News

Added a new Searchlights page which documents our Searchlight Signals project.

We are sad to report that BBCRC friend and supporter Jerry Miller has passed away, due to complications suffered from his exposure to Agent Orange during the US war in Vietnam. Jerry was a long-time Southern Pacific conductor (his RR handle was “Poopdeck”) and he was among the group of BBCRC friends who helped bring our BN caboose to Black Butte. He was a good man and a good railroader and will be missed by all of us.

The BBCRC would like to acquire a specific type of intermodal double stack well car (Thrall, “Husky stack” 48 foot, stand-alone square wheel well car) for preservation at our site. These cars were common on railroads in North American from the late 1980s through the 1990s and early 2000s. In recent years they have become increasingly rare as many have been converted to 40 foot cars or possibly scrapped. In November, 2014, the BBCRC board of directors reaffirmed our interest in moving forward with preservation of one of these cars and designated it one of our highest priorities for acquisition. Please let us know any of our friends and supporters can connect us with a possible source for a sale or donation of one of these cars to the BBCRC. Below is a photo of the type of well car we want to acquire:

The BBCRC is happy to announce that we will be donating a significant quantity (estimated 25 to 35 cords) of firewood to residents of the City of Weed through the Great Northern heating assistance program. The wood will go to those impacted by the Boles Fire as well as other lower-income, senior and disabled people. A work crew will be picking up and processing the firewood during the first week of December. The wood is coming from trees on our 50-acre property in the City of Weed where we have been thinning out overstocked forest areas and conducting fuels reduction work. Our forestry work has been funded in part by the Environmental Quality Improvement Program of the Natural Resources Conservation Service. For more info on our forestry restoration work see “www.bbcrc.org/forest.html“.

During September 12-14 we hosted our annual Fall Work and Music Party. We had a great turnout and made good progress on a number of projects — including the wiring and lighting of our first searchlight signal! We completed most construction on our new accessible restroom facility, hauled logs and cut tons of firewood, cleaned up old junk, finished the exterior painting of our office depot building, and built a shelter for our new cobb oven. Plus lots of other projects. On Friday evening we had a rocking Boxcar Music Show featuring Something on the Wing, Sharkpact, Hens Teeth, and all the way from Kansas City, Nature Boys. Saturday evening was Lance Schroeder’s Pest Habitats art show opening which featured both photographs and a walk around the land to look at the habitat sculptures Lance has built at Black Butte over the last six months. We then inaugurated the new oven with a pizza party, baking 17 pizzas! This was followed with more music by the Rail Yard Ghosts, Ryb Re, Firewitch, and Hera Has a Heart. Thanks to all the musicians who played and everyone who helped out over the weekend!

SEARCHLIGHT PROJECT UPDATE: Black Butte’s Indiegogo fundraising campaign for our searchlight signals project was a huge success! We raised almost $4000 to fund the mounting and installation of the signals as well as the wiring and electronics, including using solar power for some of the signals. We’ll be working on this over the next year and it is going to add a lot to the railroad ambiance around our compound. Thanks to everyone who helped contribute to the campaign! If you missed the opportunity to contribute to the campaign but would like to help out with our many other projects, you can do so by making cash contributions while at the BBCRC, by sending us a check, or via PayPal here on our website “www.bbcrc.org/helping.html“. Thanks so much to all of our supporters!

Our Railroad Days gathering during June 13-15 was very successful. We would like to thank everyone who came and helped out with the events, including all the musicians, cooks, photographers, the ‘Bo-Lympics Committee, and all the other people who made this a memorable event. We will be posting photos and links to the Images section of our site in the coming days.

Our Spring Work and Music Party held during May 15-18 was very successful. We would like to thank everyone who helped out, a huge amount of work was accomplished! This included moving forward on our outdoor cob pizza/bread oven, installing mounts for our searchlight signals, building the foundation for our office depot window expansion, firewood gathering and processing, trail building, initial work on the construction of a wheelchair-accessible porta-potty, getting our veggie garden up and running for the season, construction of gates for access roads on our property, installation of the antenna mount for our new ATCS train monitoring system, installation and modification of our new outdoor kitchen food storage cabinet, as well as a variety of other projects and activities. We would also like to thank all of the amazing musicians who helped entertain us over the weekend, including Hen’s Teeth, Pert’ Near Sandstone, Did is Dead, Healers, Something on a Wing, and Tallgrass. We will have some photos of the event up on the Images section of our site soon.

Today was the “cut-over” day for the new signals on Union Pacific at Black Butte. The classic searchlight style lights, which have been at Black Butte since the early 1960s, were taken down and more modern signals compatible with the coming “Positive Train Control” system were put into operation.