Volume 64 – Issue 9 1 September 2024
From the Brass Hat
Welcome to September and everything that come with it. We are about to dive into the deep end of the pool as it relates to our schedule. In a few weeks, we will begin our mad dash toward Halloween. At the end of the newsletter, you should find a copy of the schedule for setting everything up. This will become an “All Hands on Deck” seven days a week preparation event beginning 21 September. We already have one volunteer to assist with placement of the Pumpkin People on the steep banks of the big cut. We will have four Wednesdays during which a huge part of the job will be accomplished, but we will need a few volunteer folks each of the other days, to lend a hand with the details like placing all the characters on their respective mountings and helping set up the Witches’ Path and the other more detailed vignettes along the right of way.
As everyone should already know, word-of-mouth (even electronically) is one of our best forms of advertising. Please play up the upcoming Halloween rides with your friends, neighbors and social media contacts. Since our ridership for the year is somewhat behind normal, our Halloween and Santa trains could bring in up to 70% of our annual revenue.
Plenty of exciting news is contained in the following pages including several items with critical information regarding our future plans and needs. You will also find the official ballots for the 2024 Board of Directors election and a minor proposed change to the NCRM Bylaws.. Please vote if you are eligible according the instructions. Your voice matters!
As Always, Thank you for all you do for our Museum!
Respectfully submitted,
Chris Tilley
President, NCRM
EMERGENCY PLEA
NCRM needs your immediate support!
For most, it should be obvious, and to many at least well known that tickets to our excursion trains are not keeping up with operating and maintenance expenses at the New Hope Valley Railway. The summer train ride season is ending with the last Brew-and-Choo and the work crews are beginning to plan for the October and December themed train rides. Unfortunately, ridership is down 40-percent from what it was in 2022. Also, our grant writing efforts by the fundraising committee has been turned down for $89,000 in grant funds which have been requested this year – with another grant application submitted for $12,000 which we will not hear about until May 2025. That puts the burden on us for raising other funds.
While it may appear to some that our 1941 Vulcan 0-4-0 Steam Locomotive #17 has begun lookingmore like they remember, the work being done by Steam Operations Corp. of Savannah, GA this year alone will be another $32,000 putting us $16,000 over what was budgeted for 2024, and still almost two-years away of seeing a completed and operational locomotive.
NCRM needs your support! Ending up 2024 with a positive cash balance is up to us, our membership, and anyone else we can bring in. Therefore, we want to ask each one of our 230 members to strongly consider making a tax-deductible donation to our museum of $70 or just see where your generosity and love of this railroad will lead you, including shaving off part of your Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) and donating it to the NC Railway Museum!!
Other ways you can support our organization: In addition to your personal efforts to recruit more members for our museum, we need make sure that all the rest of our trains this year are as full as they can be! Even though members can ride free, that means grabbing one of our train rides and bringing two or three or four more along with you.
Other challenges due to our ridership down 40-percent: We are all getting older, and back-breaking work – not necessarily easy for all retired folks. So, while we still tough it out for some things, for the last two years, instead of replacing cross ties ourselves, we have paid a contractor $185 per tie to replace them. At only 50 ties per year, that’s $9,250 we used to do on our own. That’s over six (6) almost full weekday train rides, but with decrease in ridership, current rides are not all coming close to that requirement. It took until July to have enough revenue from train rides to even cover the contract cost of our track work – and that doesn’t cover our other expenses.
To donate, please point your smartphone camera to the QR code.
Together, with your help, this museum and railway will indeed be educating future generations about the history and benefits of railroading. Thank you, so much!
– NCRM Board of Directors and the Fundraising Committee
Official Name Change
By Victor Varney
The NRHS, during the annual convention this week, announced that the East Carolina Chapter of the NRHS as chartered in 1964 shall from here on have its official name changed as an NRHS chapter to the North Carolina Railway Museum. The change in the NRHS member tracking system has already been made to replace the East Carolina Chapter name to be the North Carolina Railway Museum.
