New Years Weekend at the Tracks

If the weatherman was right we would have needed plows and chains on the truck from Calimesa to get out here. If.....oh wait. The reality was we got a dusting of snow because it never really even rained on our side of the valley. It was pretty while it lasted and thanks to John Griffin for braving the elements, he really was just checking out his new car. He said the heater works great. It looks as if the G scale had the most snow, scale wise.

Thursday morning there was enough snow to blanket the area and the storm clouds rolled away leaving another beautiful weekend to enjoy the High Desert. The temperatures rose a bit every day. It froze Thursday night enough to ice up the hoses and after that it was just cool. Great vapor running in the morning but the coffee was warmer so I waited till mid morning to boil water in the 4-4-0.

 Greg and Becky made it out first this time and Sydnie and Caleb spent a couple of nights with family before returning home. Colette made it out and Steve Nelson and Chris Burns rolled in from Tuscon. The party was howling by the time Shelli and I rolled in about 8:30 New Years Eve and the annual hourly train rides had just started. I even engineered the 10:00 roll. It was cold out there. With no Matt to officiate the Poker game, the rules looked a little sketchy. Al and Lynn didn't make it out this weekend either so it was a bit subdued. Enough visitors came up to keep one busy. Matt and Pat Swain came up for a while and even got a hike in to the top of the ridge to see the Joshua Tree way up there. Jerry McPheeters brought up a few shirt tailed relatives up for tour too. The Snowbirds were in force with their ringleader Rick Senkler being down for a month or so we saw them two times over the weekend. Bob Buckle and his wife Dorothy were up the first time along with Kurt and Saturday Rick and Kurt came up and we conscripted them into some work on the high line.

It was kick back in the operations area as we had four engines but no more than two at a time. My 4-4-0 was ready to tackle the snow but ran around with nothing to plow. Greg brought out the Plymouth for some exercise. The Edwards Freight Motor did a lot of sitting but did run on two occasions and The Alco RS-1 plied the rails on a few days as well. Up on the High Line we assembled 120 feet of track to get John a little closer to his project. We have three decent size rocks to tackle and things look brighter after that on our 165 feet of cut we have be fore the trestles start again. with 100 feet out of the way and graded progress looks good. It was a real moral booster to add the track on the hill. It shows that even slowly, we are progressing. There is plenty more, don't feel that you've missed it. See you the next time, Mid Winter Run. January 16-19, 2015.

Of course there are pictures, follow this link. https://picasaweb.google.com/Ratsgarage/NewYearsWeekendAtJoshuaTree2015?authuser=0&feat=directlink