A caboose brings up the rear of a train. (Photo by Art Smith)

A group of historical amusement park steam engines continue to work building up steam and doing what they were designed to do, haul people along carefully tended tracks.

These trains are far from the midway, the screams of roller coasters or the smell of cotton candy. The trains of the Bluebird and Western Railroad are a ways from most things when they operate on the half-mile, dog bone-shaped tracks at property owned by Bill Piggott along Braun Road near Belpre.

Recently Grady Smith, Chris Arnold and his son Shay were carefully polishing up the locomotives in preparation for a public running of the trains.

All the engines were at least a century old. They looked brand new as they were rolled down the track and connected to flatcars and cabooses.

The trains, and the men, all have stories to tell.

The brass bell on top of one of the steam engines. (Photo by Art Smith)

Engine 1 started life in 1901 hauling children and adults around the Silver Lake Amusement Park in Akron. People flooded to the park from Cleveland, arriving by train by the hundreds. The railroad — the full-size one — quit running to Silver Lake when War World I started. The park fell silent and was sold off in pieces. It would appear that Engine 1 might have blown its steam whistle for the last time. The engine was acquired by a group of men who stored it. In the 1980s it served as a project for Smith’s shop class at Marietta High School. It was later acquired by the Arnold family.

Smith has had a life-long interest in steam power. He remembers as a small boy watching the steam trains pass through Marietta and across the railroad bridge. As an adult, he is one of the volunteers that helps to open the bridge for passing large boats by using a giant tool to manually turn it. For a while he spent his summers working at the Cass Mountain Railroad in West Virginia, keeping the fires burning at night in the Shay engines that haul passengers up the mountain.

A Shay is a type of engine that uses gear instead of connecting rods to turn the wheels. They were used a lot in the logging industry.

Shay is also the first name of Shay Arnold, who you might say was born into the hobby, as was his dad, Chris.

“We grew up going to steam shows, my dad built some steam engines, I came from a family of machinists,” said Chris Arnold. “I have just always been interested in it.”

Steam blows out the side of a locomotive. (Photo by Art Smith)

“My father’s side has always been into live steam. My dad has been into locomotives,” added Shay. Together they have restored two of the engines that they run on the rails placed 15 inches apart. The track runs through a covered bridge as it crosses a stream twice along the half mile. The group has built flatcars that can be pulled behind the engines for passengers. Another son of Chris Arnold, Jared Arnold, built an extremely detailed Chessie System caboose to bring up the tail end of trains.

The trains all burn chunks of coal to heat the water that makes the steam that pushes the cylinders that turn the wheels that pull the train around the track. A few buckets of coal provide the fuel for the day of running. A water tower along a crossover siding provides the water to make steam.

Bound by the love of trains, the group of friends gathered at the tracks recently for the annual “Steam-Up” to share with everyone the power of steam, with three trains making the loop. A train arrived at the outdoor station every few minutes.

Shay Arnold prepares to enter a covered bridge along the half mile railroad. (Photo by Art Smith)

Chris Arnold pushes a rail car along the track while working to build a train. (Photo by Art Smith)

Jared Arnold shovels coal into the firebox of one of three engines. (Photo by Art Smtih)

Two trains stop to take on riders. (Photo by Art Smtih)

The cow catcher of one of the trains. (Photo by Art Smith)

Passengers ride behind an engine originally constructed to haul passengers at an Akron amusement park more than a century ago. (Photo by Art Smith)

Two engines make their way onto the main loop of track. (Photo by Art Smith)

Shay Arnold adds water to a tender of an engine. The water is turned into steam by a firebox that uses coal. (Photo by Art Smith)