That means from here going forward legacy NRHS members affiliated with the former East Carolina Chapter will have their chapter affiliation changed to be the North Carolina Railway Museum. That will appear on their member renewal card beginning for the 2025 membership year (if they renew as an NRHS member for 2025). This also means that as we encourage current and new NCRM members to join the NRHS we will likewise encourage them when they join the NRHS to register that they are affiliated with the North Carolina Railway Museum (and no longer the East Carolina Chapter).
Get to Know a Member!
Name: Marco Zarate
How long have you been a member? Since January 2022.
Where are you originally from? I was born in Tampico, Mexico, but I have been living in North Carolina almost half of my life. So North Carolina is home for me.
What was your job in real life? I have a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a master’s degree in industrial engineering. Most of my life I worked as an environmental engineer and project manager; first with the Mexican petroleum company, PEMEX, in Mexico, and then with AECOM, one of the largest engineering consulting companies in US.
Where do you live now? Apex, NC
Any family…Kids, grandkids? My wife Susan and I have been married for 42 years and have two children, Christian and Caroline. We are the proud grandparents of three grandchildren; Sophia (6 years old), Aleena (1 year old), and Sebastian (1 year old).
How did you become interested in trains? I have always been fascinated by the magic and sense of adventure that surrounds trains. Even though I did not have too many opportunities to ride trains, my interest was always there. Thirty years ago we brought our children to the NHVR train rides, and later, three years ago, we brought our granddaughter, Sophia, to ride the train. At that time I decided to become a member/volunteer for the NC Railway Museum.
What is your favorite activity at the New Hope Valley Railway? One of my favorite activities at the North Carolina Railway Museum is to volunteer as team coordinator of our Birthday Party Caboose. Also, I enjoy very much any beautification activities/projects at our campus and railyard. In addition, I love our Halloween train rides because of the joy and excitement we witness in our young visitors. I dress up as Jack Skellington for our Halloween train ride season. At first, I did not know how the children would react, but they really love the character.
Wanted: Greeters, Docents, and Story Tellers
by Jim Jatko
Your North Carolina Railway Museum is taking a bold step forward this November at the height of our fall themed train rides. We are announcing on our webpage and to Google maps that we will be “Open to the Public,” Wednesday through Saturday from 9:00am to 1:00pm (Wednesday by appointment only – more details on that later) until December 21. While most of us know that the New Hope Valley Railway yard is actually “open” to whoever wants to visit our collection of rolling stock anytime during the year, we will have a small staff of volunteers to greet, tour visitors around and through our exhibits and offer sales at our museum gift shop. If you like history, enjoy meeting new people, telling the stories behind our collection, and are interested in being part of the 2-to-4-person crew, let Jim Jatko know. This crew is independent of the Wednesday Crew or the train crew on any scheduled ride day, but staffing will be coordinated. Information and training will be provided, and I am hopeful that there are enough interested in doing this that a regular rotation schedule can be developed. Of course, if no visitors show up, you are invited to provide help on any of our dozen or so active restoration projects.
Come, and have a new measure of fun. It all begins on Wednesday, November 6, 2024 with training beforehand. Please contact Jim Jatko or call or text 919-986-0169 and leave your contact information. Thank you, so much.
If you do not receive the operating crew calls, please contact the crew caller if you are interested in participating in train operations! We need all the help we can get to keep the trains running safely.
Nuclear Fuel Train Caboose Info – Hiding in Plain Sight
by Victor Varney
After a training session recently, regarding how the generator and power system operates in NHVX 309 (formerly CPRX 10009), it occurred to me that maybe a number of our members are not very familiar with the history of our two spent nuclear fuel train escort cabooses. It is important that our members know this history so they can share it with our train riders. We are very fortunate to have these two nuclear fuel train escort cabooses. We believe we are only one of two railway museums/historic railroads in the USA with these very unique pieces of railroad history.
If you would like to be better informed about the history of our two nuclear fuel train cabooses so you can share this history with our train riders, check out these items on our website. This info is hiding in plain “site”. See the following:
A wonderful drone fly thru of NHVX 302 and 309 just before they were used for the fuel train veterans’ event in May 2022 AND great footage of the fuel train veteran event train ride. This video got standing room only interest to see at the last NRHS Convention in Florida back in Sept 2023. There is another good article about the history of our two fuel train cabooses that appeared in the NRHS News in 2023.
