Episode 15: Special Pridecast

In this week’s episode of Off the Rails with Rowdy and Bethan, Rowdy is conspicuously absent, leaving Eric in the hot seat for a special Pridecast focused on LGBTQ+ history in railroading and logging railroads, with a look at where we are today.

Eric and Bethan spend some time discussing the unique "flavor" of Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad in the Year of Chugg™ (2026) and the team that has come together to make it all happen.

There isn't much written about queer history in American railroading, which makes uncovering these stories all the more interesting. One great resource from across the pond is the UK's National Railway Museum: People, Pride and Progress.

As part of Bethan's ongoing quest (hyperfixation) to uncover the untold stories of logging and railroad history, she dives into a few notable LGBTQ+ stories, including the Sumner Welles/Pullman Porter affair of 1940 and Portland's 1912 Scandal.

For those interested in learning more, check out Peter Boag's Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest.

Fast-forwarding to the present day, Eric shares his own coming-out story and reflects on life as a gay man in the railroad world, particularly within the heritage railroad community.

In the News!

Our weekly news segment was almost nonexistent this week, thanks to a complete hyperfocus on history rather than current events. We do, however, discuss some exciting new gift shop merchandise.

Frequently Asked Questions!

This week's FAQ segment included a question about nationalizing the U.S. rail network, a topic we mostly decided to nope right out of.

Got a question or topic you'd like us to cover? Send it our way, we'd love to hear from you (we think).

So grab your coffee, crank up the phonograph, and let's go Off the Rails.

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome to Off the Rails, the podcast where steam locomotives meet modern maps. Joint executive director of the Mount Rainier Stewart Railroad, Bethana Marr, and Rowdy Pierre Superintendent, Professional Cow Herder, and occasional how to go tour. Together they pull back the curtain on the wild, weird, and often hilarious world of tourist steam railroads. You'll get a front row speaker to the ins and outs of this truly unique business. So grab your ticket, hold on to your sense of humor, and join us for a ride into the unpredictable world of steam. This is off the rail. Oh, I'm as comfy as can be. Look at that sexy motherfucker over there, Tom. Beep. Nothing's gonna get a workout. Welcome to Off the Rails. Someone has to be placed rowdy for this one. Welcome to Off the Rails with Eric and Nathan. This edition is our special podcast. So we are filming this in May. It will air in June. And y'all, we are gonna talk about some history, some personal history, and then do the usual in the news questions from our listeners segment, etc. Sweet. I'm excited. Um I'm excited because I get to tell some like personal stuff. I've never really told people. I am excited for that because I think there are things I don't know. Um so one of the things that we do as a museum and as a nonprofit is tell stories of marginalized populations. And I know that's a lot of woke language drivel for people. So, what do we mean by marginalized populations? What we mean is that historically museums have focused on the people in charge, the people writing the history. And that's not that can be interesting, but a lot of the time it isn't nearly as interesting as the actual people that were doing the work. Um, people's who were in lying. Who lived it, who did it. Um, and part of this one, for like me, it's how we do it today. And how important um just me being who I am is to the railroad operation today, and how it's always like there's always been LGBTQ people involved in railroad preservation. If you see it. Worked at a railroad, particularly on the preservation side, you know, and I'm gonna gay men in particular, like LGBTQ people are everywhere, in particular at railroads, gay men are pervasive. Railroads are like it's a gay thing, yeah. Um that does not mean everyone, right? But if you've been in a railroad, like, dude, this is the world we live in. If that offends you, just then don't listen. Don't listen. This might not be the podcast for you. We still appreciate you following us, but this might not be the podcast for you. I have dug up some pretty cool history that I'm pretty excited about. And I'm excited to hear it and say some of my own. Yeah, and like this isn't just about like the LGBTQ community. I mean, this podcast is, but when we talk about marginalized populations, like we talk about immigrants, most of the laborers in logging camps were immigrants. If you were working in a logging camp, there is a damn good chance that you couldn't read or write, or you didn't speak English. By definition, we would consider that person a member of a marginalized population. Yep. Immigrant labor. Um we, in one of the previous episodes, we talked about a lot about like Japanese immigrant labor, and I, oh, I've gone and done so much more research. Um, and that is maybe my new special interest. I don't know. Um, it's fascinating. Um women in logging camps, women at railroads. Um you know it gets a little attention during the World War II era, but gets forgotten about for the rest of the time. Exactly. Very much so. So it's yeah, our intent is to talk about the people that were doing the damn work. And people like today come in all sorts of flavors. And always have. And always have. Now, in talking about the history of marginalized populations, it can be really, really hard to do. Um, my original background is in archaeology. One of the things that drew me to archaeology was you weren't telling the stories of like the winners, right? Like you're telling the stories of the day-to-day people. But in particular, with the history talked about, like it's and we'll get into it more. It's it's really hard to find that history because it's largely unwritten. Or when it is written, it's you gotta read between the lines. You have to read between the lines. Um, or it's like law enforcement, right? Or laws or scandal and not the day-to-day lives, right? And yeah, people were worried for their safety, obviously, in 2026, people are still worried for their safety. Um but you know society changes too. So I mean, part of what we'll hear in this uh podcast is how society has changed in my own personal view since I've been in railroading for 18 years now. Yeah, it has changed a lot. Yep. So um, and it does affect the railroad. It has everything to do with how we run our railroad because it it has to do with my life. And I'm a big part of this railroad, and I do incorporate uh aspects of my life into how I manage my side of the railroad. As the executive director of this organization, our most important assets are our people. And I believe that in with every fiber of my being that I have the best staff in preservation. Uh I will argue that point all day. There are other great people collectively as a staff. This staff is exceptionally talented at what they do. And part of that is I want everyone to feel comfortable at work, and I want them to be themselves, and I want them to do the things that they are best at and they enjoy. So and I appreciate that, and it helps me stay here and tick and do what I do. Eric will not be leaving for another railroad. Do y'all hear me? We're keeping him. I am okay with that because I love my Seattle community. And I love this area. He doesn't have a choice. We're keeping him. He's ours. We'll try and keep him happy while he's held captive. History time, right? Well, Kelvin always edits out my pen clicks, which is like Well, that's why I started talking. So you just have to click. He has to keep it in. It's like, it's my nervous. Every time we start a new segment, I have to get like at least a hundred clicks of the pen in so that I can focus. So talking about history of the gays, which I do not use disrespectfully. Oh, we love when you the gay people love when they use it themselves. Yeah, it's yeah, so and also while we want to have a talk about LGBTQ history, there's very, very little known about women. And I found I found I actually found a little bit more about trans people than I found out about like women and lesbians. So I can see that. Yeah. So for the most part, we are talking about gay men. Not to be sexist assholes, but because in an already unwritten record, that's what we have the most information about. Yes. So the US has next to no documentation on the history of the gays in the railroad industry. The UK has a phenomenally cool program that they did, like