 Spirit of Christmas can be brought to those children and the parents and the grandparents, the families, and being part of the Santa Train. It's one day a year that we get to give back. It's real heartwarming to see the traditions just keep coming on with all ages and that's what they do. They turn out as a family to see the Santa Train. It's not all about the gift that comes off. They get together as a family to see it. Well the Santa Train was initiated by the Kingsport Businessmen's Association in 1943 and basically all they did that first year was a guy dressed up like Santa Claus and several other guys and they got on the rear of the regularly scheduled passenger train from Elkhorn City that went all the way to Spartanburg, South Carolina then, but they went as far as Kingsport and at every stop and along the way they threw out candy. It's just a gesture of goodwill and is a way to promote the economic linkage with the tri-cetage. It was a good thing and so they had fun with it and so they did it the next year, the next year, and the next year. They called me for the 93. It had a couple of box cars and a car wand and that's when we went to Elkhorn, spent the night and come out there the next day on the Santa Claus train and it was a great feeling to see all them kids lined up on that train. It's the only Christmas most of them ever got and as a matter of fact they had little bonfires built up all along the railroad on Friday before we come back on Saturday. One thing that's really planted in my mind is when I was running the Santa Claus train with a little girl with big brown eyes looking straight up into my eyes when I went by. It was something amazing to her because she had her eyes wide open looking at me. I don't know, I just remember I cried after that. It's up and down emotions all day long. It was just an honor to get to do it. It was something not many people get to do. The Santa Claus train was a special train. It was getting well known all over the country and to be picked to for it I felt like I was on cloud nine. It made me proud to be a part of it. It was special. That Santa Claus train was the oldest special train that we had back then and I just felt the good Lord had blessed me. And this was just a unique experience. It was portrayed as by that time they ran out of Shelby. It was about a 110 mile Santa Claus parade and it really was and they threw gifts and candy and stuff all the way in route. I got modified I think around 2005 and they decided to just throw out gifts and candy and other things at the stops, pre-designated stops and that's what they do today. In 2015 I had the pleasure of working the train. I was one of the people on the train that year. That was my first experience with it. I had always heard about it. Never seen it. I'd never been on it until that year and that blew my mind and essentially I was hoping from that point on. The very first stop is when it hits you that the reality set in that like yeah it's work but this really means something. When you see those kids or even adults and you see them out there you realize that this is beyond a big corporation or it's just you know being tied to another human so it meant a lot from that point forward. This year was a milestone with the Clinchfield number 800 on the point of the train. Well the 800 was the Clinchfield's very first diesel electric locomotive. This was the beginning of the end of steam. I was amazed to find out that an upper management guy, Eric Hendrickson, was working with Jim and others to possibly secure the use of an SD-45 locomotive that could be repainted and re-lettered as a Clinchfield unit. But the 800 kept coming up in the discussion. It slowly but surely started coming together. The ownership of the locomotive had to be worked out. It was transferred ownership from the C&O Historical Society to a private entity, a guy named Ed Bowers. Ed graciously agreed to allow it to be repainted and so I guess a couple of months before the Santa train all the railfan buzz was hey they're taking 80-16 from Spencer to somewhere. And they were photo railfans were posting on Facebook and no one really knew. Well I was getting a lot of messages. Ron do you know anything about this? No not really. Don't really know because we were all, there were several folks that pledged to secrecy. I walked in the door and it was just, I just moved almost to tears. It was just right there. It was amazing. It was like all those years, 50 years had rolled back and that unit was sitting on the ready track in Irwin, ready to go north on 97. It was amazing. I couldn't believe it. I'd grown up around that engine back when I worked on the passenger trains. This car marshal was a good air and play on it and I'd ride it in a day time and when I got to be an engineer I've run it on presidential specials and excursions. It was just a joy to be on it and I never dreamed that they'd let me get on it. Oh it made me so so happy I almost had tears in my eyes just to look at it. It was wonderful. To see that 800, just like it's brand new, that is a wonderful job, painting and fixing it. Somebody made a great decision. Somebody really really brought back the life of the steaming of the engines on the Clutchfield Railroad. It was about trying to do something for the people in this area and that would be something special for them to remember things by and it would just be also be cool to be able to do it on the 75th anniversary because they had done something special on the 50th. So that pressure and then added with all the other just logistical pressures, it was fun but it was a lot of work behind the scenes and a lot of sleepless nights honestly. There was nights I couldn't sleep because I was so nervous about it to get it pulled off and it came down to really the last week you know to make sure I didn't know really until the last week that everything was going to pull together like it did and luckily it did. I mean everywhere you went everybody was buzzing about it and you know build up to it there was buzz, buzz, buzz and that probably made me the happiest to see everybody happy but it was a lot of people's hard work behind the scenes not just me and there was a ton of people behind the scenes that were making it happen and that started paying off right about Wednesday before the train ran is when things started kind of falling into line and I'm like okay it's certain certain happen. The excitement really started pouring in when we realized we were going to get the vintage. It was it's not a steam engine but it's one that came home to us in the 800 but it was neat to have those cars. I've been on both trains when they were on there years ago and it was neat for somebody that's been around a while as a volunteer to see that. Yeah I tried I chased that train all day long and I finally