Not Every Treasure is a Treasure

The "plow" before we ripped the wood off

Every collector collects junk, and a museum is no exception. Their back rooms and storage closets are full of the stuff.

And sometimes, you gotta toss something.

Let's be clear: No museum gets rid of stuff willy nilly. Every object has its place in history. If we are given something to keep, we keep it. That's the rule (although there's no rule that we have to take everything, either.)

And Union Station is no exception. Historical stuff is all valuable, but that value has to relate to our mission, which relates to Ogden's history, and Ogden's railroads or guns or business. It all ties together.

Unless it doesn't.

Which brings us to the old railroad car we just got rid of.

The thing was here when I started a year and a half ago, fire damaged and moldering. You saw it off to the south end of the station's railroad yard, outside the fence.

As best we could find out, the car was built probably 100 years ago, possibly as a tender for a steam locomotive. During World War II it was converted into a rotary snow plow for use at the Mina, Nevada, US Navy base.

Taking wood off the plow

That base gave it to the Tooele Army Depot, where it was also used as a snow plow until retired and donated to the Tooele Valley Railroad Museum. That museum deemed it surplus and, in 1993, sold it to the Heber Valley Railroad, which used it as a power car on passenger trains.

At some point -- nobody in Ogden remembers when -- the Heber folks decided they didn't want it and gave it to the Utah Railroad Museum, which is us at Union Station.

What we got was an orphan of a car, a wooden hulk, painted yellow, with no motor, no plow, no nothing, having little relevance to Ogden's history, Utah's history, or anything else. We stored it outside our rail yard, which meant it didn't even have the minimal security that offers.

There are some folks who think we should have restored it. The problem is, Union Station has numerous other cars that also need restoration, cars that have direct relevance to Utah and Ogden history. Those have to have priority.

Given that, plus our financial abilities, we came to the conclusion that this car was never going to rise to the top of the list. And even if we did restore it, what would it be ... an snow plow? An engine? A tender?

It was sitting on rails in sight of the St. Anne's Shelter's clients, easy temptation for anyone who needed a place to sleep and couldn't pass the "are you sober?" test at the shelter. People sleeping in it was a problem, and at least one time someone set a fire inside it to keep warm.

Inside it, on the wooden floor. Yeah.

Getting ready to load what's left

Sadly, the Ogden Fire Department was very prompt and saved the thing from destruction.

Last September I and some other volunteers decided to remove the wood from the thing. That would cut down on the fire danger and make it less inviting as a transient shelter. That still left the car's steel frame sitting, looking pretty ugly.

Some of us were all for calling the recycling center and selling it for scrap, but others said the car's trucks -- the wheel assemblies -- might have value to another museum. So we contacted several, and hoped.

Goldfield Nevada bit. The town, with a population of 300, has a nifty little historical society (click!) composed of folks who seem to like to collect old railroad cars.

I need to go to Goldfield. The town was founded in 1902 around several gold mines in the area and near Tonapah, 23 miles to the north. It boomed from nothing to more than 20,000 in six years.

By the early 1920s the population was on the downslide. The mines were playing out, costs to mine the gold were high, folks were leaking away. Fires in 1923 and 1924 destroyed huge chunks of the town and that was that.

Winching the car onto the flatbed

There's only about 300 left. The Google Maps view of the town (click)  shows a lot of vacant lots and a few buildings.

One of its members, John Eckman,  got hold of me last July and started working to take the car down. The deal was, he could have it free, but he had to come get it. He spent several months trying to arrange a volunteer with a truck who could come haul the thing down. The process is hard -- volunteers never have enough time, there's permits and costs -- and he finally gave up and just hired someone.

On our end, Ogden City was most cooperative, offering a crane or forklift, whatever was needed, to help load. Richard Brookins, Ogden's fleet manager, said he'd even go rent something if the city didn't have the right equipment, anything to help get rid of that car.

Two guys from Goldfield, Ron Young and Bob Patterson, finally made it to Ogden Oct. 15. They spent the afternoon getting the car ready to ship.

Loaded and ready to go.

