September 2009 – Edition 53

All aboard the Jerrems Express! Enjoy.

(Sue has contributed articles to the Journal about her
trip to Lincolnshire,in the June 2006 Journal, and the
full size railway carriage and caboose (guard’s van)
and model railway in her garden, in the July 2007
Journal. Jerry, Sue’s late husband referred to in the
email, was the father and grandfather of some of our
readers. They will no doubt be interested in his
enthusiasm for railways and the photo which includes
him standing on the right.)
Hi Ray

Good to hear from you again. I still play with trains.

I recently came close to finishing the big Pullman (the
silver passenger car) as a library. It was either find a
place for my books or find a place for myself but we
were getting a bit crowded sharing space. I have to
finish the bathroom, but as it is only a short walk from
my house to the car, I put that off for now. The great
majority of my books are on the railroads, with
American history a close second. Now, medieval
history is where I have landed, particularly England,
and so the collection grows.

The story of the transcontinental railroad (that was its
common name here) was good. it must have been
hard to consolidate that story so briefly but you did a
great job. If you ever come across pictures of the old
Zig Zag in use, I would love to see them. The only two
pictures that I seemed to have gotten were the
locomotives. That Zig Zag would have been an
interesting ride I would think, however it must have
been tediously slow. Of course by the alternatives, it
was probably thought of as a godsend at the time.

I have included two pictures of a locomotive. This is an
actual 1876 Baldwin steam locomotive operating
today. It ran to that Central Pacific line you spoke about
at Palisades, Nevada from a mining town called
Eureka. It was a narrow gauge train, only 3 foot
instead of the typical 4’8″ of what we call standard
gauge in the U.S.

This is the locomotive’s significance rather just being
a contemporary of engine #119 that you showed in
your article: It belongs to a friend of Jerry’s and
mine. He bought it in deplorable shape, and then
with the help of a few friends, over about eight years,
he turned it into this magnificent beauty.

Both Jerry and I lent our assistance to the project from
the beginning, much to our pride. Of course the
genius behind the effort is attributed to the owner, who
restored it to the exact condition it was in when it was
delivered from the factory, down to the true gold leafing
decoration, the spun silver reflector in the headlight,
and rebuilding the American maple cab from the
original plans. Jerry and I went out to some of the
places where we ran it for special events after it was
completed. The one picture is of Jerry with the
owner, Dan (in the cab) at a Rail Fair, in Sacramento,
CA, the west coast terminus of the continental
railroad. At least once a year, I still help him haul it out
for running somewhere.

Sue

(Here is part of Ray’s reply to Sue, regarding the
time taken by trains to use the Zig Zag section of the
railway, which only had a single track):

“It would have taken a while for a train to go down or
up the Zig Zag due to the time taken for changing of
points at the end of each level and for the engine to
change ends, but at busy times trains would also
have had to wait their turn at the bottom or about 3
miles back from the top because there were no
means provided for trains to pass each other.

After the zig zags were taken out (there was a small
one at the Sydney end of the Blue Mountains also) the
travelling time of over five hours was more than
halved. Faster engines played a part in this also.
On the other hand, the journey of five hours was a vast
improvement on the previous situation for travellers,
who endured four day coach trips over rough roads
and the cost of overnight stays merely to cross the
Blue Mountains from Sydney.

Even more significantly, upon completion of the Zig
Zags a network of railway lines was soon constructed
throughout western New South Wales , enabling
goods to be taken to or from the fertile western areas
to Sydney in a day or two, replacing the bullock
wagons which could take weeks.

Editor’s Notes: Pictured dog, caboose and
Pullman in Sue’s garden.
Ray’s Additional Comments

Here are some more comments on the Trans
Continental Railway:

The photo of the tunnel shown in my previous article
shows the very hard granite rock which slowed down
the construction of the railway over Donner Pass.
I referred to the railway taking 60 miles (100
kilometres) to climb from Sacramento to Donner
Pass. Although this may seem to be a long distance,
the railway climbed almost 7000 feet and needed a
long distance to ascend that height.

My calculation is that the average gradient was 1:46,
which was quite steep for passenger trains in those
days. It also shows how ingenious the engineers
were in finding a route for such a long ascent.

Donnie,

Ray did a marvelous job on early rail transportation,
like the horse it’s a large part of history during that
period. Today we don’t appreciate what the train does
for us in material handling for our every day of life. I
would enjoy taking a long train ride again if I could, it’s
on the bucket list……

Again, the monthly journal is interesting and reminds
us of days gone by. Thank you………

Your Buddy,

Tom Haley

Several years ago my daughter Anita signed
me up for Facebook. At that stage there were about 5
other members of the Jerrems family who had
enlisted.

Recently Donald asked me about some of the
Jerrems people on Facebook, so I looked them up
and was amazed to find 41 entries under “Jerrems”.
Donald asked me whether there was a story in the
offing, so I sat down and tried to work out what I could
say about such a large number of entries 41.

The most obvious answer seemed to be that I should
say where the people fitted into the Jerrems family
tree, but I quickly realised that this would be a huge
task from the viewpoint that I would need to display
about 6 spreadsheets.

So I decided to take the easy way out by simply listing
them as descendants of the four brothers who
migrated to Australia in the 1850s (William George
Jerrems later migrated to the United States, the other
brothers stayed in Australia:
(1) Arthur Reginald Jerrems
Rhianna,
Russell, Des, Christoph, Nelson, Kathy, Heather,
Jesse, Hilary (McArtney).
(2) William George Jerrems
Stephanie, Jerry
V, Jacki, Steve, Cassandra, Cathy, Nick, Olivia, Sue,
Mia, Shawn, Jenny, Cris (Becker).
(3) Charles Jerrems Roger, me,
Miriam,
Rohan, Ari, Shelly.
(4) Robert Cane Jerrems Sacha,
Tate, Ben, Anna, Carol, Ken, Simon, Emma
(Risvanis).

Then I wondered if I could find some trivia. Here is the
result:
(a) Russell Jerrems is the most
enthusiastic person, with 3 separate entries.
(b) Olivia has the most friends (455),
closely followed by her sister Jacki with 454 (I
wonder if they are holding a competition?)
(c) Next is Ari, who is also the first in
the “male” stakes, with an impressive 363 friends, but
his sister Shelly (330) and 4th cousin
Heather (325) are not too far behind.
(d) Stephanie is doing well in the US
with 224 friends, but Tate is ahead of her with
249.
Tate’s brother Sacha has ground to make up
on his brother with 111.
Some of these people have been referred to in
previous Jerrems Journals. It should be noted that
Sacha and Tate were referred to in the
Journal of June 2007, however the reference to their
mother was incorrect. Their mother was Tamara (nee
Koenig), Lance’s first wife. I apologise for this error.

Here’s something to think about: How come you never
see a headline like ‘Psychic Wins Lottery’?