caught it after it was parked and I got my Christmas present by getting to crawl up the side of that thing and get in the cab while it was being refueled. I have probably seen the Santa train for about 55 years at least. It was just a big thing back then because you know we didn't have a whole lot and so we look forward to it every Saturday before Thanksgiving and it's been that tradition for 75 years and I can remember when I was nine years old running till I got he got out of sight catching whatever I could because I had brothers and sisters at home that I wanted to take stuff to. It's just been a tradition that I hope never ends. Coming here since probably before I can even remember since I was a child I'm 29 now so it's been every single year since then now I have three kids of my own and we all come every single year. It's as tradition as a Thanksgiving and Christmas for us. That's God's country over there going through those gorges and those mountain passes over there and seeing a mountain goat hanging on the side of the mountain over there. I mean it's just pure beauty and you know it's so easy to stand out and watch all that go by all day long. Well I can tell you that as the years have gone by and I've worked different positions on the train. I've got the best seat in the house right now and the best view as I come through the valleys and pull into those areas you're talking about. You can see the smiles and the excitement and the people that are working so hard to make that train happen and make it happen safely. I mean you think about the engineer that's up there driving that train with those thousands of people that he's driving through the middle of and he's trying to be as safe as he can. CSX has got their safety crews but to be back there on the back end and experience all that excitement you run on adrenaline all day long from six o'clock in the morning to three fifteen that afternoon. People on the back of that train, you know Frank, Santa's Elf, never leaves the back of that train. Santa never leaves the back of that train. They're out there all that time because they want to see the excitement of people and people that are on that track, wherever they are, expect to see Santa and I want to. And that's why you do it because it's part of what everybody expects and you're the one that's receiving the gift by seeing those people each year. To try to help the child in a high school that's contiguous to the Santa train route go to college that might not otherwise be able to go to college. We're not trying to help the A student that gets all the scholarships already. We're trying to make somebody, we choose a person each year of the Santa train scholarship committee that has exemplified trying to overcome adversity in their life. Despite that, they give back to their community, they're active in their school and they have the ability to stay in school and Domtar stepped up and has agreed to fund it for the next three years now I believe and I think they made a total five year commitment. Many years ago, of course, we did the Santa train print that Ron Flannery painted for us and we still have some of those left that we sell and 100% of those proceeds go to the scholarship fund. So I thought the poster idea that was right down is an exciting idea and they're really neat posters. And I thought, well, for the 75th anniversary we should have something special. So I reached out to Tyler Hardin and I said, hey, we're thinking about some ideas. We had already been sketching some stuff. He had been talking with Peyton and some other people and he was sketching ideas. And at that point he sent me like an idea of what he had and I said, okay, go with it. I'll see what I can do to get clearance on it. So it just kind of fell in our lap that way. And those have been received incredibly well. The Chamber is selling them for the scholarship fund for the Santa train and I mean they were, we put out one small ad about them being available and they were inundated with phone calls and they have been sent. My, when I, when I designed the posters, you know, when they were going to use them, I didn't really think they were going to sell them or do anything. I mean, I knew that they were going to print them, but I figured, oh, they'll just throw them off the train to kids or, you know, hand them out. I didn't know that it was going to be used for scholarship or that there was a scholarship until afterwards. Like immediately when I found that out, I figured out how much per poster they were getting, I immediately started calculating because I knew how much, how many they printed. It just, I was like, wow, this is going to change somebody's life. And to me, that's what really makes this not seem real because it was just a sketch. There's always this incorrect notion that comes mostly from folks who are not familiar with this operation at all, who see this as maybe a charity or a handout operation. It is not and it never has been. You know, people get offended when you call a charity train. We try to go out of our way at CSX to say it's not a charity train. So much that will tell people that. We're not giving out charity. This is just being good human beings and giving to other people. This is a gift from a large, multi-billion dollar corporation to people through communities that we serve. And we're trying to show that, hey, we can be human in carrying out tradition in an area of America that people need to see more often because it's beautiful and the people are beautiful. It's just goodwill. It's just a Santa Claus parade. It's a Santa Claus parade on rails. This is successful out of a sense of tradition. And the more the tradition endures, the more likely it's going to continue to be there. That's why the crowd's never diminished. In fact, they were up this year and I'm sure on the 76th running next year will it be something special? I have no idea. But I guarantee you that the same number of people will be there because it didn't matter. It's a train. It's Santa Claus. And this is what we do. This is what we do the weekend before Thanksgiving. It's just what we do. Santa Casia. You know, with great-grandmothers and holding that little baby, starting the tradition all over again. 25 years of blessing. Santa Casia. I noticed that no matter how many miles we've gone, how many stops we've made, you make sure to wave at every child that hollers your name. Everyone I can find and every grandmother that's on the front porch or daddy on his four-wheeler out there getting ready to go hunting. It's the spirit of giving. I'm so fulfilled. I'm the winner here. Thank you for all the volunteers and people that's in the area that make this all possible. Without a train, CSX and the Food City Stores and the thousands of volunteers, this 75-year tradition wouldn't be here.