Woodland Park Memories #6

During my time at Woodland Park, it was an open joke as to just how many pictures and movies that I was at least a bit player in. Sometimes it seemed that every family had a camera and many had those new fangled Kodak Super 8 mm movie cameras. I sure wish I had a small sample of those pictures now.

Families, especially fathers with those new movie cameras would go to great lengths to get that perfect shot of their little darlings waving as the train went by. I'd find parents climbing fences, hiding under the bridge supports, and sometimes standing up in the moving train all to get better angles of their kids day at the park. (That last drew a reprimand).

Day's would go by with nothing out of the normal range as far as the people were concerned. Normal in the open park sense meant folks rushing your train at the station for a perfect seat, people running to get past you as you entered the station, kids trying to wreck you, just the routine.

At that time Woodland Park Zoo didn't have a entrance fee, and it was basically open to anyone all of the time. Well and good, but it did create a lot of unaccompanied children to be wary off. Most folks visiting the park were great, but there were often a few percentage points worth of mischief makers.

People would attempt to jump on the train without a ticket pretty often. More than a few got away with it if they did it at the station, during a slow to medium busy day when I was both engineer as well as the ticket taker. There were no passenger holding areas, fenced or otherwise, just the open platform area. On really busy days, I'd have one, or even 2 other workers who would handle the job of taking tickets so that I could make more runs during the day. On some of those days, I rarely left my cab completely and seldom had a lunch break. Those extra hands also helped advise the people waiting to stand back as I came into the station and discouraged free loaders.

At most, there were 2 of us that were OK'd for train engineer duty. When one of us was not driving the train, he (no girls ever worked the park rides during my time), would likely be doing maintenance work on one ride or other, or would circulate around the other rides giving lunch or break relief.

At other times, a more serious situation could arise when kids would try to jump on the moving train somewhere out on the run. This was very dangerous, as while the train was small, a trip or fall could easily do serious injury to the child.  When I noticed this going on, (I likely missed a lot, can't look backwards all the time), I would stop the train and go back and confront the kids. Most often they would head out as fast as they could run, but once in a while they stuck around and I made a point to tell them how dangerous this as. That usually stopped the problem, at least with that batch of kids.

What happened once in a while was if one group of kids made it onto the train, like aq virus, they would form a posse and have groups of friends doing this all over the place. This called for a shotgun rider on the back of the last car, the 'observation' car with a rounded rear end with a flat surface on top. I'd ask the ticket helper or if I didn't have one, I'd ask one of the other workers to take a couple of runs with me to calm things down. The deterrent effect of this worked well, and gave the shotgun worker a chance to break his routine by running around the park after the would be Jesse James gangs.

Parents, gotta love em. One day, during the period of the leaking fluid coupling described earlier, some family was walking around the front of the train to walk down into the amusement area. This was not a regular entrance, but enough folks did go down the hill separating the track grade from the (lower) Kiddeland level that it wasn't worth any effort to stop it as long as the train wasn't moving.

One day, and I swear this is a true story, a father yelled his kids name with more then a bit of panic in his voice, and literally snatched him off of the ground as he was walking around the front of the engine, after his train ride, as he heading down to the park. The father then proceeded to yell at his kid to say just how dangerous that was. I thought at first his concern was for his kid to be in front of the idling engine, but read on.

The father said that he could be killed stepping onto the tracks as the train was electric! I guess the father had model trains at home, and figured that's how we did it too. Yep, running lethal high voltage on the two rail track running for a couple of miles through a unfenced public park, that's what we do! He must have figured that we had a great imitation sound system to replicate the twin gas engine noises and a movie set quality smoke and fume generator to pretend we had oily smells and exhaust fumes coming from the engines. Those Wisconsin's have a great working sound, and I shake my head and relate that story often.

I didn't have the heart to interfere. He was heading out of the park anyway. I can assure you with some confidence say that we never, ever, electrocuted anyone at the park with the train rails.

(More Later)

Dad