Antonito and Virginia City Montana! Several days of material

[Ed Lowrance]

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[John Cole]

That first year working up at Alder Gulch was amazing! Other than working on the siding on the box cars and priming them we had moved the 4 box cars over on their pedestals freeing up the UTLX trucks, and re-roofed all four cars by Tuesday of the second week. Jana, (our local Montana Historical Society rep) said at the beginning of the first week that she had her doubts how much all those 'old folks' in the Friends could accomplish on her list. She said by the end of the first day of the first week she was worried that she had enough work planned for the Friends to do. (She was right). She clearly didn't know that Ed and Valley Lowrance who led and planned these 6 week work sessions over three years had done their homework and the Friends were equipped and ready!

On Wednesday we were looking for something to do with the rest of the week and thought we would tackle the roof on that big orange standard gauge car. Doing all of the prep work, replacing all of the rusted out tin on the top and painting that slurry roof paint to seal up all of the holes in that roof took a LONG TIME, because those long standard gauge heavyweight cars seem to go on FOREVER!

The next summer Art Randall led the teams that moved those big heavyweight monsters for about a fifth of a mile to their final location on snap track that the Friends made. What an accomplishment!