Nostalgia & History > TOOTD 1/15/1981 CNW Tower A20

This evening's contribution is this set from Tower A-20 (Techny) IL. 

This set covers the same route as the night before last's posting from Tower B-17.  

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I used to live in Northbrook, near Tower A-20 from 1955 to 1976.  Had a lot of fun watching trains there and looking for arrow heads in the nearby fields.  I got invited into the tower on a couple of occasions and even got to hand up some orders to a train once.  Saw the last of steam there, S2 #221.  Some of the F units were still grey and orange.  My favorites were the FM C liners.  I could hear their distinctive sound coming for miles.   I used to have a big stack of the pale green TOs that were scattered all over the ground.  They were often rolled up or wet, and we'd take them home and iron them back out.  Seems like I remember some of them being kind of rolled up to a point, and a little lead weight twisted around one end. The tower operator let us pick up the old TOs and fusees that got snuffed out on occasion.  We'd bring home buckets of the fusees, and wire them to the spokes of our bikes.  It put on a great light show on the 4th, but raised hell with the bike spokes and the back of our pants.  When I left Ilinois in 76 for Idaho, my mom tossed all the green flimsies and my model airplane collection, but I still have a nice big white arrow head that I found barely a hundred feet West of Tower A-20.   Good Times.

Craig Hanson
Vay, Idaho