The Steamboating Forum

It's been a while but the disease has me in it's grip again. Steam boats are sort of like malaria. You think you are over them and then you get fever and chills and begin to shake and sweat.

My name is Mike Colyar. My dad was Vance Colyar of Olympia who was very active in the fifties and sixties in live steam RR stuff and a source of information to a few of you 'older' steamers. Ahem. It seems like such a short time since I was listening to conversations Tommy Thomson, Russ Hibler, Ed Hass, Cliff Blackstaff and Bob Ellis. Oh yeah. there was another young guy around. Frank Orr I think his name was. Oh, my aching bones. Creak!

I first attended the gatherings at McConnell Island in the early 60's (I was in ninth or tenth grade!). I drifted off into electronics and, except for a stint as fireman for Vance on the Shay at the Camp Six logging museum in the seventies, I successfully stayed oil and burn free for many a year but now I have bought a small launch and the hobby has me by the throat again.

I'll post something about my 'project' in the Boats section for your commiseration and wise cracks. Good to be back.

Mike

Welcome (back to the hobby?)
Hope you've joined the Northwest Steam Society http://www.northweststeamsociety.org - we've got a lot more boats around the area now-a-days but unfortunately Oceanid, Hingey, DoDo, Crest and some others are no longer around. Next year's Meet is in Anacortes so if you have a boat ready, you'll be right at home. And if you don't come anyway!

Welcome to the forum Mike!

Hello there, I would like to welcome you to the forum, though I am new as well. It is amazing that your dad is active way before and things have been passed to you. I hope that I could claim the same but things were kind of different with me as I had to start with things on my own.

I remember attending a few events way before as well, but that would be because of my uncle who was interested with this as well.