Nostalgia & History > Monday Meets: I had to work for this one!

Yup! I really had to bust my patoots to get this shot! In addition to moving the door glass wiper over to the right, I also had to take a paper towel and wipe the window!!! Oh.... the humanity....... ;^)

Ok, now that the lighter moment has passed, here’s the general story as it was in those days. In May of 1980 I was about 2 years into my train service career with the Santa Fe. I never took any call to work a road trip without having my trusty Canon AE-1, and later Canon A-1 stashed in my grip. By then the cat (read: camera) was out of the bag, so to speak. I was known by the guys I worked with as a “picture-taker”. It was also well known that I could be relied on to do my job without letting my camera get in the way. By the date of this shot I had a routine more or less in place. If I was riding the head end in good weather with the sunshine mostly from behind I would usually take a paper towel and wipe my front window clean of any dirt or grime smears. I did this in case I got an opportunity to shoot an in-cab meet shot like the one below. I would only do this if I was working with an engineer who was OK with me shooting a pic or 2 on the trip. If I had a hogger who had even the slightest animosity toward FRNs* I wouldn’t even consider digging my camera out. And believe me, there were several other rails who really didn’t mix well with railroaders who happened to be railfans.

On this particular trip I was working with engineer J. R. “Jim” Wilson. Not to be confused with J. T. “Jim” Wilson -“jtwlunch” here on TO- who was a Middle Division brakeman until taking promotion into Santa Fe management in October of 1978. J R Wilson was an easy-going type who had a little bit of history buff in him. He and I got along great, so getting this shot presented no problem at all. He understood the history I was recording with my camera. As I understand this Jim Wilson also took promotion as an RFE sometime in the late 80s, probably after I had moved on to MRL in Montana...

1. AT&SF 5087 is leading train 188 CK-1 with engineer Art Weidner at the throttle. I’m shooting from the cab of AT&SF 5036 on train 963 BH-1. I’m riding with railfan-friendly engineer J. R. “Jim” Wilson. Our trains are meeting just east of the former AG Tower in Augusta, KS. Photo date: May 31, 1980.

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels
santafe199

*FRN stands for “Bleeping” Rail Nut. It was not a very kind term to be tagged with. But it just went with the territory. And you had to take it if you wanted to use your camera in conjunction with the performance of your job duties. In addition that letter “F” also stood for Foaming, or Foamer for short. In my experience to be called a Foamer was the top floor, penthouse version of being called a ground floor FRN. If a fellow worker called you a Foamer it was tantamount to hearing your mother described as a streetwalker, if ya catch my drift. As a rule, the co-worker calling you a Foamer usually had pure, seething hatred boiling out of him...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/23 02:56 by santafe199.

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Beautiful !!
Sorry to hear of all the hard work to accomplish this image.

Excellent view, yeah Dad always said hard work would pay off. Just hope the blisters didn't hurt too much, lol...

JG



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/21 11:13 by jgilmore.

Thank you, sir, for prepping for and taking the photo, and posting it here along with informative and entertaining commentary!

Matthew Dittert
Sealy, TX

That's a quality slide suitable for Trains /Classic Trains / Railfan /TRP . Lance , why not do a photo story of your RR career for one of these publications ?   --Kelly

UP951West Wrote: > ... why not do a photo story of your RR career [for publication] ...

Because I just can't seem to get anybody to extend the day to 36 hours & the week to 9 days! Between slide collections from Gary Rich (partial), Tony Fey, Jim Watson, 75% of my own collection and a 1000 (give or take) straggling slides & negatives (mostly Ray Hilner negs) from the Gibson Collection I have enough scanning (estimated 100,000 images) to keep me busy for another 20 years or mpre. And I still have keep up with photo-editing scans (averaging 60 mins per) & writing captions for TO threads. ALSO I have to set aside time to S, shower & shave on a daily basis, cook a meal now & then, run for groceries and keep my dungeon in a decent state of habitation. NOT TO MENTION keep shooting as a railfan on a semi-regular basis...

Now... what was that you wanted me to do???

;^)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/21 07:55 by santafe199.

santafe199 Wrote:
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 shower & shave on a daily
> basis, 

Awww, c'mon, that stuff's optional...

JG

jgilmore Wrote: > ... that stuff's optional ...

(snickering, big time!) Little do they know............

;^)

Wonderful shot, Lance!  I hope you have more cab shots in your stash!

RC Lundgren