People, Pride and Progress with the National Railway Museum. They did a whole STEM. The LGBTQ, oh gosh, like Commission Society. I should have been a good idea. They had their own staff to handle this project. And they worked with all of the like the different STEM museums to talk about like the history of LGBTQ people in various STEM fields. And there was a very, very cool program and project with the National Railway Museum in the UK. Now, all of that's online, so if you're interested, go check it out. Give it a Google. Um, no cool museum. I have to get over to the UK and see. I know, I need to again, and you know, I sort of need to not like subject my husband to it because it would end up being a little bit more realistic. There's any sugar daddies out there. Pay for a trip to the UK and take me like trades. And take me. Um I won't get in your way. Um show you the behind the scenes of us. I don't think I'm totally ignorant. Um so there's not a whole lot about gay men in the railroads. However, I very firmly believe that gay men have been very prevalent and prominent in the railroad industry from the start of time. Oh, yeah. It's just there's not a lot written about it. And because railroads are moving, it makes it so much harder to do research because you can't just like go into the police records, unfortunately, to see who was arrested for sodomy, right? Like and you know, you know it was prevalent enough that Washington did put in sodomy laws in the 1890s and they lasted till 1975, I believe. Yeah. The really long time. So shout out to our friends at the Northwest Railway Museum. They are the only museum in the country that I found that has even had like a page on, like they make a pride post over here, and I think that's probably reflective of a lot of their people, their leadership. I'll talk more in a bit. Um, but I've seen a few museums do something on Lucius BB, uh, especially the California Railway Museum, because they have uh hemming uh Craig's Craig's private car. Yeah. Um but there's not a lot out there. Um I will note that UP and BN were two of the first major corporations to um get like full um like A plus ratings from like the human rights commissions um for um providing health care for like partners, even you know, before yeah. So like it's taken a really long time for that kind of stuff to kick into play. Yeah, absolutely. So there's not a lot out there. We one of the earliest like gay men in railroads, there's some about Pullman porters. Um and which are also a whole nother marginalized community. Which also like that's a podcast in itself, yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. Um oh my gosh, yeah. And that would be a really good one. It that's not necessarily our geographic area. No, but it it's a fascinating history, yeah. Holy cow, super fascinating. Um, there is again very little writ. And if it was written in diaries, a lot of it was in code or very in between the lines. There was one major scandal in 1940. Do you know about this one? I do not. It was the Sumner Wells Pullman Porter affair. In 1940, the Under-Secretary of State Sumner Wells allegedly propositioned a male Pullman Porter during a train trip, um, which contributed to his political downfall. And it made nationwide news. And one of the reasons that it made nationwide news is because it demonstrated that like railroad sleeping cars were semi-private queer spaces, and that this was maybe an established or common practice with Pullman Porters back in the day. That one just made the headlines. No, and made the headlines, and also uh, you know, Pullman Porters, I think most were black. Um, and I mean, and that's like the society of Pullman Porter, again, that's its own deep dive, but it raises other questions and was it was more palatable for a white and a black or two white men, right? And it wasn't palatable for the general public anyway, but yeah, it was even more scandalous because it was a black Pullman Porter. Yes. Um so there's a fair bit of like intersectionality there in terms of marginalized communication or communities and like hidden gay culture before World War II. Yeah. And the reality is outside the railroads and all that, you know, there's not much on the military at that time, but there's even more in the on the military than there is on the railroads and all that. And even then, you gotta do the same thing when you look up this history of read between the lines and see what's what, um, and interpret, you know, postcards and pictures and this and that. And so much of like what we do is we look at transient populations when we're talking about gay men in particular, because and you can probably speak to this a lot better than I can, but if you are in a small town in the Midwest, right, and you you stay there, your family is going to pressure you to get married, to attend church, right? There's so much, everyone knows you. There's a lot less freedom to be anonymous. Opening of the American West and the Railroads changed everyone for a lot, everything for a lot of people. Yeah. It allowed for the first time that people who felt like they couldn't live their lives at home to travel someplace to be anonymous and start a new life. And you do see it in um all genders and all that, that there's females who dress like males to fit in and cowboys and do all that. There's um males who dress like females and put on shows in saloons, um, whether they were the only male in town to do that was willing to do it or they wanted to do it, or something like that. That kind of stuff was all over the American West. And a lot of it has to do with the railroads. And the reality is almost all of railroad preservation today and riding trains for fun can also boil down to several individuals back in the 30s and 40s, but um people tend to forget about Lucius Bibi and Charles Craig. I didn't know about the actually until uh, you know, internet friend um was like, hey, like I was like, I don't know, looking at photos, dressing up, doing X, Y, and Z, and I was like, wait, hold on, back up. I know nothing. Yeah. So I'm not a historian on them by any point, so I'm gonna probably maybe get a few facts wrong or close to it here. Um, but they were Lucius Beby was a um column for several newspapers. He also owned newspapers, did a lot of articles, and he was a very like you see pictures of him, he's in a top hat. He's a very styled individual. He uh lived in New York, he came from a wealthy family, he lived in San Francisco, and he was like, we're gonna do it, and we're gonna do it in style. Yeah, and that I think he said something along those. He was like, if anything's worth doing, it's worth doing it in style and your own way, and that's totally what he did. But he was really the first true gay celebrity in the United States, and he loved trains. And some things are present, and he was open about it. Yeah, which is that is he met his partner, Charles Craig, who also loved trains and was a photographer. And um, for a while there, um, they met like right before World War II, and um Clegg went off to be in the Navy during the war, and uh BB wrote an article, right? Uh wrote an article like in a book, a mainstream book of his, um, how he missed them. And that was forbidden at the time. And then after that, I mean it was still illegal. Yeah, in a lot of places. Like, so for perspective. And then they started writing train books. And while he wrote a lot of history books on trains, he didn't always get the history right. Um, because what he would do is add his own flamboyant style of writing to it, and it is the difference between being able to sit down and read a book by the fire about a particular railroad, knowing that not all the facts are, or just being like dry, dull, the blah blah blah, way the blah blah blah. We see that in 2026. Yes. Is for some reason railroad people sometimes look well railroaders are the most interesting critters. Like fascinating people, so many stories. Yeah. When you go to write it down, oh my gosh. It's as someone who's actually interested in it, sometimes it's painful trying to. It is. And so BB wrote, like, in this flamboyant, and it's developed the romanticism of the railroads. What people forget to realize is the romanticism of railroads was curated in the early 20th century. This is before so many of the big advertising firms had illustrators that started advertising the railroads as destinations, too. Yeah. I mean, and that would be a subject of a same podcast. Yeah, a lot of it's a good thing. Happening like simultaneously is the railroads started advertising like the imagery and the destination and the experience. And so, like, Bibi wrote like 40 some train books, and a lot of them were bestsellers. Um, but he wasn't selling them all to the rail fan population. He actually is one of the first to actually say rail fanning is a hobby. People like it. Yeah, people do it for fun. And one of his first excursions that they paid for, um, he chartered the train and they were like serving caviar and champagne on an open car in like somewhere on the East Coast with a steam engine. Because that's how like top hats and all that. Was it a coal-fired engine? Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah. And then he put the article in life engine. There wasn't like linen around. Oh, yeah, if he was gonna do stuff, he was gonna do it right. But he they were in the top hats and all that, and then he put the article in Life magazine, and he got this rail fan journey in Life magazine, and he kept doing stuff like that. It wasn't just for the train magazines, and I actually got the public to be like, you know, you can ride trains for fun, you can go on a day trip or a few hour trip, and that's when you start seeing excursions happening, rail fan excursions, these happening. What BB also did with his partner uh Charles Clegg, uh, Clegg was the better photographer. The typical railroad photo before they started publishing books was just the Sidon roster shot, and they made a point in the books to get the whole scene. Um they lived in the private car, uh Gold Coast, which is the one inside the California State Museum. They lived in the Carson City train yard in that car for like three years. Yeah. Um, they would take it up to Reno for parties. I could only imagine what that was like in the 40s. I like to. To have me like, uh, look, there's the the rich fancy gays living in the Virginia and trucky Carson City train yard. But BB and Clinton cleaners to clean up after. Who knows? I mean, that's what I want to know. Yeah. Um but they actually uh they love Nevada, and they are a reason why Virginia City is Virginia City today. They had a big mansion there uh in the 50s, and they restarted the newspaper uh that Mark Twain ran in Virginia City, and they helped preserve a lot of the reason why we have the railroad museums out that way. Yeah, is they helped gather up the history of that and started railroad preservation. Granddaddy of historic preservation. In a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. So having said this, um, not a lot out there about gay men in particular in the railroads. No. Women, you know, like there weren't a lot of women working on the railroads directly. I mean, there were Like in support roles and stations and restaurants and women definitely took over during World War II. In World War II. Josie derivatives. And that has its own queer culture. Yep, absolutely. That it sparked and ignited and the lesbian side of things. But on the railroad side. But there's not a lot that's written. Having said that, if you have a personal history with the railroads, even 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, um, if you know people, we would love to hear from you. We would. Um, because these stories are important. And we can hear from people, and names don't need to be put with it either. But there's these stories are important. And before it's, you know, it sounds a little morbid, you know, like the World War II generation is largely gone now. That that we grew up, you know, like our grandparents. Um, but before y'all are gone, you need to speak up because your history matters if anyone's listening or knows if someone's especially in a time where it's more a we're able to have this conversation. We're able to have the conversations without ramify like without someone wants to hear these conversations. Someone doesn't want to hide these conversations, and then we want to hear it. I am in prepping for this episode, I am really glad that I did another deep dive. And I sort of was like, I was thinking, you know, I just can't find anything. There's just nothing written. There aren't a lot of academic works on LGBTQ people in railroads. So I was like, okay, let's transition to logging in logging camps. And I found a fascinating body of work by Peter Boag, I B-O-A-G, who has a PhD from the University of Oregon, so is from sort of the Pacific Northwest. Um, and he's written a number of books and academic works, Environment and Experience, Settlement Culture in 19th Century Oregon, um, the one that I am reading and about halfway through right now, Same-Sex Affairs, Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest, Redressing America's Frontier, um, all sorts and like some seriously good work. And he talks a little bit about the process of doing work and the trouble of finding records and reading between the lines and all of these things. And well, his work doesn't just focus on logging camps, it is between it focuses on like transient communities and extractive industries. So much of the West Coast in industry in the West Coast was extractive. Um, fishing, lumber, like gold, mining. Take it out and take it out and send it on, right? And that and that's what created these huge boom and bust cycles with the gold rush. I mean, in the Klondike Gold Rush, it wasn't just California, it was up in Alaska. Seattle was the staging area. Oh, yeah. A lot of people you think of the Klondike Gold Rush as Alaska, and people think of like Skagley and all those places, but Seattle was the jumping off point. Exactly. So, and you know, and even early fur trade, like the ports, um, any shipping to Asia was all happening Seattle, I mean, from Seattle and Portland. I growing up on the East Coast, I think of the Wild West, and I always think of like California and like you think of the desert East, not the Pacific Northwest. Pacific Northwest, muddy western, crap, fascinating. Fascinating place, but rough and wild as the rest of it, if not more. If not more so, because of I mean, just how hard the geography is. So between 1889 and 1929, with the exception of a very, very brief surge during World War I, the lumber industry, so timber, provided um a larger, the highest percentage of manufacturing jobs in the region, like over half the population, was working in an industry related to timber and lumber. So what we talk about, I think so much of the history's been sort of forgotten, but it was like the history we preserve shaped the Pacific Northwest. Oh, yeah. Seattle and Portland and when you think about this, you think the lumber industry had to have the railroad. Oh yeah. Yeah, like it when we say the lumber industry and versus railroad industry, in this context, it's the same. So for us, it's the same, basically. It it it is. It's it's you can't have one without the other. And like and shipping ties into it. And while we talk about rural areas, the populations that we're talking about were all transient. So they would work in the logging camps, and a lot of times in the winter months, there would be a slowdown in work, and folks would go, you know, work in shipping, and there were there were um ah, production! Production. Well, that's never happened before. Time's over, guys. Production is making us beep. We'll just we can keep rolling. Um so a lot of times, like, and well, people had specific crafts, like you know, if you were a high climber like or a faller, that's that was a skill. That was a skill, and you stayed. But if you needed work, you needed work, and there's a good chance you would go work on the port or on a ship. Yep. So between in 1890, there were 15.5 men for every woman in the Northwest. So like all the rest of the water. Over 15 dudes for one woman. And 20 years later, so by 1910, which you know, we're talking about like some of the peaks of logging, it was only 14.1 men to every woman. And those men, um, the majority of those men were between 15 and 44. So the vast majority of the population walking around the Pacific Northwest, at the time our museum sort of focuses on, was between 15 and 44. So a lot of testosterone, and a lot of dudes. It probably smelled bad everywhere. Yeah, and what you gotta think about is we all know Seattle today and the waterfront and the Ferris wheel and all that. And we're talking basically Pioneer Square with Skidwell. Yeah, it was. Logs would be sliding down through the mug to get to the port. Steam trains, smoke. Steam trains, it was dirty. It was a port town. You also had a massive amount of like fishing coming in, fish smell. Okay. Oh, yeah. This isn't, I mean, you had you had Chinatown up until the Chinese were driven out of Seattle. Um, so you had immigrant populations and a lot of folks were away from home. Yep. You know, so it was this a rural transient culture. It was and it actually shaped Seattle to become Seattle. Um