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Let the Austin Steam Train Association Take You Back in Time!
Mon, May 4, 2015 1:57 PM

The Austin Steam Train Association museum venues can be grouped and discussed in the following overlapping categories as any particular grant request warrants:

Static history components: Railroad Museum in the ASTA office complex, exhibits in the Horse Car, and historic objects and photographs in the Burnet Depot

Living history: the train and most especially porter-style service in the lounge cars, and the 1912 Bertram Depot staffed by an ASTA volunteer to explain its components and operations

Two historic structures: Bertram Depot (1912) and Gulf Oil Warehouse Building (1920s) beside the tracks near the depot in Bertram

Five museum components: the train, Railroad Museum in ASTA office complex, exhibits in the Horse car, Bertram Depot and contents, Burnet Depot exhibits, Gulf Warehouse Building in Bertram (building only)

AWARDS

Recognizing ASTA's achievement in bringing the Austin & Texas Central excursion train to life, the Heritage Society of Austin on February 24, 1992, bestowed on ASTA the Community Service Award for Significant Contributions in Support of the Cause of Historic Preservation.

Late in 1991 or early in 1992, the Summerlee Foundation, a granting body dedicated to the research, promotion, preservation, and documentation of all facets of Texas history, made an award to ASTA for research and writing of the first tour booklet for the train.

THE TRAIN

The trains we run offer a museum experience in three ways. First, the cars in which the passengers ride, which date between the 1920s and 1950, introduce riders to the technology and comfort of their day. Second, the service provided, especially in the lounge cars, mimics the service offered by fulltime staff of mainline railroads when they ran these cars in mainline revenue service. Third, the printed brochure provided to passengers for free and the elaborate guidebook to the train and route give riders and museum visitors a substantial understanding of historic railroading and the contemporary ASTA operation.

The commuter coaches constructed in the 1920s by the Pennsylvania Railroad to run in the northeast exhibit the technology of nearly a century ago and provide the feeling felt by those for whom riding trains was an every-day experience as common as the carpool in our time. The windows open in these cars, allowing whatever is stirred up by the passing of the train to come in, those days the soot produced by the steam engine. At the same time, providing the full range of smells and sounds, these cars commonly attract riders who want to experience as fully as possible the rail travel experience of a century ago.

Steamlined coaches designed for climate-controlled, long-distance travel exhibit the advance in comfort of rail travel of the years preceding and following World War II.

Cars with sleeping compartments exhibit the ingenious design that afforded the lone traveler a bed, closet, personal sink and toilet facilities, three levels of lighting and the ability to control both temperature and airflow in the compartment. The compactness of facilities in airplanes have nothing on the prior compactness of a broader array of facilities in passenger cars.

Lounge and sleeper-lounge cars exhibit the height of luxury of rail travel of the period. The City of Chicago, a lounge-sleeper, contrasts the comfort provided to passengers with the Spartan conditions provided railroad employees who, for sleeping on long-distance runs, were afforded three narrow bunks stacked one above the other in an area called a "dormitory." In the kitchen of this, our one car with a galley, passengers can appreciate both the compact design that puts every cabinet, refrigerator space, the ice bin, the stove, the sinks, and the dishes all within reach requiring no more than half a step from the center. The word-burning stove, that we do not use for cooking and baking, is a marvel in its own right.

Motive power pulling ASTA trains began with Southern Pacific steam engine No. 786. Outshopped from the American Locomotive Works plant in Dunkirk, New York, in 1916, this Mikado-type engine, mid-size when it was built, exposes passengers and visitors to a technology of locomotion that exists only as a museum experience. The only steam engines operating in the United States today belong to operations as ours. Because steam engines are expensive and labor intensive to maintain and operate, few excursion railroads run them as regularly as we did before an old crack in the cylinder saddle supporting the front end of the engine widened beyond continuing repair. Historically, this engine operated in Texas and Louisiana, and visited Austin during its active life. It was the effort to restore and run this engine that began what became the Austin Steam Train Association and the Austin & Texas Central Railroad.

The RS-15 (road-switcher) diesel No. 442 that has hauled our trains since 2000 is the last of its class still operating. The historical relic was built in 1960, also by the American Locomotive Works. While large moving parts of a steam engine are readily visible under the engine, the energy that drives the wheels of the diesel is invisible. Because steam engines are so alien to most passengers, describing the operation of the diesel engine in comparison to that of the steam engine provides a ready museum-moment learning environment.

Beyond the experience of riding in the train, exhibits exist outside of it along the track. Specifically large chunks of granite lie along the A&TC route. Those that are rectangular in shape and have two channels carved into them were headed to Austin to be building blocks for the Texas State Capitol. Weighing around ten tons each, these blocks that fell off the train cars have been left just where they fell. These fell between 1885 and 1888. Other blocks that have no discernable shape were quarried at Granite Mountain near Marble Falls and sent down the tracks to be part of the sea wall built on Galveston Island after the devastating hurricane of September, 1900, or for use in other construction projects.

In the best tradition of history museums, ASTA provides all riders with a "Welcome Aboard" brochure that describes points of interest along the track between Cedar Park and Burnet.

In addition, we have published a full-color, heavily illustrated guide for sale to passengers and visitors. Along the Granite and Iron Route: A Guide to the Hill Country's Historic Excursion Railroad (2011) describes the train—car-by-car, engine by engine, sites along our route between Cedar Park and Burnet, the story of railroads that served Austin and the two downtown depots cattycorner across the street from each other where they stopped, the history of the Austin Steam Train Association, the history of the Bertram Depot, and the Hill Country geology and landscape through which the A&TC runs.

Beyond the obvious community for which the work was written, the booklet was designed for use by local teachers to develop enrichment programs related to the train and railroading.

Texas Hill Country Magazine