Railroaders' Nostalgia > A nostalgic, but sad personal note…

A few weeks ago I found one of my favorite fellow railroaders from my Santa Fe days [’78-’87] had passed away from cancer. Mr. Craig Hudson was a good railroader & a class act! Like his father Leo before him he had a professional dedication to his job that made him very easy & enjoyable to work with. I had seen him at the ATSF Middle Division employees reunion picnic last September in Emporia, KS which was our home terminal in those days. Although Craig & I were born the same year had aged dramatically, which is now explained by the cancer.

Craig wasn’t a railfan by any definition. But during the times I worked with him he was completely OK with me dragging the camera out of my grip to clip off a few shots here & there. I did manage to get separate portrait shots of both him & his father in or on Santa Fe waycars. Thankfully I was able to email those images to Craig last fall. Somewhere I have a sequence of slides showing both of them performing a rolling waycar crew change in front of the Emporia station. Conductor Leo [father] swung aboard first, followed by Brakeman Craig [son].

A final note: When I first met Craig I could have sworn that 1970s Swedish tennis star Bjorn Borg had come “across the pond” and hired on with Santa Fe…

1. & 2. Santa Fe Conductor Craig L. Hudson posing at the conductor’s desk in waycar 999103 on train 403 C-1 on August 5, 1982.

3. Bjorn Borg in his prime as a tennis player held a world-ranking of #1 for quite a while. (photo swiped from Google images)

Thank you Craig, for being a kind soul!
Rest well, my friend…
Lance Garrels
santafe199

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Nice tribute and photos. I know what you mean by working with non railfan railroaders who very tolerant of our photo activities. We had a lot of them and I sure miss and appreciate their kindness. Thanks for posting Good job as always.Bill Webb 

Lance, you sir are a class act!

KR

kdrtrains Wrote:
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> Lance, you sir are a class act!
>
> KR


I have to agree!!

Nice ones. Especially like the first one, looking at his watch.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Nice tribute to a really good guy, Lance. Craig was a pleasure to be around and to work with.

SLOCONDR Wrote:
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> kdrtrains Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
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> > Lance, you sir are a class act!
> >
> > KR
>
>
> I have to agree!!

make that a Hattrick Lanzo ...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/15 16:14 by Out_Of_Service.

Lance, nice tribute and sorry for the loss.  Too many of us rails seem to leave early, often for no apparent reason.

Lance,

Really cool that you were able to capture some really neat images of Conductor Hudson, but even cooler that you got a set to him before he passed. Sorry for your loss.

MIke

Good guy to work with, always a lot of fun. Craig was going to take up sky diving in the 70's. His chute didn't open, and the reserve got tangled up with it. In his panic, he got one untangled enough to make a soft landing in the last seconds. His first and last jump.

Posted from Android

An interesting tidbit about Leo Hudson I almost forgot. During WWII, he earned a battlefield promotion. He was enlisted, but came out an officer, when he was one of the only ones still alive to fight. Junior Spellman told me about that years ago, and I wish I knew more of the details. And Leo did have a short fuse.

Posted from Android

Speaking of a short fuse.....    Leo related to me once that he was protecting a shove across 25th street in Wichita, Ks (I think it was 25th st, the one across the middle of the yard anyway) one night and a vehicle was not stopping for his signal so Leo just threw his lantern through thier windshield.  Because the crossing wasn't quite fouled yet the vehicle just kept going and Leo was without his lantern
         Mark