers.
While that did not happen, I eventually pitched the same story to another friend who was starting up a site for her ex-husband. That became Jim Hill Media, now one of the most popular sites for stories on all facets of the Disney universe. I wrote over 200 stories for JHM between October of 2002 and August of 2006. Originally, my take was to write a piece once a week that exposed Disney dweebs to something other than Disney. That morphed into all kinds of things and I took up a title for my columns – Ruminations. All over the map and then some.
After a rest, I took up blogging, although resisting that title for some time. Call it an old school thing, but to this day, I like to think of writing a column, in the newspaper sense of the word. But what is a blog anyway, but an online column? Hence, The Blue Parrot was born (as part of Apple’s iWeb) in January of 2007. The name for the blog came about after one too many late nights of watching “Casablanca”. You may recall that The Blue Parrot was the cafe owned by Signor Ferrari (played by Sidney Greenstreet). My pal Ken Mitchroney recreated some art for me inspired by the film and away we go.
A couple weeks ago, I made the jump from iWeb to WordPress. And thanks to Mike Mueller (an old high school pal), I have taken up the challenge of blogging every weekday in April. A good way to relaunch things.
Now that is nowhere near all of the story of who Roger Colton is and why this blog is here. But, loyal readers, it does give you something of an idea of where it came from and where it be headed.
Hopefully, you’ll enjoy what comes. And take some time to check out the links up top in the right corner. There are stories from The Blue Parrot since 2007 as well as most of the stories from my Jim Hill Media days. It’s been a long strange trip so far and I’m gonna keep sharing tales from along the way.