RIDGWAY RAILROAD MUSEUM - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Ridgway Railroad Museum Board
Job Titles:
- Editor
- Member of the Ridgway Railroad Museum Board
Don Paulson serves as both the Newsletter Editor and as Membership Chairman.
Don Paulson: After receiving his Ph.D. from Indiana University and a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago, Don joined the faculty of California State University, Los Angeles in 1970. He chaired the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry from 1982 through 1990 and retired from Cal State LA in 2006. He and his wife Beth began coming to Ouray on vacations in the 1980s and built their home here in 1999. Don has a passion for mining and railroads. He is on the Board of the Ouray County Historical Society and serves as the museum curator. In his spare time he enjoys photography as well as hiking and jeeping in search of yet another mine or railroad right-of-way.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Member of the Ridgway Railroad Museum Board
Job Titles:
- President of the Ridgway Railroad Museum Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Ridgway Railroad Museum Board
- Vice - President of the Ridgway Railroad Museum Board
Jim Pettengill grew up near Spencerport, New York, attended college in Meadville, Pennsylvania and Flagstaff, Arizona, and worked as a geologist for the U. S. Department of the Interior for 27 years before retiring to Ridgway. Now he is an active freelance writer and photographer. His great-grandfather was a locomotive engineer for the Atlantic and Great Western; Erie; and Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh railroads from 1870 through his retirement in 1910. Jim is currently vice-president of the museum.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Ridgway Railroad Museum Board
Karl Schaeffer grew up and went through secondary school in Montrose. He received two degrees from Colorado School of Mines and one from University of Colorado and then married his wife Janet. He worked for the Denver and Rio Grande Western RR for a little over 22 years. Most of his work was in various capacities in the Mechanical Dept up to Assistant Chief Mechanical - Locomotive for the SP/D&RGW RR. Karl retired to Ridgway in 1997 and in 1998 became one of the founders of the Ridgway Railroad Museum which he now serves as president. He became a volunteer with the Telluride Adaptive Ski Program where he has have been an instructor/trainer for 10 years. Karl built a recreation of RGS Motor No. 1 and was the lead restorer on RGS Goose No 4. Both run occasionally at the Ridgway Railroad Museum.
Job Titles:
- Treasurer of the Ridgway Railroad Museum Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Ridgway Railroad Museum Board
Rod Bunyard has loved trains since receiving a Lionel train set as a child. He switched to modeling HO scale in high school in Colorado Springs. After graduating from Fort Lewis College in Durango, he became a displaced Coloradoan by moving to Kansas City, Mo, to work for the Social Security Administration. After retirement Rod returned to western Colorado, moving to Montrose in 2003 and worked several years as a handyman. After retiring again, Rod helped in the restoration of Motor Number 4 and was selected to be lead motorman for Motor Number 1 at Goosefest in Golden in 2012. He currently serves as president of the model railroad club in Montrose. Rod and his wife Judy enjoy traveling with their travel trailer and visiting train museums and model railroads and riding tourist trains wherever they go.