Steam & Excursion > Couple more "people" photos.

Loggerhogger had a post in which he mentioned not enough photos of the RR folks.
I may have posted one of these before and the other was added to Martin's post. I don't have hardly any photos of my Dad at work, but I'm thankful for what I have.
First shot is of one of the Frisco's rail pounding "spot" engines posed at Rolla, MO in about 1918. The big guy second from right is Dad and the guy with the handlebar to his left is the engineer Mike Faber. He had a reputation as a "ballast scorcher" and got in trouble several times for kinking rail with one of the spot engines. They were limited to 35MPH.
I came across that photo in a strange way. We moved in 1944 to a house in Maplewood after living in Brentwood,MO. After I got older, Dad used to talk about this picture and I literally tore the house up looking for it. In my mid teens, I was invited to a party in Brentwood. After a couple of libations, I wandered around and went into the garage to look at a car when hanging on the wall was this photo. I found out that a Frisco brakeman had bought our old house. So the picture finally came back home.
Dad is shown in the next shot in 1944 oiling around a Frisco 4400 before leaving Newburg, MO heading for St. Louis.
I cherish these and am thankful to whoever took them. I even have the negative to the later shot. I have a couple shots of him running various engines on passenger and troop trains.
I'll dig some more and find some shots on the hated diesels.

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Great photos Don -- I can easily see why you treasure them. Good, too, to Martin for starting this idea. Too many of us for too long thought the presence of people spoiled an otherwise good photo. How wrong we were!

Gordon

Another Frisco people photo, with the BNSF pilot people. This was on the return leg of a Railroad Days excursion to Emporia and back. We got to Topeka and spend an hour or so switching out the train before we tied up. When we got done, somebody took our picture, (me on the right). Don Wirth was the Engineer.

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Your dad looked like a good fellow. Railroader thru and thru. Thanks for posting.

I only have a few shots of my father in steam days. First pic is him (in the hat) and his lifelong hoghead friend Rudy Hammon in Roseville next to a fairly new SP4112. Second pic - since I know how you feel about "dismals", I thought I'd add this: Dad's holding the flashlight as he and another machinist try to find the problem with the brakes that caused these Baldwin's to take a swim. All 3 were scrapped.

Thanks again

Walter



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/17 10:07 by drumwrencher.

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Things just aren't the same any more. As Photobob said "It's all crap now".