And finally, since these two cabooses were rescued during our Save the Ten project back in 2022, check out this article published by Duke Energy.
Again, all of our crew members should become familiar with all this history so they can share it with our customers riding in the fuel train cabooses.
We should be proud that our railroad museum and historic railroad can show these very unique examples of NC railroad history. Many of the pictures, diagrams and maps associated with the links above are actually posted IN our two fuel train cabooses. If you would like more history about each of these cabooses from when they were built in the 1960’s, see that info posted on the displays in each caboose. NHVX 302 is ex Chesapeake & Ohio and NHVX 309 is ex Denver Rio Grande and Western.
Welcome, New Members!
We are pleased to welcome the following new members this month: Christopher Lazar and Christy Dixon, both Family Members. Welcome to you all. Please attend the New Member Orientation and Rules Training coming up soon. I know you will have fun working with us! Please grab on to a veteran member and make them show you what they do. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me or one of the Board Members. – Chris
[Editor’s note: If you have photos or other info about long-ago (or recent) events at the NCRM, please contact your editor. You can submit your own “Back in the Old Days…” or other article with pictures about anything (within reason) from our past for the Telegrapher. If you can rough out the ideas, we can work with you to craft an article to benefit the entire membership. – CT]
New Member Orientation
by Victor Varney
The next new member orientation session will be offered on Saturday, September 14 from 10 am to noon. It will be held under the covered area behind the yard office, and include a tour of the property along with some of our ongoing projects. The new member orientation session is intended to share information about our history, bylaws, policies, how to get information, who’s who, and most importantly how to get involved as a volunteer (and have fun). This session is open to those who have been members for up to 2 years. This is not a substitute for the rules and safety training sessions necessary to get involved with train operations, but we will explain how to attend those sessions, too. [See related story below. -ed] This will be the second of two orientation sessions offered in 2024. The next one will be scheduled for TBD in early 2025. If you are interested in attending on September 14, please RSVP to Victor Varney or Dennis Winchell by Wednesday September 11.
Rules and Safety Training 5 October at 0900AM
by Kevin Edwards
The next Rules and Safety Annual Training session will be conducted on 5 October 2024 at the NCRM Gazebo, located behind the Dispatcher’s Office. Bear in mind that each member of the Operating Crew (Car/Train/Head Brakemen, Conductors, Engineers, Signalmen, Dispatchers, Switch Tenders) are required to attend at least one session every 365 days in order to maintain Federal Railroad Administration mandated crew currency requirements. For newer members, this is your first step toward advancement in the crew qualifications. Training will consist of “classroom” discussions of the rulebook, timetable, policies, how to interact with passengers and general railroad information followed by a “hands-on” portion covering brake systems, coupling the train, connecting the air brake lines, how to skate and other yard activities. Come prepared to run a train! Lunch, Boots, long pants that can get dirty, rulebooks, timetables, training record books, radios (if you own one), gloves, water, etc. Rules tests, required every two years, will be given during lunch or after the hands-on session.
The 5 October session, prior to the Halloween/Santa Trains will be your last opportunity for 2024. Those who fail to meet the training requirement can still serve as Car Hosts or other non-crew-related jobs.
Last Chance for 20 Questions – Be a part of the Future of NCRM
Out of over 200 members, only 9 of you responded with information that can steer this organization to where it needs to be in 2 to 5 years. Please have another shot and email your answer to Jim Jatko (Strategic Planning Chair).
1. Within the last six months, have you volunteered at Bonsal on a train ride day or as a member on a work crew?
2. Have you helped on a train crew, ticket office, gift shop, parking lot, G-scale, or as a volunteer on a facilities, Maintenance-of-Way, or restoration project?
