Farewell to our Founding
Father
World
War II Army Air Corp Veteran
On February 27, 2010 we lost one of
our greatest promoters of the live steam hobby, Robert “Bob”
Maynard, in his 91st year.
Bob may best be known to the live
steam community as the designer of the Clishay
engine. This marrying of the Shay
and Climax engines was designed and built for Bill Fitt as a birthday present
from his wife, Doris. This became a
serialized build project in Live Steam
Magazine. Bob designed it for
the first time builder who had minimal tools available, and it became an
extremely popular engine. His
building of the model towboat Omar,
from riding of the boat, taking movies, measuring the boat, then
building a museum model was a measure of his intensity for perfection.
Others may remember him best for his
fascinating and informative articles published in national magazines as far
back as 1950 (or earlier) and as recent as 2006. He had over three dozen articles in Live Steam and at least a dozen articles
in both Modeltec and Model Engineer magazines, respectively.
Bob served as enthusiastic mentor to
anyone interested in any aspect of the hobby and as friend to everyone having
the pleasure of meeting him. He and
his late wife, Ev, traveled extensively riding trains of all sizes. They shared some of numerous trips to
ride the Durango & Silverton or
the Shays of Cass with friends.
Bob, along with five others
interested in sharing their love of steam engines joined in forming the
Cincinnati Cinder Sniffers club, starting out with a 100 foot oval in
Bob’s back yard. Temporary
track locations eventually led to the purchase in 1967 of a permanent home in
Dover, Indiana. This track was
eventually named, the “Bob and Ev Maynard Live Steam Railroad Park”
as a tribute to their contributions in instilling their passion of the hobby in
countless others. As the current Cinder Sniffers president,
Vincent Bradley stated, “Several of us have his engines and they will
continue to ply the rails. His influence will be felt for many years to
come..” Bob’s
contributions in live steam will forever be an inspiration to this hobby.
Following
are thoughts and memories shared by friends of Bob
To
all of our friends at the Cinder Sniffers:
Thank
you very much for your donation to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Association.
As
most of you know, my dad had juvenile diabetes (type 1) since he was around 25
years old. He was quite a famous
patient at the local VA hospital.
They would bring in the new interns and show him off as a “mystery
man”, 60 years plus of diabetes and still going strong.
And
for those that could attend his visitation, thank you. It felt good for us to have such good
friends around and it was a real tribute to our “Bobby”.
It
has also been great to read the stories that some of you have put on the CS
website. My dad was
brilliant, tremendously skilled, and so generous with his energy and time. I can’t tell you the number of
times his creativity and intelligence bailed me out of some
“situations”. Even
though he loved steam power, he was always ready to tackle my old cars and
boats with “infernal combustion engines”. Whether we were under my MGA in January
or down in the bilge of our old wooden Chris Craft, Bobby never complained
(well……maybe that time we couldn’t get to the boat’s
water pump bolts…..
“They must have set the engine on a table and built this damn boat
around it!”)
Thank
you all for the friendship and care you gave my mom and dad over the
years. I think one of the happiest
days of their lives, was when the club surprised them and named the Dover track
after them. If you look at some of
the photos of that day, the glow on their faces lasted for a long, long time.
Our
family looks forward to sharing the Cinder Sniffers with our grandson,
Sage. Another generation of happy
faces with coal dust on the faces and cinders in the hair……
Best
to all of you,
Greg
and Suzanne Maynard
03-18-2010
Jim Keith (3-05-10)
Notes taken in a
conversation with Bob and Ev on Oct 26, 2005.
Regarding the
formation of the Cinder Sniffers
·
Jim Aull and Bob met
at Rapid Run Park. Bob was running his freighter and Jim happened to be there
(as an observer) and they got to talking. [The 'freighter' was the boat before
his sternwheel steamboat, OMAR.]
·
After Jim's first wife
Kathy died, Jim poured his heart into building the B&O 10-wheeler.
·
John Korte called Bob
after he read in the Model Engineer that Bob had a steam engine.
·
The Cinder Sniffers
first gathered in 1955-1956 time period.
·
Purinton got Bob in
touch with Ralph Knox in Dayton. (This is an example of the BLS registry at
work.)
·
Another charter member
was Ed Biennstein. He was building an LBSC engine.
·
Bob tried to remember
the charter members. He came up with the following
Jim
Aull
John
Korte
Ed
Stoeckel
Ralph Knox
Ed
Biennstein
·
Jim was the first of
our (so far) three treasurers. He served till ~1983. (The other two are Al
Lohmoeller & Ed Habel.) Jim left the club a couple of years before he died
in Jan 1985.
·
When hosting monthly
meetings, Maynards place was often crowded.
·
One time there were 63
folks. They were in every room;
there was no place where they could all gather.
·
Besides building
McAllister Station & Aull Barn, Jim Aull built the "hammer" to
drive the posts into the ground for the South Trestle and drove many himself.
