Railroaders' Nostalgia > Semaphore Saturday..and a friendly wave.

Engineer C.D. Cooper (Chuck) gives me a friendly wave as he runs his Dodge City, Ks. to Newton, Ks. ATSF local east at Lewis, Ks. on April 18, 1997 under a stately looking cantilever semaphore.  My Canon 10s locked on as he waved and clicked twice for me and did a good job.   I worked out of Newton, Ks. too at the time, and knew Chuck from union matters although I did not have seniority to run West from there.   Chuck had hired out in 1946 at age 15 (with his parents approval) on the ATSF in the track department.   He was 66 years old when this photo was taken, he retired shortly thereafter and passed in 2014.
    Lewis, Ks. was about 110 miles west of home for me, and I made many trips out there to shoot this location, like in the double digits trips, where I finally got the shot that took 3 years to get of the sun setting directly between the semaphores and on the tracks there.  The semaphores came down in 1999.
   I made a print of this photo and through the grapevine found out the day Chuck was to retire.  I met him at the roundhouse at Newton at the end of his last trip and gave him the photo which seemed to really tickle him.   



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/21 11:40 by atsfer.

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Great story and photo. This is really cool
Brian Stevens

Posted from iPhone

SCKP187 Wrote:
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> Great story and photo. This is really cool
> Brian Stevens
>
> Posted from iPhone

I'll second that!!

Larry

Nice one, John. Jogged my memory as I'd kind of forgotten Chuck whom was always a pleasure to visit with. I do remember brother Tom as I worked with him quite a bit. Now there's a source of stories.   :^) 

I probably bumped into Chuck at Sand Creek at time or 2 over the years, but I don't specifically remember him. That's a nice tale about giving him the picture. I only worked with one hogger who didn't attach at least some personal sentiment to having his picture taken while aboard his train. One day in the hole at Matfield I had "Scrap Iron" Jack Richardson just bark at me when I asked if I could take his pic sitting behind the throttle. So I waited until he was idly looking out his window and shot him anyway... ;^)

Lance