Oct. 16, bright and early, Mark Westervelt, Capurro Trucking out of Reno, hit town with a special low-boy flatbed truck that has rails on it. It was the work of a couple hours to winch the old car onto the flatbed. Two guys from Ogden brought a forklift to help, the work went smoothly, nobody got hurt.

The car is there now, and long may it rest. Union Station's yard is free of an eyesore, which makes it possible for us to concentrate on things that deserve our attention more.

Union Station is very grateful to Richard Brookins, Ogden's fleet manager, for his help and support. Keeping Union Station's campus clean and free of garbage, and less inviting to transients and vandals, is an ongoing process but critical to the success of the station as a center for Ogden.

The Rich Legacy of European Browning Pistols

Leon Jones shows pattern pistol for early Browning pistols.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the pistol that started World War I was not stamped "Made in Japan."

It was a Belgian made FN 1910 Browning Automatic pistol that killed Archduke Ferdinand, but not the one that Union Station Foundation President Leon Jones was waving around Tuesday morning.

The FN 1910 (Fabrique Nationale is the Belgian company that still makes Browning guns today) that  Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year-old revolutionary wielded was one of five .32 calibre pistols that were made by the Belgian company and sent to Serbia as samples for the company agents to show around. One of the five apparently got into Princip's hands, the pistol performed with the legendary Browning efficiency, and the rest is history.

Jones was talking about that history Tuesday morning with the monthly meeting of the Browning Firearms Museum Gun Club. The club is an informal affair, meeting monthly (2nd Tuesday, 9 a.m.) at Union Station to talk about Browning funs.

Early pattern for the long line of Browning automatic
pistols, recently acquired by Union Station

Jones is a member of the Browning family (he married John Browning's granddaughter)  and an avid collector and student of the entire Browning production. It is because of Leon, and the Browning family, that Union Station has the premier collection of Browning firearms. Nobody else in the world has anything close.

Leon was discussing the history of Browning's long line of automatic pistols made and sold in Europe. He started off talking about a pistol brought to him by a collector in Provo 10 months ago. It looked like an FN 1910 pistol, but was crude, with no markings. Leon showed it to Bruce Browning, another descendent of John Browning, and they identified it as an early workup, of what eventually became a long line of successful automatic pistols. It would be safe to say that Browning is most identified with its automatic pistols.

This particular piece doesn't work, isn't even finished and was never meant to be. There's holes and filings that were filled in again. Essentially it was John Browning messing around in his shop, trying this and that to see what worked, so it provides a valuable insight into Browning's creative process.

Browning used the pattern to make a real gun, samples of which he took to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1987 to show the Colt people. There he met an agent for Fabrique Nationale who was in the US looking at the possibilities of his company making bicycles because the company's line of rifles wasn't selling. (This wasn't as desperate as it sounds today. In 1897 bicycles were a hot item, the iPod of their day).

Browning model FN 1900

The agent took Browning's sample pistol to Belgium, the company jumped on it, and the result was the FN 1899, a .32 calibre pistol that the Belgian Army liked, but suggested a couple changes, and then bought as the FN 1900.

That made Browning's fortune. "This pistol, there were at least one million of them made," Jones said. "This is the gun that made Browning a household name in Europe."

His example has a serial number in the 700,000 range. 

The next design Browning came up with, still using a blowback design, used what Leon said was the Browning 9mm long shell, or .38 cal. "This is the least successful as far as number made," he said. It just never caught on, although models of it were made in Sweden and labeled Husqvarna. It was the same as the FN but made in Sweden, shipped to the US and then changed from 9mm Browning Long to 9mm Browning Short, or .380 cal. 

Leon Jones shows an FN 1910

In 1910 Browning and FN finally produced the Model FN 1910, a compact .32 cal. pistol that sits neatly in your hand.

"One of the primary recollections of this gun is FN sent five of these out to Serbia, to their agents there, and one of them fell into the hands of Gravilo Princip," the revolutionary who used it to start World War I. 

Leon's own sample of the pistol was apparently made later, since the barrel says "Japan," on the side. Waving it around, Leon said "this is junk," noting they made the barrel out of pot metal.

In 1922 the folks living in Serbia. Croatia and Slovenia, the area later to be Jugoslavia, went to FN and asked it for a modified FN 1910. The result was the FN 1922 with a longer barrel, locking lug and internal differences. It was made specifically for police and military.