·
Jim dug the
"hole" for North Comfort.
1. Bob refers to the 'flatlands of
Kansas' in (Modeltec Feb 1986 p7) as the place where he grew up.
2. Just yesterday, I quickly read
through Bob's early articles published in the Model Engineer. Interestingly,
three of them are about how he built operating models for his son Greg (as
Christmas and Birthday presents). Interesting stuff. A couple of others detail
their back yard railroad .... there is a wonderful photo of Father and Son atop
two flat cars behind their Atlantic.
3. The rest of the story -- I've
gathered lists of articles written by Bob over the years. Other Cinder Sniffers
are included too. Didn't try to count the total but there are MANY. Here are
the lists:
Mar 1950 - Aug 1967 : http://home.fuse.net/jasdot/Maynard_ME.html
Dec 1966 - Mar/Apr 2006 : http://home.fuse.net/jasdot/CSI_LS.html
May 1984 - Oct 2000 : http://home.fuse.net/jasdot/CSI_Modeltec.html
Note: Clicking
the above links will take you to Jim Keith’s web pages. Click “Back” to return to
the Cinder Sniffers site.
If your browser accommodates multiple tab browsing, you may
hold “Ctrl” before clicking on the link and the page will open in a
new tab. (tested for PC Users with Internet Explorer 7)
Carl Schwab (3-05-10)
His design and building of the Clishay for Bill Fitt as a birthday
present from his wife, Doris. This
became a serialized build project in Live
Steam Magazine. It was for the
first time builder who had minimal tools available. It became an extremely popular engine.
The devotion of Bob and Ev to each
other, who both had health issues the majority of their lives.
Their thirteen or so trips to ride
the Durango & Silverton.
I have been to meets far away from
Ohio and when people found I was from Cinder
Sniffers, many times I was asked, how is Bob Maynard?
His building of the model towboat Omar, from riding of the boat, taking movies,
measuring the boat, then building a museum model was a measure of his intensity
for perfection.
Vincent Bradley (3-06-10)
President Cinder Sniffers
I first met Bob when I joined the
Cinder Sniffers. He and his wife Ev made my wife and daughter very
welcome. Over the years our friendship grew and he and Ev talked me into
running for president against my better judgment. Bob took a special
interest in our daughter Charlotte and under his tutelage she has developed
into an excellent engineer. Bob always seemed to be showing or teaching
others about his favorite avocation. He like nothing better than to show
a newcomer how a steam engine worked from lighting up to shutting down.
He was very patient while teaching but he didn’t suffer fools well.
Bob will be missed by his friends at Cinder Sniffers. Several of us have
his engines and they will continue to ply the rails. His influence will
be felt for many years to come and his foresight will ensure that the club is
on a solid foundation.
Larry Koehl (3-12-10)
Driving From the Righthand Side
Back in the days when Bob and Ev had
the red “bug” (VW Beetle) there was a lot of traveling going on,
mainly to steam meets. There was the Mid-South meet at Austin
Barr’s place in Arkansas, and later Columbia, TN. And then there
was Harry Herder’s in Kalamazoo, MI; Bill Fitt’s in Cadillac, MI;
John Casidy’s in FL; Clyde Bliel’s in Mentor, OH; NEOLS in Copely,
OH; Pershing Scott’s in Iowa, and the list goes on.
I had the honor of traveling with
Bob and Ev in the back seat of that red bug to several of these meets.
Imagine, Susan and related gear in the Dilly trailer in tow
behind, three people plus luggage, camera equipment, survival kit and
cooler, Ev’s pharmacy and her crutches and the Sunday paper all stuffed
into a little car. Everything and everyone had a designated location and
position. Because of Ev’s lack of flexibility, her seat was
positioned full back and partially reclined eliminating any possibility of
someone sitting in the back seat on the right side - so that half of the back
seat was filled with much of the stuff mentioned above. I had the left
half of the seat. Getting in was something like inserting oneself into a
glove. Once in, there was little room to move anything. It was easy
to do it then, but there would be no way now.
Ev could drive the Bug but it was a
major undertaking to make the necessary shifts and adjustments to get her
installed in the driver’s seat when traveling under these
circumstances. Consequently, on trips Bob did all the driving, and some
trips were lengthy. Bob, being 27 years my senior, was more subject to
driving fatigue and thereby needed a break once in a while. Because there
was a need to get on down the road, and it was out of the question for Ev to
drive, and I had never driven a stick, (Bob I doubt was keen on the idea of
getting into the back seat anyway) Bob and Ev had a solution which they had
devised before I had started traveling with them. To my great concern,
needless to say, (this was done on expressways only and when traffic was light
- remember those days?) Bob would position his foot on the accelerator to
maintain a constant speed and Ev, while Bob put his head back and closed his
eyes for a rest, would reach over and take the wheel from the right-hand side
and did the steering. If a need for additional control arose, she would
call to Bob and he would immediately open his eyes and resume full
control. This was done on number of occasions when I was a passenger and
I never got used to it. I was figuratively (you couldn’t do it
literally) on the edge of that back seat while these events were in progress.