because I know Pioneer Square really became Seattle's first gay boyhood. Yeah, and yeah, there just weren't women around. So even within the immigrant populations, um two-thirds of the men were single. So it's this weird intersectional mixing. It's a lot more like the Pacific Northwest, when I first moved out here, I was like, holy shit, it's white. Um, compared to like what I was used to and where I came from. Yeah. But it was a very, very diverse area. It's because now we're basically all well Americans. Yeah. You know, when you say that we're all just Americans, back then, yeah, their skin might have been w white or this or that, but they were Irish, they were German, they were French, they were Swedes, they were Finns, they were Japanese, they were this, they were that. Yeah. Italians, you know, everything was here, and they all still had their accents, they all still had the native language. Yeah. And it was this the melting pot that is the American dream. Yeah. So some information I have. Okay. Um, and I am not done with this book yet. And when I finish this book, um email this professor, and um, this is undoubtedly, some of the information here is undoubtedly going to be used in interpretation in a museum because it is fascinating. Um between 1890, which most of our history of what we talk about really starts in 1890 because that's when the transcontinental railroads were reaching like Seattle and the ports. I mean, it's just when they were finished, trains were getting safer, moving across. Functionality started to be there, I guess, which allowed for movement of people and goods. So 1890, um, both in Portland and Seattle, like population was around 46,000. And by 1930, that went up to 300,000. That's a lot of massive growth in less than 50 years. Um I mean, is really exceptional. So there was a 1912 incident which scandalized uh particularly the Pacific Northwest, but made national headlines. So in Portland, there was um a 19-year-old named Benjamin Trout who was picked up and booked for a petty crime. And he got so scared uh when he was being interrogated by the police that he just, it was like going to confession with a massive amount of Catholic guilt. I don't know if he was Catholic, but and just blabbered on about everything there was to be. And what he revealed was this giant scandal uh between Portland and Seattle and all the way up of white and middle class men having homosexual relationships. And up previous to this point, it was thought that it was like lower class people or transient people, and it was or people of color, immigrants, and it was particularly horrific because a lot of the men named were married, they were businessmen, they were respected. Um, and it just it made like the gossip columns for that would even back then. I mean, it would make it today in some scandals. I mean, every time you hear of certain conventions happening and how Grindos shoots up on like thing crashes and all that. Yeah. Um but totally back then it was even more. And one of the things is is when for the the for society, right? So this is I I say society, like the folks printing, writing, reading newspapers, um, not the most marginalized of people, this was seen as a lot more of a threat because middle class white men were involved. So it was like, oh, that could be our neighbor, right? It's this whole underworld that's happening, and we had no idea. And it was more shocking due to the nature of the people that were um implicated. Yep. So prior to this point, you gotta think of like how big the class system was. Like, watch the movie Titanic. This is oh shit, the first class is sleeping with the third class type affair, which I guess is the movie a Titanic, but look how that went over. Imagine the whole population of cities. And so in this this book I'm reading, um, sort of divides the story into sections. So it was like working class and then middle class because the stories are different. Yeah. Um, and you weren't really middle class, the middle class was much smaller, and you weren't middle class if you were working in a logging camp, right? You probably you owned a store or you were a professional of some sort rather than a skilled trade worker, a doctor or something, yeah. So this author um goes on that the majority of homosexual relationships um involved older men and younger boys, teenagers. Um, and that while um force was sometimes employed, um, working class youth and boys regularly sought out men for economic, emotional, and sexual fulfillment. And they were pretty commonplace relationships. So um in 1923, there was um an observer, Josiah Flynn, was like doing research and work, and in 1923 um interviewed one transient sort of um what we would today consider a hobo, and just said that, oh, all the men and boys do it. Like it was just a normal thing. Yeah. And it was um, and then, oh, Josiah Flynn, an observer and participant in migratory life in the 1880s and 1890s, estimated that about one in ten um men were participating in same-sex relationships. Um that it was almost exclusively older men with younger men. Um, and there were a lot of different names. There was jocker and punk relationships, which the punks were like the younger kids, which is interesting because wit whistlepunks were the younger boys in the logging camp who would whistle to signal moves and what was going on. So, you know, and again, these people were coming in and out of logging camps, going in and out of urban and rural areas. Um there were wolf-lam relationships, which was sort of considered a new category. And um there's theorizing that well, you know, like Pioneer Square was known as sort of the CD also gay neighborhood, and it it still is a it's moved to Capitol Hill more, yeah. Um, but Pioneer Square, there was a bar that opened in the late 30s, I want to say 38. Um, out of history I did to prep for this, called the Double Header, and it was open until 2015. The longest continually operating gay bar in the country. In the country. And in its basement was the first drag show stage. So this story talks about um a man known as Vilma. So as today we would probably call him trans. Right? This is a transgender woman. Yep. Um, but we also sometimes it's hard to distinguish what would have been considered like transgender or drag, and people's identities can also be fluid. It is. It's kind of like we've all watched those older World War II movies where the they bunt dress up on the island as women to put on the show on stage and everyone's cheering and clapping. Yeah. Yes, that was fun for the movie, and that happened while away, and they didn't have a other choice. It actually happened a lot in the cities. Yeah. And as everyday occurrences with regular actors doing regular things, and that was the very first expressionism of drag or trans or something. And they had to do it as almost like their own little comedy act to process and feel themselves. There's, yeah, so there's an interview with this Vilma from the 1930s who says um basically that there was like this clannishness um that separated um Vilma and other men, what was it, men like Vilma. So again, today, probably transgender women, maybe drag queens, but they they referred to themselves as queens. And they would bunch up and travel in groups between San Francisco. They would stay for three or four months, they'd go up to Seattle for three or four months, and they'd meet in different cities and they'd ride the rails. Um, and it was, you know, described as a very wild time, um, and that they would share food over a campfire along the tracks and hop trains. Um, they'd use new scrapers to like cover themselves and keep warm at night, and they would travel the rails as men for the most part, although they described some queens would travel the rails, but then when they would get to their destination, they would live as women. And then just the thought I had of that, you know, railroads this trans, this, and that, the movie some like a hot. Where the two two men witness against the shooting in Chicago, so they dress as women and join join the show to travel down to Florida in hiding so they don't kill get killed by the mobsters and all that. Um, very much a gay prevalent theme and humor, and even the ending of the movie. You know, the guys in drag and the boat driving away with some, I forget the ending of the movie, but is the scene in the boat. And the guy's like, Oh, you're not gonna love me. I'm this, I'm that, I'm this, and eventually goes, because I'm a man and rips off the rig, and the guy driving the boat's like, Well, no one's perfect. You know, it was in culture back then. Yeah, you know, it's never gone away, and yeah, from the transient populations