Steam & Excursion > A Funny Story Of How Steam Railroaders & Women Didn't Always Mix!

This story was passed on to me by a friend recently and was simply too good not to share:

Time for a Jim Wolverton story... and I have verified this with two of the guys involved (independently) so I know that it's true:
 
It takes place at PSM&T's Twin Rivers Camp, the west end of the Milwaukee line here on the Peninsula. It was a big camp and in addition to all the living quarters and mess hall, they had a big meeting hall adjacent to the wye - in Twin, just about everything was adjacent to the wye.
 
So... there were quite a few single guys in camp and they were trying to figure out how to meet the local young ladies, not a particularly plentiful commodity in western Clallam County in the 'teens. Well Jim and Walt Elves (a shirt-tail relative and fellow railroad type) decided that they would organize a dance. They rounded up a few musicians and booked the meeting hall and passed the word to all the nearby metropolitan areas (Shadow, Majestic, Pysht, East/West Clallam - now Clallam Bay and Sekiu). The only fly in the ointment was the floor in the meeting hall. Too many caulks had made their way into the room and the floor was not smooth enough to slide on - a necessity for some of the dances popular at the time. Railroad ingenuity to the rescue. Jim and Walt reasoned that they could improve the surface with the application of the same oil and graphite mixture they used on the locomotive smokeboxes. In due course, the floor was treated and the oil/graphite mix performed perfectly.
 
Fast forward several days to the evening of the dance. Loggers and trainmen cleaned-up as best they could, young ladies in their white dresses from miles around, music, food, a real event. Everything was going perfectly until... As the dancing progressed, a dark dust cloud, first only at their feet, then rising slowly, began to engulf the dancers. It seems that the wood floor had absorbed the oil, releasing the graphite dust. The girl's white dresses were rapidly turning gray, as was everything else in the room. The dance came to a rapid and not particularly cordial end.
 
The result was that it was gonna be a cold day in Twin Rivers before any of the young ladies ever came back, and it was. There was still the problem of the graphite in the meeting hall. Again, railroad ingenuity to the rescue. Jim and Walt simply pulled one of the Shays up on the wye beside the hall, tapped a steam line and steam-cleaned the floor. 

This escapade was not one of Jim's finer moments.

Martin

(The photo I chose to attach shows Madera Sugar Pine's E.M. Fowler and a log train with some lovely young ladies hitching a ride to camp).



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/19 02:26 by LoggerHogger.

---

---

I think that at least one of those young ladies must be checking out the great round Lima builder's plate on the locomotive!!

Ron

Notice how clean the stack is bet the hogger is hoping it stays that way. 

Great story - that's one that Jim never told me about!

Pete Replinger

When I started running mainline steam in 1966 there were still a good number of old hoggers still active who believed strongly in the old superstition that it was very bad luck to have a woman on a locomotive. And, they really beilieved it to the point of refusing to stay aboard if a female was. True story which I witnessed personally.

    Ross Rowland 

Great story Martin.Do you know anything about the RoW taking off to the right in the photo.Cant figure out if it's abandoned or new construction.
Regards,DK

DK

The track to the right appears to be the original trestle alignment that has been abandoned and replaced with the curve to the left.

Martin

LoggerHogger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> DK
>
> The track to the right appears to be the original
> trestle alignment that has been abandoned and
> replaced with the curve to the left.
>
> Martin
Thanks Martin.
Regards,Daryl Kay,

We just discussed the women and railroaders thing, causes unwanted marriages!

Out