Double Headed Bugs
Then there was the time Bob, Ev and
I went to Cass, WV to ride the trains. Their son, Greg, had been recently
married and he and his wife joined us. Bob, Ev and I were in the red bug
and Greg and Kathy were in their light blue bug. On the way back home,
having started separately, we did not know of Greg and Kathy’s
whereabouts - No cell phones in those days. As we were heading north out
of Marietta, OH headed for I-70 we spotted a VW on the side of the road with
some kind of trouble. It was Greg & Kathy. The engine had
developed a problem and was burning oil at a high rate. After putting in
another quart, Greg and Kathy pulled out and headed north with us
following. We were close enough that after short while tiny oil droplets
began showing up on the windshield. Greg pulled over to the roadside
again - We were on I-70 now at Cambridge, OH. After a consultation
between Bob and Greg it was decided that Greg’s VW would not make it home
under its own power. So now what do we do?
Bob, leaving everyone by the side of
the road, went off to find help. After what seemed a very long time he
returned. He reached into the car and pulled out a length of chain and
some nuts, bolts and washers. He proceeded to chain the front bumper of
Greg’s VW to the trailer hitch of his VW. The nuts, bolts and
washers were used in lieu of hooks which were not available where he had
shopped. There was about four feet of chain between us.
We went back to our respective
vehicles, loaded up and headed for home. It must have been an interesting
sight to see one bug towing the other. Greg did a perfect job of keeping
his vehicle from rear-ending Bob’s when slowing down and making
stops. That was about a 200 mile run. Again, I didn’t feel
real comfortable about the operation.
Denis Larrick (3-13-10)
The Man in the White Gym Shoes
Bob Maynard did what no explorer ever could. He discovered the Fountain of
Youth. As Bob learned, it did not
spout water, but steam. Bobby (his
wife called him that, I called him that, and his son still calls him that) was
the prototype Toys R Us kid. I will
never think of Bobby without picturing him in gleaming white gym shoes. It was a symbol that he was able to
achieve what we all wish we could - remain young. There was something very Disney
about Bobby, his odd vertical boiler engine, and his red Volkswagen bug.
I met Bobby in the fall of 1972. I had procrastinated four years in
asking if I could visit the club, but from the pages of Live Steam, I felt I knew him. In humility he responded to my
letter with “Of course you can come to the club. You probably know more about it than we
do”. I approached a guy in a
red vest and conductor’s uniform, not unlike a cartoon from the Polar
Express, and asked if he had seen Bob around yet. With an asymmetrical smile, he said that
he had been seeing him in the mirror for many years. That began a nearly forty year
friendship for which I will always be thankful.
It is said that you can measure a man by his
achievements. I agree. Bobby’s personal projects were
always accomplished slowly because he was always helping someone else. That was the measure of Bob Maynard.
In 1980, Bobby and I assembled a cardboard mockup of what
would twenty years later be his last engine. I had joined Bobby and Keith Watson one
day in Knox Shops. Keith told
Bobby, “If you build an engine you can ride inside, you will positively
wet yourself”. I’m not
sure Bobby didn’t. I had a
hard time getting him out of the mockup.
But when I did, he danced around the mockup in those white gym shoes as
a child at Christmas. He danced in
those shoes when we dug the roadbed under Bandy Bridge. He danced in those shoes when we put up
the highest bent of Taylor Trestle.
Through the many adversities he faced, Bobby danced through life. And he taught me to do the same.
I struggled hard with the feeling that I was letting a dear
old friend down as I wrestled with whether I could take time off school to be
at Bob’s funeral. The night
before the funeral, I saw Bob in his shop with Jon and Andy and a few of the
other neighborhood kids that I often saw around his house. Bobby was wearing those shoes and he was
dancing as he saw kids learning.
Gruff as he could be at times, he was a born mentor with kids. I knew that Bobby would smile if he knew
that I chose to be with my kids that day.
You taught me well, Bobby. You guided me in a hobby that has lasted
a lifetime, a hobby that has kept me hopeful through so many low times. Thank you. Until I someday join you in the final
roundhouse, I will dance.
Jim Bruner (3/15/10)
I met Bob and Ev about 30 years ago when I operated The
Covered Bridge Inn Restaurant. Bob
and the work crew would come in for supper after a hard day’s work at the
track.
When my son was born, Bob and Ev gave me a special
handkerchief for my son's baptism and later for his wedding. In August, he was married and his wife
carried the handkerchief. They have
a picture of it and the note that Bob and Ev sent him.
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
