Nostalgia & History > Toto Tuesday: Ushering in an icy new year

The winter of 1978-79 was a dismal experience for most of Midwestern America. Many parts of the country suffered record snowfall amounts. Midwestern railroading in general went through some very trying times, but Amtrak was particularly hard hit. Sub-zero temperatures took a brutal toll on its aging steam-heated equipment and there were seemingly unending weather-related delays for many of the long distance trains. Quite a few of those delays reached the hours-long category. For fellow recently hired Santa Fe brakeman Dave Franz (“monaddave”) and myself it was a Godsend that we were furloughed for our first “Santa Fe winter”. It was a semi-expected blow to the old bank account, but there was an ‘up’ side. We didn’t have to work out in the extreme weather. We completely avoided the winter time travails such as ill-working (or just plain not working) cab heaters, digging out iced-in mainline switches & walking disabled trains in several inches of snow looking for culprit cars with misbehaving brake valves.

With 3 out of the 4 regular Amtrak trains (#3, #4 & #15) that normally ran through Emporia in the wee hours now running in daylight more often than not, Dave & I kept busy burning them onto Kodachrome slide film. The remaining train, #16 stayed pretty much on time because coming up from Texas & Oklahoma it didn’t have near the bad weather to contend with, plus its normal time at Emporia was before midnight. Even if it was late, it was usually still through Emporia in darkness. Even though Dave & I got out to shoot together several times, I still struck out on my own a little more often than he did. I was fearless about night shooting and would take my tripod out anytime in search of photo-ops. Emporia was a great place for available light photography! Crew changes at the depot happened with standard white light bulbs lighting up the immediate platform area. The roundhouse had a few angles with pure white light, and even the yard had some spots where you could get pretty creative.

Here is a shot from the 1st day of 1979. It was taken at the roundhouse as I recall in sub-zero temperature, or very close to it. 5 different engine class/models are seen here which was an utterly common scene at the Emporia RH…

1. AT&SF SD45-2 5705 shivers at the roundhouse in Emporia, KS on January 1, 1979. Also in the shot are an SD39-2, a C-30-7, a GP-9(?) & an F7(?)B. The GP-[9]/F7-B combo was probably power for mainline local train 1311 (to & from Arkansas City via work at El Dorado, Augusta & Winfield, and once in a while Mulvane). At any time units could get cut from one consist and added to another. The Emporia roundhouse crews were usually kept hopping 24/7.

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels
santafe199



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/22 21:52 by santafe199.

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One hasn't lived until they've inhaled a ton of smoke from a fusee while trying to thaw out a switch!

Rathole Wrote:
> One hasn't lived until they've inhaled a ton of smoke from a fuse...

Yessir! If you have a problem with un-slightly nose hair, that's a sure 'fire' way to alleviate it...

;^)