to the first drags that had to move around and all that to do it to even Hollywood, to the railroads, to the it was there. It's always been there, yeah. Right? It's always been there. I think and it's sort of and it was almost more accepted back then than it was through the 50s, 60s. Hopefully, as we move on to the next segment, we can talk about humor, how humor can sometimes be protective, right? Yes, and it's a way to sometimes test the waters. So we are gonna um probably wrap up the history segment, but there's check out this book. I will drop a link in the comments. Um fascinating, fascinating, fascinating stuff. I can't wait to read more. Um, and probably email and harass this this dude because he's done some really, really, really like detailed digging and archives and diaries and police records and like interviews and just holy crap, super, super cool. And so much of it has to do with like log camp life and yeah, the transient nature of people of it all. And it's just a fascinating part of culture, and it is part a part of American culture. Straight up. Um, as and it always has been. Damn straight. Yeah, the FEMA project is gonna break Jared. Oh production. Production. Everyone needs to get broken sometime. So speaking of which, Eric, I understand that you are a gay man in the railroading world. What? Did I just out you? No, most people know. It is fun when I do like work with new people or hire people that I don't just like be like, oh, by the way. And so like I'll hire someone and they'll spend like three weeks. But it's when Rowdy walks in with the giant water bottle shaped like a pink penis. Oh yeah. Does that what is that what gives it away? I mean, sometimes it's still on my in my office. The Spencer's bag is still there. Like you walk in my office and there's a bag that says Spencer's. The backstory is Rowdy discovered Spencer's for the first time since high school. At the age of 37. Um, and he went in and saw this giant pink penis water bottle. And with Randy, his girlfriend, right next to him, goes up to the colour and goes, I'm buying this for my gay co-worker. And then the bag didn't cover the penis. So um Rowdy walked around very proudly holding it with the tip sticking out, and he has never been so proud of himself and so amused. Yeah, and so like it's moments like that that make me feel appreciated and loved. And then it's moments like I come in on a Sunday, and you guys are all like, how was your evening? And I walk in and go, Oh, I was in Capitol Hill till like two in the morning, and you know, the night ended with some dicks. And you don't truly know what dicks I'm talking about. We assume that it's the burgers and you just don't know what came first. No, I don't. I don't necessarily. Neither know, but we know that's that that we make a lot of assumptions. We make a lot of assumptions about you. But yeah, that's uh transitioning our segments into I'll share some personal stories here. Please do. And this is to um this is a lot personally I have to talk about. Um and hopefully it helps inspire more people. Um because I almost didn't get into the railroad world. Um and it was a lot of it was because being gay and who I was, and a lot of it had to do with my parents, which is hard. So, for context, and if you watch the Netflix show Boots, I know he did Rivalry Stole. Oh, I haven't seen that one. Um Boots is really good, it's about um uh gay man in the military joining the Marines through boot camp in the early 90s. Don't ask, don't tell, and everything, and it's a true story. Yeah, it's not like a true story where it's factual, but it's based off the guy's diaries, and he helped make the show happen, and they did a really good job. Um, it'll help if you watched it, you will get this that a lot of gay people have to put on their own face for public and then private, especially when you're going through high school. I was in high school, you know, 2005 when Brokeback Mountain came in, graduated 2007, and all that. I remember hearing all the bad talk from my parents about the movie. Um I remember some good talk and family jokes at Christmas, but I remember all the negative plebiscity. We didn't have shows like Heated Rivalry. No. Um that is why pride exists. Yes, right, is visibility is important, invisibility matters. It does, it totally does. Um the show Queer as Folk was out, but that was a Showtime show. So if you didn't pay for Showtime, there was nothing, especially for a teenager, um, to watch um my first real and only true knowing the gay people is I found I saw Robin Williams in one movie, and then I saw The Bird Cage advertised. And I would watch, I loved that movie. Like there was like as a young kid, even yeah, like we're talking, I was 10 or so, I kind of had a this like connection unknown to it. Um, and then I don't know how my parents didn't actually figure it out because well, that was also Ted Titanic was popular and I was singing Celindian, like everyone else. To be fair, Rowdy probably was too. Yeah, but but I was still seeing Selene. Um but we didn't like there was no mainstream things, and some of you may be going, how does this relate to the railroad? Well, my high school experience, I didn't go to prom because I couldn't lie to myself. I couldn't take a date to prom because I couldn't lie to myself. I could hide myself, but I couldn't lie to myself. I could I was on the swim team, and eventually by my senior year, I was hating that because I was lying to myself every day. Like I totally knew early on, but I knew I had to hide it. Yeah, high school was not a safe space. The one person that was out was made fun of every day, and eventually dropped out of school, and I didn't want that to me. And so by the time I graduated high school, I only knew really two things that I needed to leave the Chicago suburbs where I was, um, and that I love trains. And yeah, like from someone who didn't love trains growing up, right? I loved history, but the assumption, right, what people think of when they think about railroads is very heteronormative, manly, like it's gonna be a bunch of blue-collar rednecks that aren't gonna want anything to do with that. Oh, yeah, that's totally the norm. And so, like, I knew I couldn't tell my parents. Um, but I eventually did. I've had to tell my mom like seven different times before it finally clicked. Um, and I knew I couldn't tell um my dad, and I finally did tell my dad it they didn't know how to take it. And unfortunately, like my dad passed um before we could even reconcile. All I knew about that side is after it, before he passed, like a few months before, uh he talked to my uncle and was like, I don't know how to deal with this. Like, yeah, I need a brotherly help because I don't know. And my uncle was like, who the fuck cares? He's still Eric. Um, but that's what I was dealing with, knowing all that. So leaving high school, all I knew about myself is I like trains and I had to get out of here, and I was different than everyone else. And so the way I did it was I got into two colleges, and one was in Flagstaff, Arizona, and one was in Durango, Colorado. I was either gonna work in Durango or I was gonna work on the Grand Canyon really. Um, they were the only two I got. I've applied to one in Michigan and the some in Illinois. Um, they were not first choices because they were too close. Yeah, they were too close. I had you needed to get out to be your sister. I needed to get out. And um, mind you, I also back, you know, 2008, 2009, we all joke about the TISM jokes and all that on the internet, that we all have the TISM. Well, it wasn't like that back then. No, like I totally am undiagnosed. And then I likewise, on top of everything else, I had to manage how that affects my brain and the social awkwardness and all that. Um, but we're a lot of other people learn how to date and experience this and experience all that in high school and on the personal side. Yeah, I didn't. I learned that through college. And no wonder I was the weird socially awkward love trains kid through college even more. Because that was the first time I could try. I could totally express it. Even loving trains, I was made fun of in junior high and all that, and I hid that for. When we were in high school, the world was different. Oh, yeah. That was like kids still got beat up for like, and I'm not saying that bullying doesn't exist now. It does, right? And the internet exacerbates it in a different way. Yeah. But the internet also wasn't the internet now, so you didn't have examples of people living differently. There weren't online communities where you could find some acceptance. You could like like, yeah, no, I found a little bit on the internet, you