Nostalgia & History > Toto Tuesday: Cliff 'n Katy!

Date: 02/11/20 09:37
Toto Tuesday: Cliff 'n Katy!
Author: santafe199

Several years ago my friend and fellow TO compadre Cliff Corn (‘Topeka’) handed me a CD full of his railfan photography. It was stuff for me to post here on TO. Although Cliff’s first passion was roster shooting the CD contained a healthy menu of interesting train & actions shots, much of which I managed to get posted before he passed away. I was happy to post this material for him. But there are still a bunch of untouched roster-oriented images on the CD. So I will posthumously honor Cliff by posting a few from time to time. He never complained that I concentrated on his train & action stuff, and leaned away from the rosters. I think he expected that.

More often than you might expect over the years (decades, actually) you could waltz into Topeka and find Cliff at his official home-away-from-home, Porubsky’s Curve. There is a story about Cliff I love to tell whenever I introduced someone new to him: “This is my friend Cliff, and here’s how long I’ve known him! We met about 1977 with model railroading & railfan photography in common. Then in 1978 I ‘ran away’ to have a 32 year career in train service with 3 different RRs. And when I got retired and came home, I found him sitting right here at Porubsky’s like he’d never left…”

To find some of his posted photos do a TO search under my screen name using both Cliff Corn and “Clif” Corn. The reason being: for a short spell I thought there was only one ‘f’ in his first name. I thought I had been misspelling it for years. Imagine that: all those years I thought I got it wrong, but in reality I was mistaken… ;^)

One more anecdote about my late guest photographer for today’s Toto: A person meeting Cliff for the first time would most likely think he was sort of aloof. However, Cliff was just a very quiet and unassuming man. And I never once saw him raise his voice. But there was one day I was able to crack that seemingly dour countenance of his. We were both baseball fans so quite often our railfan conversation would turn to the KC Royals, or at least baseball in general. 4 or 5 years ago we were in such a chat and I dropped a “Yogi Berra-ism” on him. It was one he’d never heard before, but too long to tell here. When I delivered the punch-line Cliff burst forth with a huge ear to ear grin and a laugh that came from way down deep. It absolutely made my day knowing I had seen Cliff in full Run-8 laughter. And I’ll never forget it! True story…

1. 2. & 3. With what I am sure was his usual unending patience, my friend Cliff Corn caught a dance with UP 1988, the MKT Heritage unit leading UP 4557 + a manifest around Porubsky’s Curve in Topeka, KS. He bagged all 3 types of shots: train shot, consist shot & roster shot. I’ve no doubt he was camped out down there on this beautiful Sunday morning, December 28, 2008. A nice day for a date with Miss Katy, with little bit of holiday cheer on the side…
(3 photos by Cliff Corn)

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels (santafe199)
Cliff Corn (the late “Topeka”)

Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/22 03:13 by santafe199.