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The Railroad Man Rides Again
Another exciting Railroad Man adventure


THE RAILROAD MAN and I were off on another adventure. It was the middle of September and I had just finished an issue. I needed a couple of days off.

Don M. Scott, Railroad Man knew that. He always knows when I need a day off and how to convince me to take a day off even when I don't need one. For months he had wanted to retrace the path of the now defunct Southern Pacific Narrow Gauge, so we charted a course for the eastern edge of central California.

At this point I must stop to clarify something. It seems, whenever I write about an exciting railroad adventure or a presidential candidate, I write about the Railroad Man. Every lost soul I consider a close friend relishes high adventure. Yet the Railroad Man always wins the starring role. Why?

One reason:
First, he is better able than others to endure the physical and mental trauma our exciting adventures usually produce.
Second, the exciting adventures are always his idea and he forces me to go along on them.

But this time I voluntarily went on the trip because the Railroad Man had purchased a shiny new black pickup truck with terrific air conditioning, a plush, spacious camper shell, and a four-wheel drive perfect for destroying the delicate ecosystems of any area we might visit.

We packed the truck with cameras, camcorders, and two-way radios; sleeping bags, light clothing, and heavy weather gear; a dozen obnoxious audio tapes; enough rations for another Desert Storm invasion; an abundance of street, railroad, and topographical maps; a library on the S.P. Narrow Gauge; an ice chest; and a couple of shiny black Big Gulp 44-ounce plastic cups complete with insulation sleeves, nylon reinforced flexible straws, and two-way snap-down access caps.

We planned an early start. The Railroad Man arrived at a quarter past 11 in the morning and the first thing we did was get lost, about eight miles away in the San Fernando Valley.

By then it was lunch time. We stopped for sandwiches and loaded up on provisions at a supermarket. The Railroad Man's experience in exciting adventures has given him a remarkable sixth sense about such provisions so he wisely added to our rations a bag of Sun Chips, a box of Fig Newtons (the official snack food of exciting Railroad Man adventures), a gallon of sparkling orange flavored mineral water, a bag of ice, and a couple of bottles of pink lemonade mix.

By five in the afternoon we had consumed 88 ounces of orange mineral water and pink lemonade mix. We also had reached Keeler, the southern terminus of the S.P. Narrow Gauge.

Keeler was a mining town at the foot of what once had been a huge lake. At one time California's Owens Valley, from the eastern slope of the Sierras to the Nevada border, was a fairly lush farming and ranching area and steamboats used to ferry freight and passengers across the lake. Then land developers drained off all the water for Los Angeles. By the 1930s, Owens Lake completely had dried up leaving an enormous expanse of sand and the entire valley deteriorated into a desert.

About fifty people still live in Keeler. The S.P. tore up the rails in the 1960s but history moves slowly in the high desert. Many structures remain, including the depot, some in pretty good shape. Even though the tracks are gone, most of the roadbed still is visible. The Railroad Man and I took photographs.

By six o'clock it was time to move on. It had been a taxing day. We found rooms in Bishop 30 miles to the north and prepared for an even more strenuous effort the next day: We would invade Laws and discover the Lost City of Owenyo.

Laws is a seven minute drive northeast of Bishop. In the mid-1930s, after the S.P. had abandoned the old Carson & Colorado line into Nevada, Laws became the northern terminus of the narrow gauge. Now it is a museum and most of the track and structures remain. So does locomotive Number 9, an assortment of rolling stock, a beautiful A-frame turntable, and almost a dozen 1:1 scale archbar trucks the Southern Pacific apparently copied either from Bachmann, USA Trains, or LGB. The Railroad Man and I shot a roll of film apiece and assiduously inspected the train stuff. Then, as a sacrifice to the sacred gods of steam, we performed the secret railroad dance.

We left the museum curators, the other visitors, and most of the greater Bishop population reeling in stunned disbelief and proceeded on our quest for the Lost City of Owenyo, where the standard and narrow gauges once had interchanged.

Hours passed. We consulted maps to no avail. We forded washes and followed off-road trails only to end up back where we had started. And we ran low on gasoline. Finally, as we refilled the tank, the Railroad Man asked the attendant whether he had heard of the Lost City of Owenyo. The attendant replied. "Sure, just turn at the corner and the road will take you right there."

Twenty minutes later we reached the end of the paved road. To the right, familiar landmarks from the photos of Owenyo in our books. Ahead, nothing but rocky desert. To the left, some scarred earth and scattered junk.

The Railroad Man and I looked around and reluctantly faced the prospect of failure. But before the Railroad Man turned back, he wanted to take the pickup off-road just once more. He headed for a pile of rusty junk on the left and abruptly stopped. That was no junk. It was a pile of old rail sections!

"Al Akhbar!" shrieked the Railroad Man, his face flushed with enthusiasm. "We have found the Lost City!" In more subdued jubilation, I sipped ice-cold orange flavored pink lemonade from my 44 ounce Big Gulp cup and ate a Fig Newton. Of course we had.



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