Families who Play with Trains Stay on Track
Trains resonate with my soul, the nostalgia and the families they affect. Trains are usually on time and timetables used to be etched in stone. A tear comes to my eye for the distant, overgrown, abandoned rails. Is anyone still waiting for the
6:05 to pull into the station in Winfield, Texas? Waiting for a long black snake of a train to come crawlin’ out of the gulch and shake up those old T&P tracks again? Trains fill the brain with dreams of outlaw gangs, chains of box cars bangin’, clangin’ and strainin’ down the line.
Much of what we get out of life is inherited – a jutting jaw, curly red hair, a love for art. Our grandparents share their genes and passions. My paternal grandfather was a jack-of-all-trades, from cook on a chuck wagon to conductor on a commercial train that hauled copper and coal. I have been a professional carriage driver and train porter and Papa’s adventures only became apparent to me during adulthood. How could this be, that I ended up
driving horse drawn vehicles and working on a train? Who does that? Is it in the blood?
A man I met this spring on the Sierra Scenic Train to Reno has followed his love for and connection with trains since birth and his passion inspired me to write this particular piece. Originally it was to be an article
about the excitement and tranquility experienced while traveling on scenic passenger trains coupled with the fantastic food and exemplary service found only aboard privately owned rail-cars. When researching the article I realized a deeper story.
First, let me reveal how my thoughts evolved. The man I met, Conductor Bill Hatrick, was handsomely adorned in true train fashion and had an attitude towards service as that of a Boy Scout.
He had the speed and precision of a Broadway producer, “The show must go on… the train must stay on schedule… May I help you with that bag ma’am?” For Conductor Bill, this is no show. This is life.
When I accepted the invitation to ride as a guest of LA Rail on the Santa Barbara Vino Train, the spin on my original piece was to include the story of how Conductor Bill’s grandfather’s passion for trains inspired him. It was not until I was on board, behind the scenes, that I discovered the best story of all.
Conductor Bill and his wife Debbie are the proud owners of two passenger cars, the Overland Trail and the Pacific Trail. The Overland Trail is a 1949 Southern Pacific club lounge from the San Francisco Overland long-distance train. It is a 39-seat car with a barbershop and shower that features a classic, quarter-circle bar with a Streamline Modern interior. It was built by the Pullman Standard Car Manufacturing Company for delivery to the Southern Pacific Railroad in December of 1949. The Pacific Trail is a 1950 Union Pacific long-distance rail-car that seats 44 and features ample leg room with deeply reclining chairs and leg rests … you really could sleep all night fairly comfortably! It was designed for cross-country travel and served on the routes between Chicago – Los Angeles, Oakland and Portland/Seattle. The car then served Penn Central in the late 1960s and was bought by Amtrak when they took over the nation’s passenger trains in the early ‘70s. The Hatrick family acquired the car in 1983 and has named it the Pacific Trail in honor of the California coast that it frequently travels.
Bill is the grandson of Jasper A. Dyer who was a section foreman (track foreman) for the Santa Fe Railway (as was his father J.J. Dyer). Jasper tended to sections at Prado Dam and later took over his father’s section at Santa Ana. He quit the Santa Fe in the early ‘60s and went to work at the Naval Weapons Station at Seal Beach, CA working on their “in house” naval railroad. Jasper retired in the mid ‘70s. After he retired, his former co-worker, Cliff Oshner, would continually call him for advice concerning track maintenance issues at the Navy Station. Oshner was now the railroad foreman in charge of the whole railroad and he knew of Jasper’s track experience. At some point, Jasper suggested to Oshner that he hire his grandson (Bill), who at that time was a volunteer track department superintendent at the Orange Empire Railway Museum. Soon Bill was hired and started maintaining track for a great wage and good benefits. Turns out that most of Jasper’s former coworkers were now retiring and Bill moved up to brakeman and then engineer on the navy railroad “hauling bombs” in short order!
On a side-note, during retirement, Jasper built a 2” scale railroad around his house that was big enough to ride on! He built 9 pieces of equipment from scratch with his ingenuity, his welder and his lathe. If this did not lay the tracks for Conductor Bill’s future, I’m not sure what would.
Conductor Bill and his wife have two daughters and a half dozen more young adults they have brought into their fold over the years through family, friends and church. As a team, they lovingly care for the cars and their passengers with five-star service. They serve gourmet meals prepared fresh in the tiny kitchen. They elegantly prepare settings seen only in the finest dining establishments and serve wine in stemless glasses in the dining and lounge cars. (A stemless glass is practical because it feels so much better than plastic and it tends to stay upright even on the roughest tracks.
