Santa Train Delivers Gifts to Appalachian Trail

They were just two lines of steel laid down by the Clinchfield Railroad to carry coal cars through the Kentucky mountains. But on a recent Saturday, the rails might have been magnets, and the hill people iron shavings.

About 30,000 men, women and children made their way out of hollows and over ridges, traveling over footbridges and forest paths to collect along 110 miles of railroad track in the heart of coal country. A few mothers and fathers squatted around bonfires, sharing thermoses filled with hot drinks. Shortly after daybreak, the boys who had kept their ears to the cold rail heard a rumble and jumped up to announce, “He’s coming!”

Armful of Mittens

On the last car of the approaching train, R. D. Hubbard of Corona del Mar, Calif., dug his hands deep into a cardboard box and came up with an armful of red caps and mittens.

Hubbard owns a champion quarter horse who was running an important race in Los Angeles this particular day, but now the race was forgotten as children dived for the jump ropes, cap guns, mittens, candy bars, coloring books and other gifts pitched off the observation car by Hubbard and four other men--one of whom was Santa Claus.

The kids chased the train, scrambling back up after they tripped on crossties or the crushed rock that lines the railroad bed. Hubbard kept slinging the treats as fast as he could. Then, with a mighty blast of the whistle, the train moved on and the excited crowd disappeared around the bend. “Jingle Bell Rock” blared from speakers rigged to the train car.

Santa’s Helper

Hubbard returns each year to his former home of Kingsport, Tenn., to be one of Santa’s helpers on the Santa Train, which has made its annual run through the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee for 42 years.

Mountain boys and girls like Joshua Rasnick, 11, get their first glimpse of Santa Claus not in a department store, but on a moving train car. “I’ve been coming to see the Santa Train for more than 20 years,” said Joshua’s mother, Sherry Rasnick of Big Ridge, Va. “The train is a tradition in these hills.”

Hubbard, the 50-year-old chairman of the board of AFG Industries in Irvine, a glass manufacturing company, rode the train for the first time four years ago. He remembers handing a toy truck to a baby boy at one crossing deep in the hills. “I knew I’d never experienced anything like that before,” he said.

Since then, Hubbard has donated money to keep the train stocked with gifts. He’s helped out Kingsport Chamber of Commerce members with the year-round task of rounding up the two tons of toys, clothes and sweets they throw off the train each holiday season.

“After you’ve ridden the train, you get a feel for what they (the children) want. Every kid likes balls, so we bought every ball and bat in the area last year,” Hubbard said. Except for occasional shopping sprees like Hubbard’s, most of the Santa Train cargo is donated by manufacturers, businesses and individuals in various parts of the country.

When the manager of the Kingsport newspaper and a local hardware store owner came up with the idea of the Santa Train in 1943, the coal business was in decline and the families that lived along the route of the Santa Special were poor.

Winter Vigil

The Santa who has ridden the rails for 38 years (he retired last year), 79-year-old John Dudney, recalled that in the early days some of the children didn’t have adequate clothing to withstand the winter vigil. Employees of the Clinchfield Railroad (the line was taken over seven years ago by the Seabord Railroad) used to cut and split unused railroad ties for the families to burn while they were waiting for the train. Dudney said that one time a 4-year-old boy chased the Santa Special barefoot. Dudney took up a collection on board, and later mailed the boy’s parents money to buy him shoes.

The coal business has gone through good and bad times since then, but many miners are currently unemployed, and their villages are still isolated. The character of the Santa Train trip hasn’t changed much. This year’s Santa Claus, Frank Brogden, said, “I know in my heart that, for some of the families, whatever they get today is all they’re going to get.” Brogden is vice president for Tennessee Eastman (Kodak) Co. in Kingsport.

Not Enough to Go Around

Hubbard said that when he was a boy growing up in a family of eight in Kansas, there was never really enough to go around at holiday time. “It would have been nice to have something like this (the Santa Train) to look forward to,” he said.

Sam Fortune is an officer of the Seabord System Railroad so he doesn’t drive the trains much anymore. But today he was at the helm of the Santa Train wearing his best suit. There was a coffee can between his feet into which he occasionally spit tobacco juice.

“I feel very fortunate (to be engineer on the Santa Train),” he said. “I try to look nice for this.”

Fortune paused to radio the crew in the last car that he’d spotted some kids down the track: “A few more, Santa, right and left side. Over.”

