Working on the railroad

Construction was one of the exemptions of the governor's stay-at-home directive, which is why three men are building homes, and for the most part they're building them in their own homes. 

"It's a good way to get your mind off the Coronavirus," said Dave Colyer, who's constructing five miniature houses for the tie plant portion of the railroad display at the Paradise Center. Colyer, Marc Childress and Mac Hall, are working on several buildings for the 26-foot long display, located on the second floor of the center, which served as Paradise Elementary School from 1910 to 2013. A group of people from the Paradise School Preservation Committee, the nonprofit organization managing the Paradise Center, started working on a railroad display two years ago. The railroad display shares a room with an old school classroom. 

"The railroad made Paradise. If it wasn't for the railroad, Paradise wouldn't be here. The Northern Pacific even came up with the name for the town," said Colyer, who is in the process of making his fifth structure, a residential dwelling that housed a railroad employee. Colyer is no stranger to railroad operations in Paradise, where he grew up, attending Paradise Elementary School from 1962 to 1970 and working for the railroad from 1974 to 1982. Colyer did several jobs with the Northern Pacific Railroad, including loading treated ties, and working as a switchman, a motorman, and a door tender on a tie kiln. 

Colyer's father and grandfather were both employed by the railroad. His father, Jerry Colyer, was an employee for close to 40 years, working mostly in the tie plant. His father purchased one of the railroad's residential houses in the 1980s. It is now owned by Terry Caldwell and located just west of Paradise. Colyer's sister, Wanda Copp, owns another of the single family dwellings, which was moved near the Clark Fork River also just west of Paradise. His grandfather, Pat Cox, was a cook in the 1920s. 

Colyer and his family lived in the cookhouse for about four years and is one of the four buildings he's mostly done with. Each of the family dwellings are about four inches long. Colyer, the vice president of the Paradise School Preservation Committee, started working on the buildings in early March. Colyer said the buildings, which are HO train scale, are made of foam board. He uses a heavy black paper for the roof. Windows and doors will be painted on. 

Childress is working on three residential dwellings that were located next to the site of the tie plant. "I enjoy tedious, boring work and the resulting aching back and stiff neck when I have nothing else to do," said Childress, a Plains resident. Like the others, Childress uses diagrams and photos to help erect the dwellings, which ranged from nearly 30 to 47 feet long. Railroad house number one, which was 35x38 feet in real life, will be converted to a model size of 4.87x3.20 inches. House number two will be 6.25 inches long by 4.48 inches wide. His third dwelling will measure 4.13 inches by 2.1 inches.

The creators of the display had to make it in two sections, due to space restrictions. One will be 27 feet long and eight feet wide. It will house most of the estimated 70 feet of track. One of the largest buildings on the main display is an estimated 48-inch foot long roundhouse, a semicircular shaped facility for engines to be worked on or turned around. The roundhouse at Paradise operated from 1907 to 1937, said Benita Jo Hanson, author of the book "Milepost Zero," a history of the railroad in Paradise, and one of the display coordinators. Terry Christensen of Plains has been working on the roundhouse since the fall of 2018 and has about 300 hours into the project. He hopes to have it done by May next year. It is a museum quality kit with a back shop and 20 stalls. "As an advanced modeler, I decided to fabricate from scratch a foundation," said Christensen. "The first five stall unit is fully detailed and functional with lights and sound, whereas the other 15 stalls are further away from visitors and will not be completely detailed on the inside," he added. 

Hanson said the Paradise roundhouse was one of the biggest ones on the railroad line. "Paradise was the division point between the Idaho Division and the Rocky Mountain Division where train crews and cabooses changed," said Hanson, who did much research on the buildings and what the Paradise depot and town looked like in the 1930s. Hanson's father, Butch McNeeley, worked at the plant for 20 years. She attended Paradise Elementary School from 1952 to 1961 and of the 10 houses that are being built for the display, she and her family lived in two of them.

Rudi Boukal of Thompson Falls designed and constructed the custom display cases. Storyboards and photographs have been incorporated into the display to highlight important dates and events. Cheri Seli of Plains is working on a way to create a photo or a combination of photos for the background to represent the mountain setting behind Paradise. The display is being done by volunteers, donated material and money, along with grants from the Montana Historical Foundation and the Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association.

The tie plant section, which has about 90 feet of track, will have 23 buildings, including a 21-inch long representation of the retort structure, the main building at the tie plant and where the untreated ties went through a boring machine before being pressure treated with a mixture of creosote and number two burner oil. The ties were usually moved around on trams, a cart that ran on a narrower gauge rail. Colyer has a model tram in a display case at the center. 

"We are now thinking that perhaps we can find someone adept at using a 3D printer who can take Dave's tram car and duplicate it, reducing its size equivalent to HO size, which would carry the ties on the tracks," said Hanson. Colyer said he'd like to have 45 trams made for the display. Since there was always cinder on the ground when the tie plant was in operation, he'd like to get real pieces of cinder, crush it and place it around the tie plant display. They also plan to have some 9,000 one-inch long railroad ties strategically placed throughout the display.

The tie plant was destroyed by fire 28 years ago. One of the railroad artifacts at the center is Colyer's hardhat he was wearing on the day of the fire, complete with black specks of burned creosote from the fire. The center has a dozen railroad artifacts that range from a caboose oil lantern to a pickaroon, a tool used to move railroad ties. Charles and Jan Oelschlager of Plains donated a three-wheel cart that a night watchman used to go up and down the rail during his rounds.  

The railroad display will eventually have other reproductions of Paradise buildings of that period, such as The Beanery, a restaurant, the train depot, the NP Hotel, the Paradise Mercantile, and other "iconic" businesses, including the school, according to Hanson, who added they want the model structures to be as historically correct as possible. 

The group has already purchased HO gauge trains, along with an assortment of scale model landscaping items. Members of the group made four half-inch fire hose cart sheds. Colyer used old car filters, painted black, to simulate storage tanks that held creosote and number two burner oil.

Hanson said the exhibit is a way of honoring the people of Paradise. "The railroad exhibits are just one other facet of the heritage of the area for which the Paradise Center has attempted to show appreciation," said Hanson, who now lives in Plains. "This is a way to preserve part of the town's history," said Colyer. "It's going to be a real eye catcher. I think the center is going to be the number one attraction in Sanders County," he said.