The busy day began with a specially prepared staff breakfast complete with fruit, hot sausage and eggs, tasty coffee and a motivational meeting and prayer. The bustle settled as the family of workers seated themselves in the sky-view area to listen to Conductor Bill share his thoughts on the upcoming trip. It would be no less than an 18-hour day for the team who had already worked long hours the entire previous week in preparation for this ride. They were ready. The warmth and smiles were contagious. They worked together in perfect harmony.
Once the passengers were boarded, I reclined in the lounge area of another companion car, “Silver Splendor”, and admired the pelicans as they paced the train along the coast. The car was filled with interesting people so it was hard to break away from the conversations to snap photos of the cliffs that overlooked the immense ocean lapping at the beach. There is nothing akin to traveling on board a vintage private rail car to appreciate the subdued elegance and refined “Streamline Moderne” appointments of a more gracious bygone era.
My initial talks were with Renee, a guest chef who is frequently flown from her Southern California residence to cook for a private car owner in Pennsylvania. The trip was on Saturday so she brought her 15-year-old daughter to assist. This precious child has manners that must be recognized. During the staff breakfast she was asked if she would like sausage with her eggs. She genuinely replied, “Yes please, if it would not be too much trouble.” I rarely hear teens talk like this. Good job Renee!
Renee and Amanda, Bill’s daughter, were the chefs. They prepared an amazing breakfast for the guests, much like our morning feast improved with mimosas, Belgian waffles and delicious frittatas. The passengers then delighted in an excursion to Santa Barbara to enjoy the beach and wine tasting rooms. Later that afternoon, they returned to the train and dined on a savory combination of Chicken Parmesan on a bed of noodles, a fresh green salad and a decadent home-made brownie sitting atop a zesty cranberry/red wine sauce. The wait staff served dinner and wine with a smile while the guests chatted with their new friends. The light music playing over the muffled sound of clanging cars enhanced the setting sun through the large picture windows to the west.
My next conversation introduced me to John Caestecker, the owner of the “Silver Splendor”, the private car into which I had just melted. The Silver Splendor is a 1956 Vista-dome/diner/lounge from the Denver Zephyr. It has an on-board full kitchen and will seat up to 60 guests. (Although the Overland Trail also has a kitchen, the meals were prepared in this car.) John purchased the car in 1997 from a ne’er-do-well wheeler dealer of passenger cars in the St. Louis area and began to restore it with his wife when his twin boys were three.
John’s love of trains sprouted when his parents bought him an O-scale Lionel train for Christmas when he was four years old. They discovered that it was the perfect pacifier for an overly energetic young boy because he would sit for long periods and just watch it go round and round a simple oval track. He said his intense love for trains messed up any possibility of a relationship until he met his wife, Heidi, who had seen this type of illness before. Her grandfather had a basement full of Lionel Model Trains and she understood John’s obsession.
While not the most daunting job in the refurbishment of the Silver Splendor, the window
replacement certainly took the longest. Spread out over two years, they replaced 48 of the 50 windows; each one was about a two-week process. They would remove one window at a time and take it home. Over the next 10-12 days, they disassembled the two-piece frame that held the pane, cleaned the frame, replaced the glass, added a new rubber gasket and finally reassembled the frame around the new gasket and glass. The most surprising thing of the entire rebuilding adventure, John said, was that his boys continued to revel in helping, even into those awkward teenage years. Their emotional investment in the project never waned. Heidi and John never became “uncool”. These families shared interests and it strengthened values and family ties.
John and Bill are just two of the owners of LA Rail, a collection of private rail owners with a common goal of providing top-notch service and extremely cool private rail car experiences. This group provides rail travel more times per year than any other private rail service in the nation. In addition to the day trips they do luxury overnight journeys, weddings, corporate events, family reunions and even bachelorette parties. They couple your private car to a train or engine based on the direction you’d like to travel and off you go. You can look at the map of where Amtrak travels to see just a few of these options.
Lastly, I’d like to share a couple of terms I discovered while I was researching this story.
Foamer: The industry term for people who fall so madly in love with trains that when they feel the ground shake, hear a whistle blow, or even see an engine sitting on a distant track they foam at the mouth. The intensity varies but the love is shared. The term was originally a slight but has evolved into more of a term of endearment, much as the label “nerd” has come to mean so much more.
Passion: Passion is a wonderful thing; it drives us to follow our dreams and work tirelessly to complete tasks. In Latin, passion is translated as suffering. While there is a lot of work and few monetary rewards I don’t think any of these families would say they have suffered. I would say they are blessed to have such a rewarding illness consuming them.
Denice Barton is a train enthusiast and freelance transportation writer. She has crisscrossed the United States and Canada to review and experience many modes of transportation.