Summerland British Columbia - Under a June sky that looked like a grey duvet had been yanked over British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, Jim Davis pulled a rifle, six-shooters, and a box of .38-calibre Winchester blanks out of the back of his SUV.
 
As he passed the guns to fellow gang members trickling into the place they call their hideout that Sunday morning, he spun their clicking barrels to ensure they weren't sticky from disuse.
 
Since 1996, the Garnett Valley Gang has offered paying tourists an immersive, turn-of-the-last-century train experience.
 
It involves a journey on the Kettle Valley Steam Railway's Spirit of Summerland, a 110-year-old shining black steam locomotive, and a dramatic "robbery" pulled off by gang members on horseback who gallop to capture the train.
 
Once they've halted it, they relieve willing travellers of money that is then donated to Okanagan charities.
 
Since its beginnings 26 years ago, the Garnett Valley Gang has collected more than $200,000 for charities.
 
In recent years, before COVID-19, it purloined an average of about $1,400 from each train robbery.
 
About 60 percent went to the charities, the rest helped cover the gang's expenses such as insurance, legal fees, rent for their "hideout" and blank cartridges for their guns.
 
After more than 250 robberies, the only thing that ever stopped the gang in all those years was COVID-19.
 
Now, with pandemic restrictions easing, the robbers, pulling up in pickups and unloading their horses and gear, were getting ready for their comeback on this cloudy Sunday.
 
But it almost didn't happen.
 

Experienced horseman and president of the Garnett Valley Gang, Jim Davis, approaches the train in character - Date? Lucas Oleniuk.

Mr. Davis, alias Jimmy Boots, joined the gang in 1998 and has been its president for the past eight years.
 
Normally, he runs a crew of 20 to 25 volunteers who commit their time, considerable expense, and creative effort to the attraction.
 
Members buy or make their own costumes and cover the costs for hauling and feeding their horses.
 
They travel to Summerland from up and down the 200-kilometre-long Okanagan Valley.
 
For Mr. Davis, the gang has long been a family affair, his wife Wendy, both of their daughters, and a son-in-law are part of the gang.
 
The volunteers all do it, Mr. Davis says, "because they love the old west, they love horses. They love the camaraderie and the fun of putting these events on."
 
Every year from Mothers Day through the Thanksgiving weekend, the shrieking whistle of the Spirit of Summerland has echoed throughout the valley as it chugged along on its regular scenic tours through the Okanagan's belly.
 
The special excursion package featuring the hold-up, called the Great Train Robbery and BBQ, is the railway's most popular.
 
Running 14 times this season, the two-hour trip costs adults $61.50 and $35 for children.
 
Prepandemic, some 30,000 passengers a year, many from Europe, rode the steam train's five passenger cars along the 16 kilometres of track preserved from the now-defunct Kettle Valley Railway line.
 
The 170-ton steam locomotive, number 3716, was built in 1912 for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
 
Until retired in 1966, it hauled people and cargo through B.C.'s Kootenays, Crowsnest area, and parts of Alberta.
 

The Garnett Valley Gang approaches the moving stream train - Date? Lucas Oleniuk.

Volunteering for the gang "is a huge commitment," said Mr. Davis, a retired truck driver and construction worker who grew up on a Saskatchewan ranch and rode rodeos in his younger days.
 
The riders include Ms. Davis, his wife of 42 years, also known as Mexicali Rose, the group's secretary.
 
She knows first-hand how tough this volunteer gig is.
 
Ten or 12 years ago, she fractured her spine in five places during one heist.
 
"I guess it was my own stupidity. I was trying to rein my horse in, and she didn't like that. And she started bucking."
 
Mr. Davis, the gang's oldest rider at the age of 64, interjects, "I didn't even know what had happened because I was out there shooting and carrying on, and somebody told me, "Hey, Wendy's down, you better go check on her!'"
 
He found his wife on her back in the dirt.
 
He rode with her to the hospital in the back of an ambulance.
 
Still, the stick-up went on that day, tourists had come from around the world for it.
 
In the Spirit's last full season in 2019, before the pandemic devastated tourism worldwide, the non-profit Kettle Valley Railway brought in about $880,000 in revenue from its train trips, says its business manager, Julia Belmonte.
 
But in 2020, international flights halted, and provincial health regulations required the train to keep passengers in small bubbles, reducing capacity to 105 from 268.
 
