Seen, Heard, Learned at RailFair99:

• The whole Big Four (Hopkins, Huntington, Crocker and Stanford) were there to open the Fair, and the President (Teddy Roosevelt), came along as well.
• I saw Charlie Chaplin. W.C. Fields was walking around with Mae West. He ignored Rich's hand and kissed mine.
• Mark Hopkins referred to the crowd as "an unprecedented gathering." Well, yes, with Teddy Roosevelt and Charlie Chaplin and all, it certainly IS!
• T.R. was also Jack Ford, directing a movie, on alternate hours.
• Mark Hopkins had spoken at the Golden Spike event. He said it was because he was tall enough to be seen over the crowd.
• The Pony Express, though delayed a bit in El Dorado Hills, made it in time to bring the Postmaster's authorization to issue the Gold Rush stamp. (We got both cachets and also a sheet of First Day of Issue stamps.) A fifth grade escorted the rider into the tent. They were all in costume. The teacher had a LOT of hard work put into this.
• The flag ceremony for this event was put on by the 10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers, who were based in Sacramento.
• When they unveiled the stamp, I thought they were going to pull the whole thing over!
• I saw a miner working his way through the crowd with his bag of "party ice." Jane Stanford was walking around with a beautiful camera, too.
• The replica of the Jupiter is not actually the replica of the Jupiter (one of the Golden Spike trains), but a different train, made up as the Jupiter for the movie Wild Wild West.
• "Clinton should have been allowed to keep playing around, 'cause look what he's doing now!" (One of the women making pioneer dolls.)
• 1400 fabric bodies is just about enough for a busy weekend, but we needed more right away. I was dreaming about pioneer dolls and now when I see someone in a pretty dress or shirt, I think what the fabric would look like in a doll!
• We killed Thomas the Tank Engine! The first day he was chugging up and down the tracks with the big guys (classed as a 060T for the occasion) and getting in everyone's way, but then his battery died and they towed him to a place behind Amtrak's big bullet train, out of the way.
• The press about This Old Flatcar: "Is this here for RailFair99?" "Yes." "Couldn't you get something better looking?" (This Old Flatcar is rebuilding a rotting, rusted, splintery flatcar during the 10 days of the fair. They get volunteer apprentices who seem to be enjoying doing the work.)
• The curator of the California State Railroad Museum's comment was: "It's dead, Jim!" A master mechanic of the Orange Empire RR Museum said' "Man, you got a dumb hobby!"
• The Knight Foundry in Sutter Creek is hoping to stay open to do specialty railroad parts. They refer to themselves as "The Jurassic Park of Metallergy." It's been open 127 years and Rich and I thought it closed a few years ago.
• Two "shays" are here from North Carolina and, uh, Pennsylvania. They are hoping for a "shay race." These lumber-toters get up to a whopping 8 mph under full steam.
• The Gold Rush was the lottery of the 1800s. (They had to do a lot more work to win, though!)
• Jack Ford is filming the Grand Train Robbery with Tom Mix and a number of people we have never heard of. Jackie Coogan didn't make it, so they take a kid from the audience. The one we saw was funny. When he forgot his lines (silent movie) he put both hands over his mouth.
• "I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded by a train." (Walt Disney, planning Disneyland.)
• We picked up pins, but forgot to get our discount. Oh, well.
• Walking in the Tulgo, the aforementioned bullet train, was quite an experience. Compared with that last horrible airplane flight, they're getting a convert.
• Yesterday we sampled a regular train, and I'm now considering a trip to San Diego on it. Train would never have crossed my mind, but it's so gorgeous! I've only travelled by rail once, Laramie to Pittsburgh and back in 1964. The UP to Chicago was fine, but the Eastern trains were really crowded and rackety at the time.
• Lots of people rode the train from the Valley or the Bay Area to come to this event. Some had tour buses. We've talked to people from Germany, Denmark, Australia, and England who came just for RailFair.
• There was a toy train convention in San Francisco and RailFair was an outing.
• The first briefing, our Fearless Leader described the morning events like "loading jackrabbits onto a flatcar." His safety hint for the day was "don't trip over a railroad track. It's painful and embarrassing." I was reminded of the time I did just that, coming back from Santa Cruz in September of '97.
• Saturday's briefing, he was telling us the prices of the dinner and dessert trains (which are sold out in the first hour every day!) "The prices range from 'You've got to be kidding!' to 'Holy shit!!'"
• Friday night we were done by 8 so we went over to join the dancing, but after a full day in the heat, we only lasted 45 minutes. I washed our shirts mostly because I didn't want to have to stay downwind from EVERYONE the next day.
• Then we trekked across the tracks to our car. We encountered a guy who showed us Venus in the sky and explained that was the spaceship come for him. (The next night he was apparently getting messages beamed from space and telling everyone what they said.)
• Before we got away Friday night, there was someone's van to jumpstart, and so, tired, home.
