For BchrisL & co.

[surfinsapo]

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[Unity]

City of New Orleans in Memphis.

Illinois Central went through Champaign IL, where I went to school. I grew up in Danville IL, which was served by the Chicago & Eastern Illinois line. I rode the Dixie Flyer and other streamliners to and from Chicago quite a few times, including when I enlisted. You pass through a different socio-economic world on a train.

--John
(The aunt who helped raise me was chief clerk for the New York Central freight office in Danville. I grew up around trains.)

 

[BchrisL]

Thanks Sapo....I enjoyed that. It is exactly the images I was thinking about yesterday.

Sounds like the beer kicking in.

Sometimes it takes a beer or two to start me to dreaming these days.

My grandfather and father and several cousins and my uncle were all railroad workers. My father and grandfather worked for the Virginian in Victoria, Virginia. I can just remember the day when the new diesel engines rolled into town in 1958. I remember that there was a big commotion about it, I didn't know why.

My dad used to take me for a short ride now and then down the line in the cab of a steam engine, and later in the new diesel engines. It is that image that I remembered when I took this picture and very simular to the video in the U-tube clip. There was smoke steam and noise and warmth. Not the kind of warmth you get from a match, but a massive wave of warm that surrounds you like a thick blanket on a cold winter night from the huge mass of a steam engine, or the cooker when it is fully up to temperature. It is a powerful image that was brought back to me by the cooker as I was sitting there.

 

[Griff]

Thanks SS. That brings back memories.

Oh those many years ago when I was in high school, I walked about a mile to school. Part of the route was along the Illinois Central Railroad tracks. "The train they called the City of New Orleans" arrived just as I was passing -- so long as we were both on schedule. (The train was on time more than me.)