Ross K Boelling, President and General Manager
Lyona, Kansas
Ross Boelling has served as President and General Manager of the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad since 2022. During this time, he has overseen a period of growth and change that has reinvigorated the organization.
Boelling retired from BNSF Railway in 2018, where he had worked as a train dispatcher, manager of train movement, and assistant chief dispatcher for 16 years in the Kansas City Regional Operations Center. Prior to that he was a train dispatcher for Southern Pacific in Denver, Colorado, and chief dispatcher for Montana Rail Link in Missoula, Montana.
Boelling worked in the Kansas State Fire Marshal’s office for 12 years as an inspector, fire information system manager, and finally as Chief of the Fire Prevention Division, where he oversaw the State of Kansas Fire Prevention Inspection and Enforcement Program at over 15,000 Kansas facilities. For seven years, he was a programmer/analyst for Development Planning and Research Associates in Manhattan and Washington D.C., where he led several projects including managing and reporting RCRA enforcement information for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Boelling attended Emporia State University, Oklahoma State University and Western Illinois University. He and his wife Lynnette (also an A&SV volunteer) live on 80-acres south of Junction City in the Lyona community. They have three children and four grandchildren.
Dr. J. Steven Schwarting, Vice President
Abilene, Kansas
Dr. Steve Schwarting was a family physician in Abilene for 36 years, and for several years, he was also the Dickinson County Coroner. But his underlying passion has always been what he calls “an interest in everything mechanical.” In 2004, Schwarting was recruited to volunteer for the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad, and today, he takes the lead in servicing the railroad’s collection of antique engines and passenger cars. He is the head of the volunteer force that oversees the rebuilding of Santa Fe 3415, the railroad’s prized steam locomotive.
Schwarting retired from his family practice in 2013. He remains active in many Abilene civic organizations, and he is on the Board of Directors of Dickinson County Memorial Hospital.
Schwarting and his wife Toni have four children and 10 grandchildren.
Dr. J Stephen Smethers, Board Secretary
Manhattan, Kansas
Dr. Steven Smethers is an avid historian and has been a narrator for the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad for 12 years. His lifelong interest in railroads began when he was just a little boy in Selma, Kansas, growing up by the Kansas City-Parsons route of the MKT Railroad.
Smethers is a former Kansas broadcaster and a member of the Kansas Broadcasting Hall of Fame. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Kansas State University and his Ph.D. in 1991 from the University of Missouri. He is the former Director of the A.Q. Miller School of Media and Communication at K-State, where he taught media history, as well as media management related classes for 20 years before his retirement in 2022.
Since retirement, Smethers has assumed more duties for the A&SV, serving on the Board of Directors and as secretary of the organization. He also handles public relations and advertising work for the A&SV, works on the railroad’s holiday planning and decorating committee, and serves as one of the staff historians charged with researching Kansas railroad history, which helps the railroad fulfill its Kansas Heritage Railroad designation. Smethers lives in Manhattan, where he still does adjunct teaching and service work at K-State. He is also on the Board of Directors for the Collegian Media Group and the Riley County Historical Society.
Jim Waters, Board Treasurer
Salina, Kansas
Waters is a former hardware chain store owner; in fact, he owned seven True Value Hardware Stores in Kansas, located in Junction City, Salina, Great Bend, Manhattan, Emporia, Dodge City, and Wamego. In 2019, Waters retired and sold his stores and has devoted time to the Abilene and Smoky Valley Association.
Waters received his degree in business from the University of Kansas in 1972. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Chicago-based True Value company, and locally, he is on the board of the Kansas-based Central National Bank. A lifelong member of the Boy Scouts, Waters served on the board of the Coronado Area Council Boy Scouts of America, where he was also president. Waters served on the Board of Trustees of Salina Regional Medical Center for 16 years and on the board of Member Insurance Company in Bermuda.
His interest in railroading started as an infant, when he made his parents take him to the Union Pacific depot in Junction City, where he was delighted to watch the trains come in. Today, Waters is the treasurer of the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad, and he volunteers as a car host.