When he saw children waving items such as plastic bags from the Piggly Wiggly market to signal the train, he let out the independent brake slightly, releasing a piercing hiss in the engineer’s compartment. At 34, Fortune is cheerful about the fact that he’s a little bit deaf from years of listening to this noise.

Fortune looked now and then out the side window at the children who strained for a glimpse of the guy who had the important job of engineer to Santa Claus. “The look in the eyes of the kids is truly worth all the time, effort and expense the railroad puts out,” he said.

To make way for Santa each year, the Seabord Railroad must reschedule the traffic that normally uses the track between Shelbiana, Ky., and Kingsport, Tenn. At times during the seven-hour run, the Santa Train passed half-mile-long stretches of coal cars--each car piled with more than 80 tons of coal--pulled over on a siding to let Santa pass.

Fortune was 4 or 5 when he first came out to meet the Santa Train, he said. Because he had two grandfathers and a father who worked for the railroad, it didn’t seem odd at all that Santa came to town riding the rails. The train has not entirely supplanted the usual Santa story in these parts, however.

“I always believed in reindeer,” Fortune said. “I always thought it was one of Santa Claus’ friends--you know, one of his helpers--that rode the train.”

Through the Tunnels

The locomotive chugged through tunnels blasted out of solid rock (there are 32 such tunnels along the route), and wound through forests of poplar, black walnut and buckeye. One moment there’d be a pristine hillside touched with the first bolt of sun to make it through the mist; the next there’d be a trash heap on the banks of the Clinch River, where a family’s unwanted refrigerators, televisions and, in one case, an old cement mixer mingled with the Kudzu vines that grew everywhere.

The train passed a falling-down cabin typical of Appalachia. It would have appeared beyond habitation, except for three pairs of button-up-the-front long johns hanging on a line, and two hound dogs scratching in unison on the porch.

Three small children crowded out the front door at the sound of the train and were showered with candy and Santa’s usual greeting: “Santa sees you there. Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas.”

Near Elkhorn City, the train passed huge coal bins and equipment on orange scaffolding. Santa waved up at the structure just in case a miner was standing there.

It passed tiny settlements like Bartlick, Splashdam, Kermit and Waycross (all in Virginia), and a hundred other places along the route where there were no towns or even houses--just people waiting.

And it wasn’t only children. There were plenty of adults and old people who trotted after the train and laughed in delight at the rain of candy and toys. Maynard Neece, a retired miner who’s lived his entire life in Dante, Va., came out to greet the train with his wife, Bonnie, 67.

Her 20th Santa Train

As the Santa Train raced nearer its destination, the families began to appear more affluent (there are industries and, therefore, jobs in Kingsport). Karen Castle, 25, brought her 2-year old son, Jason, to see his first Santa Train at the St. Paul, Va. stop. It was Karen Castle’s 20th Santa Train. Jason passed the time before the train pulled in by banging together two railroad spikes he’d found along the track.

Castle said she still remembers catching tablets of pink paper off the Santa Train as a child. (This year the helpers threw off quantities of yellow paper tablets). “And my sister got a big toy telephone from him (Santa) once,” she recalled.

Accompanying her was a friend, Vicki Salyer, 20. “This has been a big event for me ever since I was 6 years old,” Salyer said. She described herself as “a coal miner’s daughter” who is also married to a coal miner.

At the beginning of the run, the car had been packed to the ceiling with boxes, with room for only a narrow aisle down the center. Now Santa and his helpers began throwing entire boxes of goodies off the back of the train to get rid of the few items that remained.

By the time the train pulled into Kingsport--where five high school marching bands, a contingent of cheerleaders in Santa Claus hats and several thousand locals waited to greet them--the floor of the rear car was a mass of crushed candy, shredded wrappers and shattered toys and tree ornaments.

It was about time for Hubbard to head home, where he plans to spend Christmas with his wife (he has three grown children) at a Palm Desert resort.

He disembarked the Santa Train at Kingsport with a letter stuffed in the back pocket of his Jordache jeans. Inside was a list:

cabbage patch twins girls (pink)

tooth

upsy baby

teddy bears

make it bake it oven

Then, at the bottom of the page, the letter said: “I love you Santa. SUPRISE ME.”

All Hubbard knows is that the girl signed her name leanbethphillips and that she lives somewhere near Elkhorn City, Va.

With just that to go on, it’s a good bet that Santa will find Lean Beth Phillips this Christmas--with a little help from his crew member on the Santa Train, R. D. Hubbard.