Despite a few hangovers that this train exacerbated, the Texas State Railroad still needs saving.
A lot of things have been on my mind lately and I have not closely followed the monetary woes that the Texas state park system has had. Funding the parks to in order to keep them up and running has been, at best, death sucking on a Lifesaver in recent years. This statement by the Texas Sierra Club’s Ken Kramer kind of sums up the history of the park funding mess.
In particular, I had not known that the future was so bleak for the Texas State Railroad.
The railroad operates vintage steam-powered locomotives and passenger cars that take visitors on a 50-mile round trip through the Neches River basin and some of the most beautiful forest land in East Texas. Passengers can board the train at depots either in Rusk or Palestine. It’s a genuine piece of rolling history and traveling on the train gives one a feel that they are back in time before Al-Quida, the TSA, cell phones, the Internet, Al Gore, etc.
My friend Waldo, before his untimely death more than seven years ago, had a camphouse on some 200 acres just across U.S. Hwy. 84 from where the Texas State Railroad runs outside the tiny town of Maydelle. Waldo along with me and a few of our friends would go to the camp — Camp Waldo — a few times a year for some drinking, telling tall tales and just generally acting out our inner yahoos. There were a few times on Sunday mornings, I would be awakened with a hangover from the lonesome sound of the locomotive whistle as the TSRR would be chugging by.
Once, I rode the train for a story I wrote for a paper I was working for at the time. I had written a column prior to that story about the train waking us up, although it really wasn’t that bad. The park superintendent to whom I was setting up the train ride for my story said the train crews had kind of been offended by my column — and the notion that the train had awakened us.
“They (the crew) kind of figured people should be awake by 11 o’clock on Sunday morning,” the then park superintendent told me.
We pretended to bitch about being awakened by the train. But in reality, at least for me, I thought life could be a whole hell of a lot worse than waking up to the sound of an ancient steam locomotive lumbering through the Pineywoods of East Texas. It turns out I was right, of course, Waldo died and his property was sold. Thus we (my friends and I) lost both a friend and a hell of a place to get away from whatever it was we needed to get away from at the time.
Yes, a lot of my reasons for wanting the Texas State Railroad to survive are sentimental. All the reasons are in fact. But it just doesn’t seem right to throw a piece of history and a chance to get out in the woods in the crapper.
A number of arguments could be made as to why the trains are a treasure. The railroad has been used for quite a number of movies, for example. Waldo told me of an experience in which he was somewhat annoyed involving the shooting of a movie.
Waldo said he was attempting to leave his camp one Sunday afternoon when he was blocked at his gate by a county mountie. It seems the shooting for the TV mini-series “Rough Riders” was taking place on the railroad across the road, so Waldo had to wait for an hour or so until the crew was finished before he could leave the camp. Oh well, such is the price of proximity to showbiz.
One may look right here to find out what efforts are being made to save the Texas State Railroad. Check it out. Sign a petition if you want. Go naked in front of the Capitol in Austin. (Why not?) The Texas State Railroad needs to be saved. We squander our past and our outdoors as it is.