Railroaders' Nostalgia > Story time on YT - check it out

A you tube channel that a friend hosts, called Sidetracked, has released a video interview of a gentleman who is well known among Willamette & Pacific/Portland & Western employees.  Ken Nichols was the second Road Foreman of Engines for the WPRR until the early 2000s and was the absolute best RFE we had.  Before that he was an SP engineer in the Bay area.  His dad was also an SP veteran while his grandfather ran for The Rock Island and was killed in a washout accident.  

On YT, search for "High Iron with Ken Nichols."  It;'s long but Ken has a bunch of great stories, SP and probably WPRR/PNWR but I haven't gotten through the 1:43:41 length of it.

I knew Ken from his SP days, both in Okaland and after he came up to Oregon; really great guy.

Having hired out on the Western Division I knew many of the people he was talking about. It was fun listening to his stories.

Railbaron Wrote:
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> I knew Ken from his SP days, both in Okaland and
> after he came up to Oregon; really great guy.
>
> Having hired out on the Western Division I knew
> many of the people he was talking about. It was
> fun listening to his stories.

But he didn't get to some stories that he told during our recert sessions, like how he and his brother worked together once, rigged up a steam whistle to feed off the main reservoir of their unit, a GP9  as I remember, and whistled their way down the track, to the point that they depleted the MR and caused the train brakes to set.  I finished it and enjoyed the WPRR stories as I recognized all of the people he mentioned and worked with most of them, particularly the female, runaway locomotive, conductor.  She was a bit of a menace  She even had a runaway car working with Scott Pirie on the Corvallis Local that was never reported, even with a runthrough switch the he and she fixed



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/25 21:54 by roustabout.

Thanks, Lou and happy birthday!