The FN1910. One like this started WWI

This gun is probably the most common FN pistol in the US because it was brought home by so many World War II GIs who captured them from enemy soldiers. During the war the Germans  occupied Belgium, took over the FN factory, and cranked out their own versions of the pistol after assembling as many as they could from existing parts. 

Interestingly, Leon's sample of this pistol was brought home by a GI who took it off an enemy in Vietnam. It's interesting to ponder the journey that pistol might have made, he said: Built in Belgium, taken to war by a German, captured by a Russian, transported to Vietnam and finally captured again and brought back to Ogden, where its designer originated.

The last gun Leon showed was the 9mm Parabellum, built specifically for the military. It uses a .38 cal round designed to have extra punch and was sold both by FN and under the Browning name.

Jones with the Browning Parabellum 

Spikers Gandy Dance Union Station!!!

The Spikers

The Spikers at the Chamber Ogden/Weber needed a new publicity photo, and what more natural than to shoot it at Union Station, home of a really spiffy replica of the original Golden Spike.

Also a place that used to be connected by rails to Promontory, home of the Golden Spike Historical Site where the original Golden Spike was driven.

OK, I beat that one to death.

Anyway, the Spikers, a couple dozen of them, turned out in all their be-pinned livery to array themselves on our Gandy Dancer, a self-propelled little rail device for getting down the rails, as made famous in such epic films as "Blazing Saddles" and "Oh Brother Where Art Thou."

My hat is off to Ryan Hadley of Masterpiece Images, whose job it was to herd those cats into position. As you can see, a fun time was had by all, especially when Ryan stopped taking pictures and they could play with the new toy.

The Spikers do pins the way Carter does pills.
Everyone said Cosmo Young had the most

Steve Jones, Union Station Foundation, and
Chamber director Dave Hardman chat.

Ryan Hadley directs the Spikers into position

Taking the shot.

Spikers learn how to Gandy Dance

And away they go.

YCC Battered Women Shelter Expansion a Lovely Success

Kids at the YCC share a message

I had the pleasure of visiting Your Community Connection's newly expanded battered women's shelter the other day, and what a huge improvement.

The shelter, as originally built, could only handle 30 residents, and no men.

Yes, there are battered men.

Julee Smith

The problem was growing acute, to the point the YCC, in Ogden, had to turn clients away. When you have someone fearing for their safety, finally able to get away, coming to you for help and refuge, the last thing you want to do is say "no."

And, no, they didn't. They used local hotels. It wasn't secure, it wasn't cheap, but they did what they had to do.

A couple years ago Julee Smith, the executive director, started a capital campaign. I was still working at the paper at the time and had the opportunity to write a few columns about the issue. Even sparked a few nice donations, including one of $30,000.

Which was great, but $30,000 doesn't buy you new bedrooms, or even many new beds.

Karen Thurber, a dear friend who retired from the Ogden Weber ATC a couple years ago, has real

Karen Thurber

skills as a fund raiser. She took the capital campaign on as a personal project, wringing money out of every foundation, donor and passer-bye she could grab hold of.  And $1.7 million later, they've got it.

The new extension was built over what used to be a garden in front of the YCC on Jefferson Avenue and 23rd Street. This gave them more room on the first floor for added programs, and the entire second floor for the expansion of the battered women's shelter.  Security was beefed up, facilities were improved, all a lot better.

I took a picture of some of the kids in the Head Start and Day Care programs holding a big "thank you" sign. Karen is sending copies of it to donors, which is nice.

Julee Smith models the new common room

Mostly, this shows what this community is capable of when the need is clear and deserving. They're still $17,000 short of the final goal, but that almost sounds like pocket change after what they're raised.

Mostly, it's just nice that they won't have to turn battered women away. Or even men.

As I left, I noticed a string of T-shirts with writing on them hung along the small walkway to the front door. The morning sun made the white of the shirts glow so the writing stood out.

Julee said the shirts are drawn by clients the shelter -- "survivors" she said. "We don't call them victims, we call them survivors."

They messages were of defiance and survival by the people that the YCC is helping live through horrible experiences, now with a new larger, better, more secure place to do it.