know, of stuff like that, but you know, YouTube barely existed. Yeah. Uh, if you watched YouTube from back then, you're like, you watch this shit for hours, all pixelated and all that. Video. I guess that was later, but yeah. Um, but yeah, discovering all that was, you know, while I got hired on in Durango, I was only stocking the concession cars to begin with in college. But I was there, I was around trains, I was around the people. And what I discovered is there were more people like me. And at first, you're like, I didn't know how to process that because I didn't know gay culture, I didn't know anything, I didn't know those who had been in it longer, this and that, because it was not just young people, it was a lot of people. Like, I'm not gonna name names, but like there are managers within Durango, right, that are gay and that are open. Oh, yeah. And there were a lot of um lot of different people, even Durango just itself was a whole different culture. And so while I and the more I discovered myself, unfortunately, my real family it it did separate some more and more and more and more. Um, do I have a do I talk to my family and all that today? Yes, I do talk to my mom, but the reality is I have a closer relationship with Nancy Rowdy's mom. Not only because she is one of my employees, but she is also she's gonna cry. Yeah, but she is mom when she does that. She's mom. Um and all that, and I have a better relationship with her as a mom figure than I do with my own mom sometimes. Um, not that I don't love them and they won't love me, but it does play into it. It's hard because their vision of me stopped when they found out I was different. And part of that vision was when they realized I was gonna go for hospitality and get a hospitality degree. They're like, you work at Disney, who work at Universal Studios Cruise Live for a dirty effing railroad in the Pacific Northwest. Um, and so that was the start. And then so five years of college in Durango really got me starting to be comfortable. What then happened is I got hired on my Iowa Pacific's Pullman Rail Journeys, and that was like the very it's history repeats itself, folks. So moved back to Chicago. Yeah, I had to live with my parents, but I was gone enough. You were gone enough. And so, like first trip down to New Orleans and have the co-workers come out in those little rooms to go out in New Orleans and drag. Yeah. And then I got to see New Orleans, I got to see uh parts of New York, I got to see San Francisco, Reno, travel the country. And I actually got to experience through one railroad job gay culture in several different cities across the United States. And it's vastly different. History repeats itself. Yeah. Oh, the transient box. Hey, I had a job, but yeah. Um, did that. Unfortunately, um, I had a lot of fun doing that, but I was on the train that derailed in Southern Illinois. At Ellis. Um in like was that 20. That could be an after dark, like subscriber only sign a waiver episode. Um, and then I got laid off without being told I was getting laid off. I think Iowa Pacific in general is maybe like and so at least I saw the warning signs ahead, but I stayed working part-time for Ed and private cars for at least two years after that, while I also worked at the skunk. And at least like the skunk, um, I found out different parts of my life about there, and that was good and bad in both ways, um, relationship-wise and all that. But you know, it was fine there. What surprised me because I had another separate rough patch life living in California, making 13 bucks an hour, and pretty good type deal. Yeah, but also relationship-wise, I was with my ex, we were married, we knew I knew it was wrong, but I didn't know how to get out of it. Yeah, um, because I didn't have those protected figures in my life. I was just searching for something, and I thought I found what I needed, um, which has the after-effect of everything else. Um, so to help get out of it all, I moved to Ely. That's a choice. Ely, Nevada. Downtown Ely, Nevada. Yeah, and it just residental reset. It was open space. Oh my god, the people in Ely were great. That's like, yeah. I know some people were probably worried about that at first. I cannot say enough about the people of Ely, Nevada. Not everyone there would get this conversation and want to hear this conversation, but everyone at the railroad will be tuning in and listening. And everyone who was involved in the railroad would great. Um at first, when I got to Ely, like, yeah, they didn't know how to approach it all. You know, like, yeah, there's been a few in and out of there, but it I don't know how to do it. Like just you being gay. Like just the simple fact that like the simple fact. Um but then, you know, they have the shop humor that is on Parvate Rowdy's shop humor. And when they learned I could throw it back just as well, oh my god, it went flying. I'm like, oh god, they are making more gay jokes than I am. And they it was truly a great experience. And um, this sevel still there in Ely that have since started volunteering for friends I made during that time, uh, from like Salt Lake and all that, who will pop in of the queer community and all that. Yeah, and it was just um a welcoming place, um, especially to spend during COVID. That was a lot to handle and all that, and we all just helped each other. It was just like, oh, we are all good people. One of my first things with Ely, and I give this volunteer a lot of credit. Um, this was uh one of the engineers, he's never been really outside living in that area. He worked for the mines, he did this a day job. He knew the railroad well, has always been involved in the railroad, and he didn't really have a lot of exposure to gay people or anything. Um, and so when I first started in Ely, he like was like, Hey, can I ask you a few questions? And I'm like, Oh, okay. Um, he's like, How do you want me to approach, you know, calling this, calling your partners, calling this? Like he was truly almost stressing himself out of he needed to know how to approach me, but came up in the most like considerate asking, uh, wanna conversation, which is the way life should be, but always isn't. Yeah. Um, and that was like the culture aspect of Ely Nevada, and it was truly, truly great. Um, and then I made Dirt famous. And then you made Dirt famous, and then Railroad Eric made himself famous in the railroad world by making a cat famous. And you forever altered the way that preservation rail markets. Yeah, and okay. You really did. I did. It's I again I talk about like the Polar Express on the formative like impact that had on Heritage Rail. I also think that just dirt and what you did with dirt. This is a cat. If you don't know about dirt, you should wherever you've been living. This is where the joke started going around that the gay man made everyone fall in love with his dirty pussy. Seriously. Seriously. But like, I don't like anyway. I could that could be a whole different segment about how Mount Rainier Scenic Railroads. Well, Eric doesn't really do a lot of our marketing. But I would argue that you are foundational to the way Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad markets. Yeah. Because of what you did. I mean, you do uh ask me, like, is this good? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what, like, I mean, in theory, Rowdy doesn't do our marketing either, but like he died, like his it's y'all have little fingerprints all over everything. And so, like, the reality is if I didn't truly have the drive to be myself, yeah, I may have not even got into this because going back to Durango and my parents and all that kind of stuff, now that you know how it's progressed and the friends I've made along the way and all that, um, I remember being in college on the phone call with my parents, and I've just met what was my first boyfriend at the time, but I didn't tell him it was my boyfriend. Oh, I've met this guy named Josh, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And talking to him, and I was like, oh, by the way, he's gay, and this and that. And, you know, it's really the first person I've met like me to talk. And I remember my dad saying on the phone, oh, if he's gay, you can't take him to the railroad. No one's gonna like him there. Like you can't that, you can't do that. No one's gonna like you, no one's gonna like this, no one's gonna like that. And the mental impacts. Like the fact that I just remember this small little phone conversation that was only like 15 minutes left. Well, when you love someone, something, right? And that's what you want to do with your life, like and the people you who love you, yeah, and you love back are telling you