• Saturday we had lots of help from some teenagers putting in their community service time. I had a senior-to-be, and asked her where she wanted to go to college. College? She had plenty of time to worry about that. Still, by the time Rich had her and asked the same question, she'd had time to come up with a community college plan. Anything to shut us up!
• I was interested and amused to see how they related to their mother's boyfriend. In the CASA program, we hear a lot about bad stepfathers and mom-boyfriends, and it was a joy to see a healthy relationship. They all (two girls, one boy) seemed to like him and to respect him.
• Friday night I had made extra dolls for Sam's foster-siblings. (An attempt to avoid jealousy when I took Sam to the fair.) I was sitting out with Rich and a couple of little kids came by, and I told them about doll making. They were first going to see the Daylight engine, then they would make dolls. When I looked in the museum, the dolls were packed up! Oops. So I headed over to the Daylight to catch the kids, and gave them two of the dolls I had made.
• Some Dads are confident enough that when their little boys want to make girl dolls, they just go along with the flow. Many, however, were sure their boys would only make boy dolls. I could have cheerfully wrung the neck of the grandpa who was teasing his grandson, and encouraging his brothers to do the same. The birth of the next Littleton shooter?
• Rich was helping pan for gold. In 1991 the Discovery Museum Volunteer director bought 3 ounces of gold flakes and put it into sand, and this is the same gold. It was also used last year in the Great Gold Rush. There's enough so the kids are guaranteed to find some, and then they get a certificate and a gold claim! (Reminds me. Somewhere I have my deed to my square inch of Alaska, a cereal boxtop prize.) Rich came up with the timesaving idea of not actually rinsing the gold out when the pan is rinsed, so the likelihood of success even for the tiniest tot is real close to 100%.
• The Union Pacific 844 (which pulled the Liberty Train in 1976) was at Expo 74 in Spokane, something I have to know for my Spokaneite daughter.
• I had thought it was the 844 in the park in Cheyenne when I was a kid, but it was never out of service, so it was probably the Challenger 3985 which was rusting away till it was rescued and put back in service. It, too, is based in Cheyenne.
• Yesterday we took advantage of our passes to ride the train the 3.5 miles south and back. We rode in an open gondola car which was used as a troop carrier in WW2. The coaches are 60 years old, but the engines (a coal-fired one down, an oil-fired one back) are the youngest.
• We saw the burly-que, the "Ladies of the 1800s." Afterwards we learned their group is from San Francisco, and dying in the heat, especially in corset and pantalettes and two or three layers of petticoats! One of their songs was about all the people who missed them at home, like the landlord and the grocer and the milliner, etc.
• There's a train from Holland! And I picked up a map and remembered my 24 hours in the Netherlands.
• Teddy Roosevelt would go well in Arsenic and Old Lace.
• Now we're eager to go to the trains in Jamestown and in San Diego, and to ride some of the Bay Area trains.
• A skunk kissed Rich. (From the Skunk Train in Ft. Bragg, of course.)
• 4.5 hours of going around, into, behind, in front of, through, over, and under the RailFair events with a 7 year old made me very aware of why people my age don't usually have kids that age! It makes me really appreciate the grannies who take on their grandchildren!
• Sam and I rode on a horse car. Jiggs, the horse, is a nice big fella who eats about 50 pounds of hay a day. He's gorgeous. Later we went to pet him: just like a BIG dog with hooves.
• Sam got a gold claim, a doll, the Junior Engineer button (this involves going all around the fair looking at trains and finding clues till you get the treasure), a pencil, coloring book, and keychain, and got to do some rubbings of brass railroad plates. On the whole, a successful day.
• Someone lurched into the sore shoulder and I didn't fall on the ground blubbering. It's much much better. Frozen, but better.
• I love Hot Dog on a Stick. Egg Roll on a Stick is good, too, surprisingly.
• I'm really glad we volunteered for this, as we quite possibly wouldn't have gone otherwise. (We went to '81 but not to '91.)

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I'm still the same weight, and haven't broken through this plateau since last August. 13 pounds 8 weeks, ouch! (On the other hand, Roni called from Hawaii, and as far as I know, she hasn't done the invitation list for the calligrapher, my sister, so she's in worse shape than I!) So much walking around for the RailFair, though I don't know how much. Enough to make my bunion flare up Sunday, and I'm wearing different shoes today. I'd guess somewhere in the 10 mile range for the week. Mail going out as it should, though, indeed, I do still owe my Brit friend a letter and I have a refund to set up. No magazines, and the house is a mess! I did get into the back room three times and accomplished some work in there.

All the kids called. Sunday, in order, it was Vince, Bernadette, Monica, and (surprisingly), Roni. We're saving that message tape because it's neat to hear their voices. And two other graduates sent a thank-you. (Still two no-shows.)