Full steam ahead for Railtown volunteer

Ron Sloan, 74, of Twain Harte, volunteers his time repairing locomotives at Railtown 1897 State Historic Park in Jamestown. Here, he sits in the locomotive fireman’s seat. Maggie Beck/The Union Democrat, copyright 2009

Twain Harte resident Ron Sloan, 74, quietly calls from amid the beast he works on.
 

The only other sound is water dripping onto the barn’s packed floor. It’s spilling over the 4,000-gallon tender on Engine No. 2.

Sloan emerges, looking the part of a railroad buff with a cap and overalls, his gloves sodden in oil.

He is a volunteer at Railtown 1897 State Historic Park in Jamestown, which offers tours and rides on its trains. As such, Sloan works to patch up the oft-ailing locomotive.

"It needs a lot of maintenance,” he says, a smile peeking out from under his mustache.

The locomotive’s most recent casualty has taken more than a month to fix, he says. The frame the wheels rest on was beginning to grind when it went around corners.

The park has been running a diesel engine in its stead.

The team who worked on it is ready to fire it up again Friday, hoping it will be ready for this weekend’s clusters of tourists eager to ride the cars it pulls.

The locomotive was built in 1922, originally for hauling lumber out of Sutter Falls near Oroville. The Sierra Railroad took it over in the early ‘70s after a dam was built in Oroville and resulted in the flooding of timberland.

Years of hard work have worn on the engine, and it shows after its weekend shifts.

“There’s always something to do the next week to fix it up again,” Sloan says.

It’s work that Sloan enjoys, maybe for the massiveness of the engines he tinkers on, and a bit for the camaraderie, too, he muses.

It harkens back to his first job at age 20, as a locomotive fireman. A fireman on an engine is responsible for regulating the fire and water to keep the steam at an appropriate level.

The fire turns water to steam, which powers an engine. 

Sloan grew up in the Spokane area on a dairy farm. He went to work for the railroad in 1955 and spent nine years running trips, mostly out of Spokane and Portland.

That tenure ended in 1963 when the railroad company bought out his seniority. He could have stayed on, stripped of his title, but he chose to use the money to go to school.    

He studied at Brooks Institute, a renowned photography school in Santa Barbara. Sloan worked in various photography positions for about 12 years before he started his own business in Palo Alto.   

His work included mainly industrial and commercial photography.

In the meantime, he also served as a police reserve officer for 23 years.

He volunteered with a group of men in the Bay Area, restoring an engine in Redwood City. He also served as a locomotive fireman on trips to Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo during his 16 years there.

In 1999, he retired with his wife, Ann Sloan, to Twain Harte.

That same year, he sought to continue his railroad work, so he volunteered to join the team at Railtown. He comes down on Tuesdays and works on the locomotive with a group of about four men who maintain the locomotives.

“We really enjoy working together,” he says.

The about 135 active volunteers at the park are pivotal to its ability to function, says George Sapp, the railroad restoration lead worker.

“We couldn’t do it without them,” he says.

Sloan is very dependable and trustworthy, he says.

“He just keeps showing up,” Sapp adds.

Sloan often works with another volunteer, Dan Maher, and the two of them are “like a salt and pepper shaker set,” Sapp says.

They seem to be always working on the latest problem with the locomotive, he says.

“They just never give up,” he says. “It’s awesome.”

Working once a week, Sloan gets the chance to do some of the locomotive fireman work he did in his youth.

It allows him enough time to volunteer on Saturdays with the U.S. Forest Service monitoring off-highway vehicle use.

“I try to keep them from doing all the things they’re not supposed to do,” he says.

His volunteer time still leaves him room for other interests, since it’s only two days a week, Sloan says.  

“That’s a lot of time to play golf,” he says.