all this, um, the implications on your mental effects. That was huge. And there was a small point in my life that I didn't think you could be gay and were kind of railroad. Um, even though it's always been there. Suck that shit. Yeah, there was a small point where I did think that because I had no exposure. Yeah. You're like, we didn't have the TV shows, we didn't have this. And truly, what's happened is as family went this way, the railroad world has become more family than I've ever dreamed of having. And part of the reason why I wanted to do this podcast is to share that for anyone. Yeah, today you have heated rivalry, today you have a lot more shows, but um, it's still not easy. It's still not hard. And to say, like, hey, there is good stuff out there, and it is in places that you might be told that it won't be. So outside of your family, um, and that's a that's such a hard one. Is like, I want to hug little Eric and tell him it's gonna be okay. Like, especially like as a mom, like you don't know what your kids are gonna be. No, like you know you're gonna love them, um, and you want what's best for them. And I think it's so, you know, like oh god, 20 years ago, like you know, you would have been scared. Like it just the world was different. Oh, yeah. The world was different. The world was totally different. And I would just say there were times like, yeah, I've changed railroads because I did not feel comfortable. Well, and that's what I was gonna ask you. It's like aside from your family, like what are the shitty times like that you are comfortable sharing? I've never let's just say this, I've never been treated bad by a railroad itself. Um, because every railroad I've worked for has the gay people involved. Some have more than others, but some are willing to hide more of themselves to work in their places than others. Yeah. And so some places I've been, there were just points where, like, yeah, we could be ourselves internally at the railroad. But if I was dealing with the community outside and all that, I while it was never spoken, said, or this, you can feel the pressure that of everyone, everything that to hide, to put on the yeah, to put on the face. To put on the face, and that is exhausting. Yeah. Um, some people they like their little private life and all that. Um I'm very introverted in some ways, but I'm also very extroverted as I discovered myself. Like I have discovered I need my community outside. And I love getting my community involved with the railroad and doing all that. Um, I'm happy with them. The happy ads, I like to share everything. Um, that's that's why I I could survive Christmas. Yeah. Um, because I have my support backwards. Support systems out. And so, like negative when I don't have that. Yeah. It while I could still do all the job and still do that, the taxing toll at home. Yeah, of living in an environment where you can't be yourself. You can't be yourself, or if you do, like if I bring my partner Alex down, um, or have to go to a community event and like, oh, a plus one is invited. It's always a like, do you want to go? Do you should you go? This like you shouldn't have to make a decision of no do I bring my other half to an event that I have to go to where everyone expects a plus one. Yeah. And some places I lived and worked in um for a little while. Yes, I had to, we had to make have those conversations and all that, and it totally affects how you run the railroad. Um here we're just like, fuck yeah. I I mean, and that's I we have had those conversations. My staff is not politically correct. Oh yeah. They're probably never going to be, and no amount, if we had the world's finest HR department came in that did sensitivity training with everyone, everyone would be fired. We are a living, breathing version of blazing saddles every day. However, they will be incredibly politically incorrect and they better be fucking welcoming. Yeah. Right? Oh, yeah. And we discriminate equally. We hate everyone equally. That better be how it is. None of us like people, we just like trains. But we better just like people. Equally. I like some people. I mean exaggeration for emphasis. I know, I know. But what are the what are highlights? Like, what have been the best times of like, hey, I can be a gay man and work at a railroad and life works. Some of the best times the people I've met along the way, the people I called close friends, they all know who they are, and I know they were watching and all that. Here I bring certain fun groups down. I won't name the groups this time for privacy, but I bring certain fun groups that we all will have fun with. When I was in Maine on the Maine No Gauge, we did do a Pride event train. And I've been asked, like, oh, are you gonna do a Pride event train at Mount Rainier? And I was like, it would be fun, but my own, I can't do it just to do it. I need a purpose to do it. I need to like support the youth centers of Seattle or something to do it, and then I would totally do it. Um, just because I don't want to capitalize off my own like we do have a booth at Seattle Pride this year. We do. So come visit us. Um and it's to talk about this kind of stuff and be ourselves and all that. Um, but like in Maine, we did a Pride train because um Pride's a very not safe for work event in a lot of cities, Seattle's being one of them, and we all know that. Um Portland, Maine was um, there was a lot of um fun, sexy activities and all that, but there was not many family activities. Family activities. And Maine Nero Gauge had over half our family members were same-sex couples with kids. And so we actually did a family pride event. That's cool. And it was just come down, ride the train, make bracelets, have stickers, just be welcome. We flew the flag on the pride flag on the caboose, and people would cheer us. Yeah, like people would like totally yell and scream and cheer us in good ways uh as we passed by the beach just for doing that. And it was just a small weekend impact that was great. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, that's it. I mean, it has everything to do with how I run the railroad on my side of things. And yeah, y'all have a problem with it, get fucked. We'll send Rowdy after you with a bag of dicks. Send me. That too. I don't know. What about like my nonviolent liberal? Well, I don't know. I'll give you a really stern glance and then kick you off the train. But I just had to throw a dick joke in there. I can't. The problem is, as a vegetarian, I can't eat. I can't eat dicks. That's a you problem. It's a me problem, but it's gonna become a work problem and a branding problem. If you're from dicks, we're looking for another sponsor. It's my boys love some dicks. Rapid fire in the news and questions with Eric and Bethon. So, my in the news, because I did not research railroad preservation news this week, is you are producing an incredibly cool gift shop item. I am. We will have mini Georges. Yes. Um, which are dog the dog squeaky toys, but they're also plushies and all that. It's a dog squeaky toy, it's our cat. So if you do not know, and if you have lived under a rock, we have two cats: Bernard Montgomery, who goes by Monty, and George S. Catton, who goes by George Georgie. And they're named after the World War II generals. They are, because and so George S. Cannon will have a little helmet with the Mount Rainier insignia on it, and his little jacket, and he will squeak. In Well, you have really revolutionized the railroad and done a tremendous amount of work. How does it feel to peak this early in your Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad career? You think it's the peak yet? It is the single best thing I have ever seen. Um, I mean, it feels good. I mean, the train squeaky toys are selling great to both dog owners and the local furry community. Hey. Um, shout out to them and all my friends at that one. Thank you for supporting our nonprofits. And none of them were dog owners. So the thing about Eric is um if he can make money, he's going to. I will. I will. Cold hard capitalism, sometimes to the point it makes me blush. However, we make money, we make money. Okay, moving on to questions. Um, are you the first gay dude who's worked at Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad? I am not. Absolutely not. Are you the first openly gay dude that's worked at Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad? No. I know some friends I've had who were here in the past were not out always at the time. Yeah. Um, but it they've always been here as much. I mean, you can't have all the stories of like Tiny and his whole campaign and all that. Yeah. Gay or straight without having some gays involved in a campaign