In Snoqualmie the trains run on timeless -- thanks to Jim Sackey

Originally published Saturday, August 28, 1999

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Jim Sackey grew up on the right side of the tracks. His home in Galesburg, Ill., was midway between the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy RR and the old Atcheston, Topeka & Santa Fe tracks.

Rights-of-way for the CB&Q, referred to by oldtimers and locals as "Cheapest, Best & Quickest," and the AT&SF crossed near Jim's home, midway between Peoria and the Mississippi River. Galesburg also was the site of huge rail classification yards and the country's largest gravity-humping facility.

And Jim, now 51, sometimes rode those trains when he was a boy, or watched them when he and a friend rode their bicycles down to the train station to pick up the Chicago newspapers for their paper routes. But Jim never dreamed he'd end up as a railroading man in Snoqualmie.

These days, all growed-up and on the aft end of a Navy career, Jim looks every bit the railroading man with his wire-rim spectacles and salt-and-pepper mustache. On weekdays he's in work denims and a starched denim pin-stripe cap. On weekends, when the Snoqualmie Valley Railway's "Cascade Foothills Limited" is running, Jim is decked out in a starched white shirt and tie, and dark conductor's uniform and cap.

Some guys play with model trains. Jim plays with the real thing, as head of visitor services at Snoqualmie's popular Northwest Railway Museum. Popular, as in more than 65,000 visitors last year, about 40 times the population of the town 56 miles east of Seattle.

Jim came here on a sort of one-way ticket.

"I'd been here while on furlough in the Navy and I liked all the trees, and the people. There was nothing back home in Galesburg but three graves and memories, and I sure didn't want any more cold winters!"

The Navy had given him more than a petty officer first class rating.

"For about 15 of my 20 years in the Navy, I was in tropical climates and all I saw was brown sand and palm trees. That might sound ideal to some people, but I don't even consider palms real trees. Not like what you have right outside the door here," he said, waving his hand in the direction of North Railroad Avenue.

Shortly after settling here, he began looking for work . . . quite unsuccessfully.

"So, to keep from going crazy, I joined the railway museum as a volunteer," Jim said. The entire operation, from the right-of-way and track and the 70-odd pieces of major rolling stock and the historic refurbished depot, is all pretty much kept going by volunteers. Jim is one of only five salaried staffers.

"The (job) opening became available a couple years ago, and I was lucky enough to be chosen," he said with a Cheshire cat grin. "This is a great place to work. Where else could I work where you get to talk to interesting people, you get to ride the train for free, and it's within walking distance (he lives six blocks away)."

Snoqualmie residents aren't exactly beating a path to the depot door.

"Almost everyone who comes here is from somewhere else,"Jim said. "Typically, local people don't come here unless they're being tour guides for relatives from out-of-town."

Jim rubs elbows with the locals when he makes regular short runs for coffee -- sort of like a steam locomotive taking on boiler water -- at the Snoqualmie Falls Candy Co. & Restaurant across the street.

Jim also functions as an unofficial Answer Man.

"I love history, and I love dealing with people. I've learned a whole lot about the Northwest and railroading in the last several years, but when someone asks me a stumper, I admit that I don't know the answer. And then I research it until I do."

Although he loves to talk trains . . . any kind of railroading, he emphasizes to visitors that the museum and rolling stock is mostly about Pacific Northwest railroading, hence the large number of logging engines and cars and even the odd-looking Northern Pacific snow-blowing engine currently being refurbished.

Jim is also chief clerk and floor-sweeper of the bookstore and the vintage 1890 depot/museum, which, he advises everyone who walks through the door, is on the King County, Washington State and United States registries of historic places.

As we're chatting, Jim fields a dozen or so questions from visitors strolling through the front door and browsing the extensive book and railroading historiana offerings. "No, I'm sorry," he tells several weekday visitors, "I can't sell you a ticket . . . but if you come back Saturday or Sunday morning, when the train is running, we'd be happy to sell you tickets."

And he hands them a schedule card with departure times for the Cascade Foothills Limited, a restored diesel that pulls coaches and open touring cars on the seven miles of restored right-of-way between Snoqualmie and North Bend, to the east.

Round-trip weekend fares are $7 for adults, $6 for anyone older than 62, and $5 for children 3 to 12.

Northwest Railway Museum, hard to miss on Railroad Avenue in downtown Snoqualmie. Depot/store open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., daily, through Labor Day. Train runs 11 a.m. through 4 p.m. (round-trips to North Bend). More information at: (425) 746-4025 or www.trainmuseum.org