On Wednesday, February 21st, the Pacific Railroad Preservation Association lost Senior Engineer Greg Kamholz to pancreatic cancer.

Greg was one of the primary engineers running the SP&S 700 since it’s return to steam in the 1990’s. Not only was he a primary engineer for the engine, he was also one of our most knowledgeable steam experts. His passing is a great loss not only for the PRPA but also for the steam community as well.

With his passing, a wealth of irreplaceable steam knowledge has been lost. He cut his teeth on steam when still a teenager and has run myriad engines over the years.

Marvin Gregory Kamholz was born July 18, 1942 to Marvin Kamholz, owner of the Vernonia Eagle newspaper from 1936 to 1970, and Amy Hughes Kamholz whose father and mother moved to Vernonia in 1924 where her dad was Chief Electrician for the newly established Oregon-American Lumber Company.

Greg’s interest in railroading came early, starting with the arrival and departure of The Oregon-American log train that was a daily fixture of Vernonia life. It didn’t hurt that his mom herself was a train fan and so from early on, when Extra 105’s whistle announced its arrival, she would gather Greg, and later his brother Ed, and they’d walk the block and-a- half to the rail crossing to wave at the train crew on their way to the mill. That must have made an impression because by the time the operation closed in 1957, if the Kamholz brothers weren’t standing trackside, the 105’s engine crew would wave at their house whether they were standing in the window waving back, or not.

When Greg and Ed were seven and three respectively, their mom managed to get permission to ride the log train’s caboose to Camp McGregor and back. They repeated that trip with their dad in 1956, the high spot being invited to ride in the cab while the 105 crew switched the loaded disconnected log trucks for the trip back to town. That wouldn’t happen in today’s world.

Greg’s interest in railroading went beyond the logging railroad’s daily routine. He spent countless hours hanging around the Vernonia rail yard when the Spokane, Portland & Seattle local was in town. As a pre-teenager he was on a first-name basis with all the crews and was known to beg for cab rides as the crew made up their train for the return trip to Portland.

Rare is the case when a particular incident defines one’s career path but for Greg you would have to believe it occurred one August afternoon in 1956 when Stacy Hendricks, engineer on the SP&S’s Vernonia local, invited Greg, age fourteen, to take the throttle of Alco RS-3, number 78, and let him make a few switching movements. The die was cast.

While attending Vernonia schools Greg played in the school bands, learned piano and later, photography, interests he maintained throughout his life.

Greg attended Lewis and Clark College for four years and Portland State for two more. While he didn’t graduate from either, he deepened his love of music and then changed majors to business administration.

In October, 1964 he formally began his railroading career with the SP&S as a night-shift hostler’s helper at the old Hoyt Street Yard while attending PSU during the daylight hours.

In May 1966 Greg was inducted into the Army and served in the Army Band in Norfolk, Virginia, South Korea and Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri until he was discharged in 1969.

Meanwhile, his love affair for the former Oregon-American Baldwin locomotive 105 and his interest in steam engines in general blossomed. When he could find the time between 1962 to 1970, he spent countless hours working with the Vernonia, South Park and Sunset Steam Railroad operation, often at the helm of the 105 under supervision of one of the SP&S hogheads assigned to each day’s operations. Greg’s good friend, Jim Abne, can tell you all about it as both he and Greg got their starts in running steam locomotives during that time.

Upon his return to civilian status Greg returned to the SP&S and followed his dreams, eventually qualifying to be a Locomotive Engineer in October, 1970, a vocation he continued until his death on February 21, 2018. At the end of Greg’s active career with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe he held the distinction of being the Western Division’s most senior employee and also the last former SP&S employee remaining on the BNSF payroll.

Many of you know Greg as co-author of The Oregon-American Lumber Company: Ain’t No More, published by Stanford University Press in 2003. What most don’t know is the role Greg played that made that work possible. Many were those who entrusted their valuable photo collections to the project but it was Greg who brought those photos to life in his garage that he temporarily turned into a darkroom. But that’s only part of the picture. To tell the O-A story, Greg also microfilmed nearly 16,000 separate documents totaling more than 23,000 pages of material from the company’s records over a two-year period. Mind you, this was while he held down the Willbridge day-shift switch job.

To make maps of the operation, Greg and Ed spent countless weekend hours doing field research on the former O-A properties. No cross-reference between the original spur numbering and the current road identification system existed. The brothers’ explorations sometimes took them so far off the grid that even if they’d been equipped with a two-way radio they’d joke that were they to have gotten lost the only way anyone could find them was to read the book they hadn’t yet written.

But even before Greg’s attention began to focus on the Oregon-American book, his interest in steam engines drew him to the foundling Pacific Railroad Preservation Association and the group’s efforts to bring the former Spokane, Portland & Seattle’s pride and joy, the 700, back to operating life. Greg’s life-long inquiries and experiences in steam theory and its practical application, coupled with his metalworking expertise enabled him to contribute heavily to the PRPA by rebuilding, fabricating and repairing myriad parts that go into making a main-line steam engine operate. His crowning memory was the great Montana trip of 2002 when the 700 and PRPA crew hauled a nineteen-car excursion across the former Northern Pacific route from Sandpoint, Idaho to Billings, Montana and back.

Greg also put in time behind the throttle for the Mount Rainier Scenic, The Chelatchie Prairie, The Coast Scenic and The Portland Zoo Railroads. While he had his favorites it’s doubtful Greg ever met a steam engine he didn’t like.

Those of you who observed him at work undoubtedly noticed that Greg’s persona changed the instant he took his first step up the gangway into a locomotive cab. At that moment all of us ceased being friends, acquaintances or relatives and were relegated to observer status… and what we saw was the quintessential Greg taking control of the situation. Quiet. Serious. Professional… a man at the top of his game showing the rest of us how it was supposed to be done.

Greg was an avid reader and some might be surprised to learn that his intellectual curiosity ranged far beyond railroading in general or steam in particular. How many of us would wade through multiple 800-page volumes about the life and works of the composer Gustav Mahler? Who would have guessed that Greg was an avid history buff and enjoyed serious works about World Wars and other global events? Would anyone know that his interest in clocks led him to build a working clockworks out of wood and that he kept the contraption running for a year despite the fact it locked up every time the humidity changed? That clock, unfortunately, ended up as firewood but it illustrates both his curiosity determination to make things work.

Greg remained unmarried throughout his life but that’s not to say he lived in isolation. A rarity these days, Greg resided in the same house he bought 41 years ago and was a neighborhood fixture along with other households in his cul de sac. To an outsider, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish the line between neighbors, family and generations.

And acknowledging his co-workers from the BNSF and those who knew him from his years with the PRPA, all would agree he was a man of integrity and someone who cared deeply about doing things the right way.

It was gratifying to see the stream of former workmates and friends who gathered to pay personal tribute to Greg in his final days. While he was inherently quiet, maybe to the point of being overly modest, he was deeply moved by the show of love and support that showed up at his bedside.

Regrettably, among Greg’s un-addressed retirement projects were the two live-steam scale model locomotives he owned. It’s only fitting that his notion about twilight years was not just to run another steam locomotive but to run one operating under his own rulebook and on his own time…not someone else’s.

Those of us who spent time with Greg in his final days witnessed a courageous man determined to overcome his illness. And while he might have run out of tracks and out of time, he never ran out of hope.

That was Greg Kamholz and we will miss him.