Only three trips ran before the railway made the hard decision to cancel the rest of the season.
 
In 2021, Ms. Belmonte says, the train ran 38 trips, a fraction of normal, and no train robberies.
 
The Kettle Valley Railway Society took in just $428,000.
 
This season, with pandemic regulations easing, it's aiming for $700,000.
 
Maintaining a steam train and its tracks, even when it's not operating, is expensive.
 
A grant of $290,000 from the B.C. government's major-attractions program last August helped keep the operation viable.
 
"That was a huge benefit for us," Ms. Belmonte says.
 
The money helped cover the wages of the railway's three full-time staff, and the company was able to replace about 900 rail ties for about $100,000.
 
Repairs and replacement of some of the train's huge steel drive wheels cost another $150,000.
 
But while the provincial aid money helped with infrastructure, the gang of train robbers was depleted to the point the Davises wondered whether the group would ride again.
 
Membership was down by about 10 people.
 
"It was horrible," says Ms. Davis, describing COVID-19's impact on the size and morale of the gang.
 
The curtain seemed about to come down permanently on the Garnett Valley Gang's theatrics until earlier this spring, when Tim Bugera, owner of the OK Corral Cabaret in Kelowna, heard about its sorry state.
 
A fan of Western life and lore, he had his public relations person issue a social media call-out for volunteers, and within hours, people were asking to join.
 
Gerry Conrad, a retired Canadian military helicopter pilot who flew Sea Kings off naval ships, has been a train buff since childhood, his father was a CN engineer.
 
The Peachland resident, who joined the gang 13 years ago, and describes himself as a "big voluble person" who "loves to yarn," plays Sheriff Sam Smith during the train robbery excursions.
 
Each volunteer, including the fan-waving women in long frilly dresses and lace chokers who mingle flirtatiously with passengers, "works up their own shtick," Mr. Conrad says.
 
"My shtick is I'm a well-meaning, incompetent sheriff whose head is turned by pretty ladies."
 
As the Spirit started chugging down the tracks, Mr. Conrad, as the sheriff, ambled through the train cars warning passengers to be wary, there were reports that "varmints" were planning a robbery.
 
The Great Train Robbery excursion, as Mr. Conrad sees it, "is like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a romp with a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan's operatic flavour."
 
Roli Nuetzel, a bricklayer and stone mason who lives on an acreage near Naramata, has been riding with the Garnett Valley Gang for 13 years.
 
With his Swiss accent, yellow suspenders, round spectacles and baggy white shirt, he'd look like a 19th-century clockmaker if not for his rifle, the buck-knife sheathed on his belt, and his horse, Poco.
 
"I've been a Western fanatic since I was a boy," says Mr. Nuetzel, who moved to Canada from Switzerland in 1994 to live a cowboy-like lifestyle.
 
In 2006, he discovered the Spirit of Summerland when he took a visiting brother on the Great Train Robbery trip.
 
As the train was ambushed, a gang member on horseback, spying the authenticity of the western clothing Mr. Nuetzel wore that day, asked him through an open window, "What are you doing in the train? You should come and ride with the gang."
 
Mr. Nuetzel joined a few weeks later.
 
He already rode and owned two horses, but worried whether they could handle the gun blasts and train commotion.
 
So he practised by riding his horses around his property, clapping his hands, popping paper bags and eventually firing off real shots.
 
He cautiously introduced the horses to the train by trotting along with it during one of its scenic runs.
 
Still, he says, his first robbery "was like getting thrown into cold water.
 
To this day, when I'm in the hideout waiting for the train, I can feel the weight of it vibrating on the tracks, and my heart still pumps."
 
Haley Sprietsma, 30, was one of eight new recruits joining the gang that day for its first train robbery since pandemic restrictions were eased.
 
A former barrel racer, she was so nervous in the morning about how her horse would react to gun shots and the steaming train that she said she might walk her through the event rather than ride.
 
But later she said, "I rode her and she was amazing."
 
She plans to continue with the gang.
 
"It was neat to see all the kids and their excited expressions."
 
And besides the fun of it all, she'd also discovered a fulfilling reason to stay on.
 
"I just found out that we give to charity. I didn't actually realize we were robbing people of actual money," she laughs.
 
"I thought it was just all show."
 
Anthony Davis.