Birth date: Nov 14, 1918 Death date: May 12, 2013
Mason City-Garner A. Portlock, 94, of Mason City formerly of Decatur, passed away Sunday, May 12, 2013 at Mason City Area Nursing Home. He was born November 14, 1918 in Kingston, Missouri, the son of Roy William and Lorene Emilene Read Obituary
Thomas, Thank you so much for taking the time to share your memories of my grandpa with us. This really warmed my heart.Sincerely,Laura McAden
I was sorry to learn of Garner Portlock's death. I used to work with him at the Monticello Railway Museum and just happened to be thinking of him today and did a Google search on his name. I can't remember exactly how he got involved with the Museum – I think he visited the Museum one day and got to chatting with some of our volunteers and decided to come up and work with us. I recall Garner being very personable and easy to work with. His prior experience with the B&O Railroad served him well at the Museum and he was happy to share his experience and knowledge with us. His experience on the B&O extended back into the steam era which fit in quite well with the Museum as we were still running steam locomotives on a weekly basis when Garner started volunteering with us. As I recall, he was made a steam locomotive engineer at the Museum based on his prior railroad service, rather than going through our training program and qualifying exams. Although he had to get used to the idiosycrasies of our steam locomotives (every steam locomotive has its own "personality"), he picked up on it pretty quickly. Garner did a good job running our engines once he got used to the fact he was not running "road" locomotives on the B&O mainline.Garner also helped our Museum with work activities to keep our locomotives and other equipment running. I recall him spending a lot of time tinkering with #44 – our 44-ton diesel-electric switcher that had come to the Museum from Lincoln Sand & Gravel at Lincoln, Illinois. So far as diesel-electric locomotives go, the #44 is a pretty simple engine, but it had its share of problems. Leaky radiators was one of its biggest problems. Garner took it upon himself to take the radiator cores out, one by one, flush them out, and then re-installed them with new gaskets he made himself. That was a great help to the engine's operation and squeezed a few more years of operation out of it. Ultimately, the radiator problems came back to sideline the #44 – the radiator cores rotted out and just couldn't be patched up any more – but Garner breathed a little more life into an old machine while he was involved with the Museum. His wife started having some health problems and Garner started drifting away from the Museum as he was spending more and more of his free time with her. Eventually, he stopped coming out to the Museum altogether. Last time I recall seeing him was in 1990 or 91. A friend and I had bought a used railroad hy-rail truck (a pick-up truck with railroad wheels) and completely overhauled the motor – turning a Ford 351M engine into a 408 using a crankshaft with a longer stroke. We were having trouble making it run right and invited Garner to come over to our garage in Decatur to take a look at it. He thought the problem was in carburetion. We got that fixed and the engine ran fine. We drove the truck over to his house near Nelson Park on 22nd Street to show him the final result. Garner was very pleased to see we had gotten the problem solved and the truck was running well. After we had backed out on to the street, my buddy goosed the engine a little bit and burned a little rubber in front of Garners house. I looked back and he had a big grin on his face. That was the last time I saw him. We'll miss Garner.Thomas E. Scott Jr.
