Basic Training in Poway : Restored Locomotive a Crowd-Pleaser

In the early 1900s, it carried rock. In the mid-1950s, it pulled trains to their demise. Today, it carries babies and brides.

The Poway-Midland Railroad’s star attraction, a 1907 Baldwin No. 3 locomotive, has an eclectic history and a buoyant bottom line.

Operating just nine hours a week, the railroad at Old Poway Park last year had a surplus of $8,870, the railroad reported. All profits are invested in maintaining the train and restoring other rail cars.

Poway-Midland volunteers, who maintain the city-owned train, also plan to open a museum and an interpretive center.

“With the interest that the public has shown in that thing, it could operate on a 24-hour basis . . . but we wouldn’t,” said Vic Hengeveld, a volunteer conductor. “The interest has been phenomenal.”

Old No. 3 owes its life to Hengeveld and his group of volunteers.

Prompted by his grandson’s desire to ride it, Hengeveld in 1991 organized the Poway-Midland Railroad Volunteers Inc., a nonprofit group that restored the dilapidated locomotive. The group has 100 members.

When the first volunteers started, termites lived in the locomotive’s wood, and its metal long ago had rusted.

“We were told by the ‘experts’ that it was impossible,” Hengeveld said. “It was derelict.”

Other volunteers remember No. 3 in equally blunt and abysmal terms.

“It was just about scrap itself,” volunteer Gary Steinweg said.

The city inherited the train in 1987 when Poway bought the land for Old Poway Park from the widow of Col. John S. Porter. The Porters lived on the site of what today is the park, and the colonel operated the train from time to time until his death in 1979. Porter had purchased the locomotive, the tender, the passenger car and the tracks in 1966 after former owner Charles Pollard died.

Pollard bought the locomotive in 1960 and brought it to Vista from the San Francisco Bay area. In Northern California, the locomotive first had been used to haul rock to crushing mills and then to pull other engines to their doom as scrap metal.

Volunteers spent two years restoring the locomotive, which roared to life from its decade-plus slumber on July 4, 1993, chugging along the railroad track encircling Old Poway Park.

Since its first trip around the park, the Poway Midland Railroad has delivered a bride to her wedding and introduced toddlers to something they only knew from “Thomas the Tank Engine” books and a PBS show by the same name.

“It’s the only Baldwin running in the U.S.,” said Ladonna Green, who oversees the park’s historic buildings. “It’s the only steam engine running in San Diego County.”

Volunteers operate the railroad and spend a total of 900 hours a month maintaining the train and restoring other rail cars, Steinweg said.

“You get a glimpse of turn-of-the-century history,” he said.

When operating, the train runs Saturdays, Sundays and most holidays. More than 1,300 people rode the Poway-Midland Railroad on July 4 alone.

Volunteers just purchased an 1894 yellow trolley car that reportedly was used in the movie version of “Hello, Dolly.” With the trolley and their ongoing work running the railroad, the group continually seeks more volunteers.

“We’re getting so much community support,” said volunteer Chuck Cross. “Some people say it’s one of the best things the city’s ever done.”