Railroaders' Nostalgia > The people you meet!

When Willamette & Pacific took over the SP branches in Oregon, I gave chase of its many jobs and trains.  During this time, I chased the Corvallis Local to one of my favorite places, the Hull-Oakes Mill at Dawson.  While taking pictures of the 1801 and the mill, the engineer came up to me and said, 'I'm Scott Pirie, could you send me a photo, please?' and then handed me his calling card.  That moment was the start.  After that, I searched Scott out and got the okay to ride aroud with him and was introduced to his conductor Gary Dallman. From being around those two and watching how effortlessly Gary switched cars, I decided that I needed to work there.

Letting Gary know my intentions, he even took the time (and a bit of a risk) to show me the basics of car handling and railroading.  So did Scott; we discussed the finer points of hand signals (Scott is very old-school and appreciates good hand signals and dispises radios). After I was hired, I spent time on the job with Gary learning more; Gary was instrumental in training a number of newbie railroaders during the first several years of the WPRR.

So to these two, even though Gary passed years ago, I say thank you! Fortunately, I see Scott regularly and he was even the Best Man at my second wedding. But that is another story!

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Wow! A real train, with friendly railroaders on the back platform!

Nice.

T'was ever thus -
...Lorenzo

Pretty cool story.Thanks for sharing.Bill Webb

Very cool story!

Larry

Thanks,Lou!!

It's too bad WPRR  #1 doesn't look like that nowadays.  The Coastal weather has really done a number on it.

Great story, Lou!  I never knew what prompted you to become a rail.  What's not to like about working a local freight way out in the middle of nowhere, where you're pretty much left alone to do your job (unless, of course, your TM is a new-hire weed weasel who's greatly intent on impressing his superiors) and enjoying a daylight job to boot.

Being younger than me, Lou didn't get to start out his train operation on steam on a Class 1, as I did, but he was curious about that form of locomotion.  Fortunately, I had the opportunity to introduce him to it 13 years ago on a tourist line:  https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,1473079,1473079#1473079.

Lou, why didn't we chase it when it was run behind an SP S12?  Or was it because we were in class?

Lee Hower - Sacramento

mcfflyer Wrote:
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> Lou, why didn't we chase it when it was run behind
> an SP S12?  Or was it because we were in class?
>
> Lee Hower - Sacramento

Lee,
I wonder the same myself.  From the pictures I have, I didn't find Hull-Oakes until 1972.