Nostalgia & History > Switcher Saturday: In the cold snow!

My first winter as a newly hired train service railroader for the Santa Fe was spent furloughed. The excitement for this railfan being a brand railroader (albeit laid off) was still very much alive. For railfanning purposes I was now living in one of the best railroad towns in the entire country. I spent quite a lot of my free (read: furloughed) time behind my camera. I just couldn't shoot enough of my new residence.

Witness this night in December of 1978. A recent blanket of snow had covered the ground & it was cold. Very cold! But that doesn't stop a 23 year old railfan living in his 1st RR town from getting out with the tripod! I somehow kept my fingers and toes (& camera) from freezing up...

1. AT&SF 1225 shivering at the Emporia, KS roundhouse on December 30, 1978.

Thanks for looking!
Lance Garrels
santafe199



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/22 21:03 by santafe199.

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I've worked with enough of those types of switchers to know that by shivering, you mean everything in the cab rattles constantly. It doesn't matter how many paper towels you crap behind a part, it will still rattle.

Nice photo, Lance.

As I am not familiar with Emporia, KS I decided to check it out on a Google satellite image. The roundhouse, turntable and rails are long gone, but the area is now used for the storage of track components (rails, ties, etc.), with most of the item carefully laid out where the stalls used to be!

Cheers,
Jack



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/12 10:47 by africansteam.

africansteam Wrote:

> As I am not familiar with Emporia, KS I decided to
> check it out on a Google satellite image. The
> roundhous, turntable and rails is long gone, but
> the area is now used for the storage of track
> components (rails, ties, etc.).......

Very sadly true, Jack. When I hired on with the Santa Fe in train service in 1978, Emporia was Eastern Division HQ, a crew change point between Argentine (Kansas City) & everywhere west & south of KC. It was home terminal to Middle division road crews. It had separate eastbound & westbound switching yards with multiple round-the-clock switch engines on duty. It had round-the-clock roundhouse fueling & minor servicing. It had round-the-clock car inspection forces (carmen). It had 4 long distance Amtrak passenger trains making regular stops at a gorgeous 2-story red brick, trimmed with native Kansas Limestone passenger depot that housed the Eastern Division offices upstairs. Eastern Division train dispatchers were also based in the depot. It had locals based there that went to & from Topeka, Atchison, Abilene/Salina & Arkansas City, KS. There was unlimited photographic potential from one end of town to the other all hours of the day; OR night if you were adventurous enough with a tripod. It was said to be the largest flat yard on the entire Santa Fe system.

You can only imagine the beehive of activity around Emporia say, in the 50's before the decline of Santa Fe's dozen (or more) scheduled daily passenger trains IN EACH DIRECTION! And it was STILL the quintessential American railroad town that had it all when I hired on in '78...

Lance