Waters and his wife of 50 years, Jenni, have two sons and a daughter.
Dean Gier, Board Member
Wichita, Kansas
Dean Gier was born and raised in Abilene, and his fondest memories of his childhood include growing up across the street from Eisenhower Park where Santa Fe 3415 once sat as a stationery exhibit before it was rebuilt by the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad.
Gier moved to Wichita after completing his degree in mechanical engineering at Kansas Technical Institute in Salina, where he began working as a CAD designer at Koch Industries. Prior to retiring in 2020, Gier worked at two non-profit organizations, His Helping Hands and the Kansas Food Bank. Gier married his wife Julie in 2011. The couple enjoys traveling, having visited over 20 islands with more planned in the future.
Dean and Julie have two grandsons ages six and nine. He enjoys volunteering as a crew. Member on Abilene and Smoky Valley trains, where he works as a brakeman and conductor. Additionally, Gier assists in maintaining the railroad’s antique passenger coaches.
He is heavily involved in the South Central Kansas Mustang Car Club, and he donates platelets regularly at the American Red Cross.
Ric Jung, Board Member and Volunteer Manager
Hutchinson, Kansas
Ric Jung came to Kansas in 1977 to work in broadcast engineering. With a degree in broadcast electronics from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and a Masters from Friends University in Wichita, Jung was employed by Radio Kansas, a network of Central Kansas public radio stations headquartered at Hutchinson Community College.
Jung retired in 2021 after 44 years of service to the broadcast industry. In 1994 he started a successful web design business which he ran for 15 years.
Railroads, and particularly Colorado narrow gauge lines and history, have been a lifelong passion for Jung, who also enjoys modeling and studying Colorado rail history. He has operated trains and participated in maintenance and car renovation on the Abilene & Smoky Valley Railroad for the past 19 years. Additionally, Jung serves on the A&SV Board, and he manages volunteers and crew scheduling.
Jung and his wife Sandra (who is also an A&SV volunteer) live in Hutchinson, and they have three children and seven grandchildren.
Anthony Hershberger, Board Member
Derby, Kansas
More info to come.
Todd Walter, Board Member
Abilene, Kansas
More info to come.
Joe Minick, A&SV Founder and Ex-Officio
Abilene, Kansas
Joe Minick is the founder of the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad Association, an organization that he and his co-founder, the late Fred Schmidt of Abilene, launched in 1993. Minick and Schmidt work tirelessly to establish a sustaining heritage railroad operation, first acquiring the tracks of the defunct Rock Island Railroad that ran from Herington to Salina, then finding an engine and passenger cars. The result was an all-volunteer railroad operation that has grown in popularity and stature since the first train ran between Abilene and Enterprise, Kansas, in the fall of 1994.
At age 90, Minick works with the vigor of someone half his age. A diesel and auto mechanic his entire life, he continues to put those skills to work, and in 2006, he undertook perhaps his biggest project: rebuilding a steam engine that had been on display in Abilene’s Eisenhower Park since 1955. In 2006, having assembled an army of volunteer mechanics from across North Central Kansas, Minick’s crew worked tirelessly for three years to make the engine run again, and in 2011, Santa Fe 3415 was again pulling trains, this time for Minick’s Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad. In 2024, the Kansas Legislature named the iconic engine as an official symbol of Kansas.
In 2025, Minick’s latest project, the Iron Horse Trail, a five-mile running and biking pathway between Abilene and Enterprise, was dedicated. The trail runs alongside the A&SV tracks on the railroad’s right-of-way and is the only “rail with trail” park in the Midwest. With only a few volunteers at his side, Minick graded and put gravel on the trail and even built a footbridge across the Smoky Hill River. In 2026, Joe Minick received the Kansas Park and Recreation’s “Distinguished Volunteer Award” to commemorate his work in building the Iron Horse.
Minick lives in Abilene. He has two children, three grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.