Greeley Tribune article about GFSM 2nd Anniversary
GFSM was featured in the Greeley Tribune on Sunday, May 29th, 2011.
http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20110528/NEWS/705289926&parentprofile=search
The Greeley Freight Station Museum celebrates its second anniversary
Dante Stewart, 13, visits the Greeley Freight Station Museum on Saturday for its two-year anniversary. Stewart traveled from Grand Junction with his family to visit the museum.
The Greeley Freight Station Museum celebrated its second anniversary on Saturday. The Freight Station is a sought-after attraction by both a local and international audience and features a prototypical train simulation.
The Greeley Freight Station Museum celebrated its second anniversary on Saturday. Darrel Ellis, of Loveland, volunteers regularly at the museum, running trains and working on the electrical systems.
Jake Reese, left, assists Steve Campbell at the Greeley Freight Station Museum for the celebration of the museum’s second anniversary on Saturday. Reese, of west Greeley, retired after 42 years of service as a locomotive engineer and now spends much of his time at the museum.
Dispatcher Kevin Morgan keeps the single track main line organized at the Greeley Freight Station Museum’s second anniversary celebration on Saturday. Morgan commutes from Arvada to volunteer at the museum and run the antique dispatch panel that was once used by an actual railroad station.
Helena Krantz, 4, watches miniature trains at the Greeley Freight Station Museum’s second anniversary with her grandmother Alberta Krantz on Saturday. The Freight Station Museum has activities for both children and adults.
It’s hard to fully appreciate how much meticulous planning went into the recreation of the Oregon, California and Eastern Railway at the Greeley Freight Station Museum.
Though visitors could see the details in the model towns and railway routes as the museum celebrated its second anniversary Saturday, less obvious may have been the effort spent running the trains as though they carried living passengers.
Phil Todd is a volunteer operator at the museum. He carries a throttle that controls the speed of one of the museum’s many model trains, but he can’t change its route in any way, unless he receives permission from a dispatcher.
Todd must try to keep his train on schedule. Because the creators of the museum shrank South-Central Oregon to 5,500 square feet, they also decided to shrink time to help their trains arrive on time. For every minute that passes in the real world, four minutes pass on the train schedules..
Todd has about 250 hours — that’s actual time, not train-schedule time — volunteering at the museum. His brother also volunteers.
“We’ve been building trains since we were probably five years old,” he said.
His mother’s relatives were involved with Union Pacific Corp. when he was growing up.
“We grew up with railroad stories and with this fascination of trains and knowing and hearing all about them and enjoying them,” he said.
Todd said that the museum’s model train display isn’t the biggest he has ever seen, but it’s the best.
The museum roughly resurrects the Oregon, California and Eastern Railway as it looked in 1975, before cabooses became outdated. More than 20,000 trees, 150 locomotives and 2,500 freight cars line the layout. The trains ride over 1,353 feet of mainline. The whole layout took about five and a half years and more than 27,000 hours of volunteer labor to build.
Executive director of the Museum Michelle Kempema said that the museum has a pool of about 180 volunteers, though they don’t all help out at once. She said that people come from all over the world to help operate the museum’s railroads.
“There’s no other place that has something like this in the world,” Kempema said. “There’s other model layouts, but they’re not controlled like ours. They’re just a computer switch you flick and it goes in circles.”
Though visitors could see the details in the model towns and railway routes as the museum celebrated its second anniversary Saturday, less obvious may have been the effort spent running the trains as though they carried living passengers.
Phil Todd is a volunteer operator at the museum. He carries a throttle that controls the speed of one of the museum’s many model trains, but he can’t change its route in any way, unless he receives permission from a dispatcher.
Todd must try to keep his train on schedule. Because the creators of the museum shrank South-Central Oregon to 5,500 square feet, they also decided to shrink time to help their trains arrive on time. For every minute that passes in the real world, four minutes pass on the train schedules..
Todd has about 250 hours — that’s actual time, not train-schedule time — volunteering at the museum. His brother also volunteers.
“We’ve been building trains since we were probably five years old,” he said.
His mother’s relatives were involved with Union Pacific Corp. when he was growing up.
“We grew up with railroad stories and with this fascination of trains and knowing and hearing all about them and enjoying them,” he said.
Todd said that the museum’s model train display isn’t the biggest he has ever seen, but it’s the best.
The museum roughly resurrects the Oregon, California and Eastern Railway as it looked in 1975, before cabooses became outdated. More than 20,000 trees, 150 locomotives and 2,500 freight cars line the layout. The trains ride over 1,353 feet of mainline. The whole layout took about five and a half years and more than 27,000 hours of volunteer labor to build.
Executive director of the Museum Michelle Kempema said that the museum has a pool of about 180 volunteers, though they don’t all help out at once. She said that people come from all over the world to help operate the museum’s railroads.
“There’s no other place that has something like this in the world,” Kempema said. “There’s other model layouts, but they’re not controlled like ours. They’re just a computer switch you flick and it goes in circles.”
posted by Greeley Freight Station Museum @ 2:33 PM
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