Railroaders' Nostalgia > Tower Thursday

From my view point on the trailing unit as I was working as a fireman and two brakemen were in the lead unit, engineer Steve Johnson on local 1413 southbound out of Newton, Kansas rolls past the shell of the south junction tower in Wichita, Kansas around 1980.    Hey Skinem, if you're reading this check your private messages.

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Ahhhh..... the memories! :^)

Lance

Nice shot!  Can  you explain where you are going and where the tracks go to?

Thanks.

RC Lundgren
Elgin, TX

The train (Santa Fe local 1413) originated in Newton, Ks. on duty at 1500 I believe.   The destination is Arkansas City, Kansas( a 78 mile trip) with work stops normally at Wichita, maybe Mulvane, Winfield and Hackney, Kansas.(plus other assorted stations as needed)   This was during to old days of the ATSF when a local had maybe 2 or 3 locomotives and was rarely very long maybe 4,000 feet but could be heavy enough to be restricted to 45 miles per hour..
   In the photo, we have just left the Wichita Terminal "hump" tracks that held the old union station and are headed down the 3rd district mainline.   The track to the right is the Rock Island main which went on south from there to Oklahoma, and the track to the right of that is I believe the old Englewood branch which of course was non signaled and at the time had a lot of industry (lumber yards, cement plants, etc) that the ATSF serviced.   That particular line was serviced by the south yard job on duty at 2300 hours which I worked both as a switch man and engineer and man are there a lot of stories I could tell about working there.  The track at the extreme right is the south yard lead track, which on a normal trip you had to back the train into after pulling out west a ways onto the Englewood sub.   After working some industries in the south yard and southwest grease and oil company which was basically in the middle of Wichita and was a nightmare many times to work, you would assemble your train with the loaded cars for the industries to be worked out on the Englewood sub, place the empty cars you already had behind the caboose and then head west on the Englewood sub to service the customers there.   Most of the incidents I had involving car train collisions happened out there due to the number of crossings we crossed in the middle of the night that had only crossbucks as warning signs with most of the crashes being where the vehicle ran into the side of the locomotive or train.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/22 06:09 by atsfer.