where you know, some of the most influential people in Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad's history are in fact gay. I'm not gonna name names because I didn't ask permission, but gay dudes have been at the railroad for decades. No. Um boy, have this is a great question. Have you considered sending a volunteer or two to police academy and getting certified as railroad police? Can I go for the uniforms? We have. We have considered that. Um, I'm going to say again that we can't talk about all things security related on the internet anymore. And we had we had a comment on one of them. They were like, hey, we'd love a mile-by-mile like shadow to the railroad and access and what it looks like and and all the details. And I thought about it and I was like, that would be really cool to do. But from a security standpoint, right now, we can't live in the world. We just can't do that. And there was a reply, well, you can't live under a rock, or like you know, it wasn't that. It was a like respectful reply, but it was like, you can't live life in fear. We are not living life in fear. However, the incidents have not stopped. So at a certain point, you also need to be smart and not stupid. Yep. Right? This is we're not gonna make ourselves a victim. We're gonna protect everything we can, right? It's like if someone sexually assaults a woman and she's walking around at two in the morning in a short skirt, is it that person's fault that is committing the assault? Abs fucking literally. And they need to be treated appropriately. However, as a woman, there are also certain situations and incidents that I are like that I don't want to put myself in for my own safety. Particularly in the past when I was in my 20s and I lived a lot more life than I do now. Um, so we're not gonna talk about all of the security nitty-gritty. We get questions about cameras all the time, we get questions about how we protect ourselves. We're not gonna put that stuff on the internet. Sorry. Yeah, when we have something worth telling on those lines, we'll tell you. And sometimes we put things on the internet that like push buttons and see what happens. Shocking. I know. Um what is maintenance away working on these days? Everything, track wise, every little bit we can. Ties, ties, brush cutting. Ties, brush cutting. Ties, brush cutting. Yeah. A lot of track and ties, especially where trains are operating or where we want trains to operate. Yeah. Um they did a really another really big tie replacement program between Mineral and LB, and now they're gonna be moving on between LB and New Reliance some, but also LB and East Creek Junction to put the railroad to East Creek Junction back in service. Because our hospitality manager has all sorts of plans. I do, I do. So good plans. Yeah. Um, but they're working on ties, so we can do stuff like bring the polo car back, um, bring the 21 and over um car back so we can do some cooler stuff and all that kind of stuff. While I still nag liquor board stuff and try not to get them confused with the restaurant up the street. Yeah. Yeah. Um how are your grants going? That's a you one. I'm waiting. I'm here. I'm upright. I'm breathing. I drink enough for everyone. Our friends from the WWNF sent us three cases of Jocko Go. It's real energy, zero crash, balanced energy, increased focus, and supports memory. An anonymous former volunteer who volunteers with different railroads on the West Coast, uh, or East Coast. I'm on the West Coast, um, sent me a lovely message that was like, Are you eating real food? Are you drinking water? And I was like, Well, I'm drinking a lot of caffeine. So those people are enabling us. Um I'll just go drink my sido and have a good time out. So we're working on one grant that is a capital project grant for the museum, which would be pretty transformative, also because our hospitality manager has a lot of demands. I do, I'm very demanding. Very parking lots, bathrooms, lights. We are there's a lot of talk and planning and waiting for grants to come available and applying to get this side of the railroad open again for events and parking lot and additional trains, um, especially as we work on two locomotives and more passenger cars coming and need all that. Um, we haven't totally forgotten about the museum side of the railroad. It's just we're not in a place where we can work on it ourselves. Um, but part of the reasons why I was like, hey, we need to do stuff like go to pride and have a booth, is slowly we want to bring people back in that to help us take care of stuff as volunteers and rebuild the volunteer program. Yeah. But that's not all just playing with trains. Yeah, it's most of it is not playing with the trains. We want um to help grow a volunteer program to help take care of the museum, even if that also means someone helping coordinate that as a volunteer. Yeah, we need a volunteer volunteer coordinator because our volunteer program has suffered because our staff just can't keep up with the management of it. Um and you know, that's if my staff spends three hours getting ready for a volunteer work party where I have two people show up, like that time doesn't necessarily pan out because a lot of the lot of the volunteer projects aren't revenue generating, which sounds really cold and cynical. But we if I don't make a profit, we don't stay, if Eric doesn't make us money, we don't stay in business. No. So it's we need a volunteer, volunteer coordinator that can do things like help us with painting and landscaping projects and cleaning out the new shop. And very like, yeah, we'll throw all throw you on for a train ride. Sure. Um, and you'll get pretty much as many train rides as you want, but you may not be ever working on the trains or doing that skilled stuff. In an imperfect world is yeah, we don't know a lot of what we've had people reach out to do, but it's not something we can do with the way we're taking the railroad and the rest of the grants and operations. It's not where the needs of the business are. Um, we, you know, so um, like we have a lot of volunteer machinists where we have a really excellent machinist that by the time we set up the equipment and the, you know, you got you trained. By the time we get to Chris could have just done it, you could do it. It's it stinks, but it's we gotta make the railroad keep chugging along. Um and the reality is, yeah, if you're here long enough and you do bullshit with us after uh day painting buildings, then we get to know you better. Yeah. And that that's how a lot of places have moved into how you get involved with the other side of things. Yeah, trust is built and regularity, right? It's it's hard. I mean, so we we need like groups that can come in and do a giant painting party, a giant cleaning party. I mean, yeah. That would that would be our ideal. Um and then let's see. Uh oh, the last uh kind of hinted at the advantage of trucking over railroads in the USA and other stuff. What are your thoughts on nationalizing the railroads in the US? As a nonprofit organization, we're not gonna be overly political because that can get us in trouble. I will say that if we're going back to how our grant applications are coming, um, the current best case scenario uh with numbers that are given to us by the mills, if we are to get grant funding, have I put enough caveats on it where like if I'm knocking on wood, I'm crossing fingers, would be upwards of 83 cars of dimensional lumber a week. And that is a lot of trucks off the road. Oh, yeah. Um, that's not answering the question about nationalizing railroads. Um, we would probably need to bring Rowdy in for an alternative view. I don't know that Rowdy's gonna give an alternative view on that one either. Yeah, the railroad funding scheme in the US is messed up. Write your elected officials. Yeah. Inclusivity matters, your participation matters. Join your Rotary, your Eagles Club, your local service organization, and get to know your neighbors and have hard conversations with them about who they are and what they need out of life. It's true. Happy Pride. Happy Pride. Thanks for coming in. Come check us out at the table, the booth. We don't know where we'll be yet when we film this, but we're gonna be there. Yay! Eric might not. Who knows? I'll be around. Partying. And that wraps up this episode of Off the Rails. A huge thank you to our totally real, definitely not made up production crew. Sound designed by Microphone, catering by Cornelius Cobb, track maintenance provided by Rusty Switches, and marketing brilliance courtesy of souvenir. I'm your host, reminding you to keep your hands inside the train at all times, because around here, things always go off the rails.