December 21, 2013 Saturday Public Run Report

Saturday the 21st was a beautiful day. The sky was clear and the weather was cool with a little breeze. The station filled up early with knowledge that there would be a special visitor today.

We were operating with a very small staff due to illness, vacations and travel, but we still were able to run 4 trains efficiently and pulled 962 passengers. Due to limited train availability we ran the inside loops and figure 8. The Crenshaw line was closed for the day.

Trains running that day was Howie on his SW1500 UP 1205 with Bob Diaz as his conductor. Kelly on his Santa Fe GP with his son Jeff as conductor. Mark ran his BNSF AC4400 with Andy Z. as his conductor. The club's Santa Fe F7 ran for a while driven by Dale then pooped out later in the afternoon. Still have some work to do on it I guess. The club's SW1500 was still down for repair.

Joanne worked in the Depot store and Tim set up a hot chocolate stand instead of the lemonade stand outside the depot, as the weather was getting a bit brisk. Everyone loved the hot chocolate and marshmallows. The Christmas soundtrack was playing in the depot and everyone was in a very merry mood.

Arriving via Santa Fe was Santa Claus Phil and his elf Chloe. The kids had a great time speaking with Santa and asking for their Christmas goodies while Elf Chloe was handing out peppermint candy canes.

Robert and Daisy were out playing on the Polar Express at Williams AZ so we did not have one of Daisy's special home cooked meals, but Phil was able to bring beef, turkey, lamb and ham sliders along with chips and cookies so all was not lost. Come back Daisy we are loosing weight!

The run day ended at 3PM with 962 riders, everyone had a great time.

We look forward to seeing all live steamers at our 4th Annual New Years Day Steam Up and Mini Meet. All live steam club members from other clubs are invited. We will be open to the public again on January 5th, 2014 for the first public run of the year. Hope to see you all there!