3. If you are a volunteer, which day(s) of the week do you prefer to be at Bonsal?
4. If you are not a current volunteer, would you be interested in becoming one?
5. Have you ever curated a museum exhibit piece or restored a rare piece of history?
6. Would you be interested in being trained as a guide or docent at our museum?
7. How many times per year do you visit Bonsal?
8. Have you brought friends or family members to Bonsal?
9. If you have ridden any of our excursion trains, which is your favorite? Why?
10. Are you retired or still employed?
11. When you are at Bonsal, what do you enjoy doing the most?
12. What would you like to see more of at Bonsal?
13. What would you like to see less of at Bonsal?
14. What would do you believe would make our visitors’ experiences better?
15. Do you believe that we are accomplishing our mission of educating future generations about the heritage of railroads in North Carolina?
16. If we are not accomplishing our mission, what could we do better?
17. How do you think that the North Carolina Railway Museum could become more visible in the Triangle Region of NC?
18. Would you be willing to help spread our name in your place of business or community?
19. Would you be interested in helping us develop interactive educational exhibits for our museum?
20. Would you be interested in helping us develop play-based learning areas for younger visitors at our museum?
Please send your responses to the above questions to Jim Jatko, NCRM Strategic Planning Chair.
Last Run: David Matthews
Former NCRM member David Matthews, Jr. 82, of Oak Island, NC passed away on 10 August 2024 after a courageous battle with ALS. He was born 17 December 1941. He was certified in electrical, HVAC and plumbing and served in the private and government sectors before he began working for CP&L Brunswick Nuclear Power Plant from 1983 until his retirement. He was a member of the NCRM and a major player in the design and construction of our beautiful ticket office. He was buried on 17 August with several of our current members in attendance. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family.
Last Run: Mac Henson
The last living engineer on the Cliffside Railroad, Mack Henson, age 92, of Ellenboro, passed away August 10, 2024 at Rutherford Regional Medical Center. He was born March 11, 1932 in Rutherford County and he worked as a truck driver and as the train engineer for Cliffside Railroad and Cone Mills for forty-two years. Mack also served as the Fire Chief and was on the rescue squad of the Cliffside Fire Department for many years. When visited by NCRM personnel several years ago, he stated that he wanted to pull the throttle on 110 one more time.
Rusty Spike Nominations Needed from Members by September 30
Each year, the New Hope Valley Railway awards the Order of the Rusty Spike to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to our railway. Pursuant to a policy adopted by our Board in 2022, ANY member may now nominate an individual for a Rusty Spike. A majority of the Board will then determine by secret ballot who among the nominees should receive the award each year, with a maximum of three Rusty Spikes to be awarded each year.
Nominations are due by September 30. To nominate someone for a Rusty Spike, a member needs to prepare a paragraph or two listing the reasons why the nominated individual is deserving of the award and send the nomination to the Chair of the Membership Committee, currently Tom Hutchinson, (or nominations may be placed in an envelope in the Membership Committee mailbox in the dispatcher’s office). If a member wants to nominate someone for a Rusty Spike, but needs help in preparing the written nomination, they may contact a member of the Membership Committee (Tom Hutchinson, Robert Middour or Luke Sullivan) to provide assistance.
The Membership Committee will accumulate all of the nominations received by September 30 and present them to the Board for vote by December 1. Consideration for a Rusty Spike is normally given to individuals who have been members at least three years, but this requirement may be waived by the Board in exceptional circumstances. Nominations made will be kept confidential and only the Chair of the Membership Committee will know which nominee(s) have received a majority of the Board’s vote until the Rusty Spike is awarded at the annual Membership meeting. Any questions concerning this process should be directed to a member of the Membership Committee.\
Many Hands Make the Work Light
by Gina Casselberry
Halloween decorating kicks off on 21 September with our Drop-off/Set-up train. We will need a train crew to drop off items followed by a setup crew in the Hyrail truck to install some of the easier exhibit scenes along the line. Below is the repeat printing of the proposed Halloween Setup Calendar in preparation for the 2024 Halloween Trains on the NHV. We have four Wednesdays, but you can see projects for the rest of the days. If you are available and willing to help, please contact me and THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP!
CLICK HERE to get a copy of the
NCRM Board of Elections Ballot.
