The other day, I took my one year old son to the park to play on the swings like I do most nights. Now, said park is right next to the NS Piedmont Division main line. My son was tiring of swing when I heard horn. My wife gave me the “go ahead” look and I put my son on my shoulders and walked to where could see the action. A few minutes later, a pair of SD40-2s pulling a trio of covered hoppers ambled by.
That’s when it hit, an SD40-2 is to my son what a GP9 or F Unit is to me. A modern wide cab will be to him what an SD40-2 is to me. If he’s even interested in trains, and I’m doing everything I can to sow those seeds, he’ll be say “yeah, ES44AC!” The way I go “yay, SD40-2s!”
I know the feeling. My adult son, who recently took up the hobby, got a picture of a Cargill SD9 in transit on the Burlington at Western Avenue. We both agreed that it was a good catch on that date. What was once ordinary for me is now something special for both of us.
I hear you my hubby is like a schoolgirl at prom when the local comes to town with something other than the normal B-40-8W’s on the point. Couple days ago it came thru with and he about fainted a GP38 and GP50 on it. He was like what are those doing here one of which still was in Blue and Yellow.
And here I have a local shortline with ALCO/MLW power, from C424/425’s, C430’s, up to big C630’s & C636’s… Those must be like seeing (and capturing in a photo) the real Bigfoot, being abducted by aliens flying a UFO, during a blue moon, with rainbows and unicorns in the background.
The other shortline has SD40 series, GP35-40 series, and SD45 series units. Can anyone say Sasquatch, shaking hands with Elvis, during an eclipse?
And, yes, the mainline guys (and gals) near the lakeshore run mainly ES44 series, SD70 series, etc… But, I get to see lots of “dinosaur” power on the shortlines around too.
Over here we get the best of both worlds… aging RS-18s on the Guelph Junction Railway, high horsepower SD’s (including an ex Cotton Belt SD45T-2) on the G&W , and 20 minutes away we have CP’s double track main with more up to date power.
When I was a kid (and I know I’ve said this before), the locomotive in my life was a BL2. That’s what I saw, day in and day out.
Then, I started getting Trains in 1962. I found out just how rare these beasts were. I also found out about some other locomotives, switchers, etc., that I’d occasionally see. And Trains was running attractive ads from EMD about “The Revolutionary GP30.” So that was the gold standard for me. I was on Cloud Nine when we happened on a couple of those engines idling, sounding unlike anything I’d heard before. It was about then that I discovered that Alcos sounded weird (sorry, Larry…they did, then!). And right about the time I saw my first GP30s, we lost the BL2s…those were precisely the units traded in for the 30s!
Of course, as an avid reader of Trains, I was up to the minute (or the year, anyway) on the GP35s, and wow!–the 40 series, when it was announced in 1965. I was a victim of the cascading of power…the GP7s and GP9s I was used to were going elsewhere to replace the F7s that never came our way, so the GP30s and GP35s became more commonplace.
Then I left home and moved to the big city. Hired out for a railroad whose mainline power was SD40s and SD45s (impressive creatures), but they still used GP30s, GP35s, and SD35s as well–not much of a change. I should have realized that things were changing because the yard switchers of choice were now GP7s and GP9s.
The Dash Twos came, and those were sophisticated units–wow again, they were as common as Geeps were (I still hadn’t realized that this was beco
A similar chronology could also be written for electric locomotives in the NorthEast, where there have been several generations on the PRR, and then Amtrak, plus a few commuter lines such as SEPTA.
I grew up near a railroad that used mostly 4 axle units. They (RI) had a handful of SD40-2 and U30C engines. Now what I saw has road power growing up is only used as yard or local power. (I remember hearing that when their first GP38-2 units started arriving on the property, they weren’t supposed to be used on local trains. Of course that edict wasn’t always followed.)
It used to be that those SD40-2 engines looked so big. Now they look small.
The other day I was working a train on former RI trackage. I showed my conductor what that subdivision looked like in the last RI employee time table from 1979. He saw the date and said he wasn’t even born yet. Now that’s Scary!
There is only 1 dispatcher on our roster that was born before my hire date. I am the only one that has a seniority date from the 20th Century, which is also before all but 2 on the roster were born. Talk about scary!
Balt, I will pull a little age on you. I rode behind passenger steam (2 trains–Birmingham #11, and #136 two years before the Southern pulled all its fires. Until all steam was taken out of service, the Southern proudly noted in its passenger timetable which trains were Diesel-powered, and the terminals for the steam operation (the trains that came through Bristol were diesel-powered between Washington and Monroe and between Bristol and their destinations… I remember the steam engines that used to come through my home town (and watching a pig that someone kept in his back yard, right next to the track, going crazy when a train went by), and the first Alcos that I ever saw (Roadswitchers) on the same branch.
I miss the opportunities I had to interact with men in road service (of course, after moving here, going on 42 years ago, I had no opportunity to even talk with such). It seems that trainmen seldom even come through the passenger cars now.
As a kid (7-8 or so), I recall riding behind steam in revenue service on the carrier I hired out on. Later in Junior High school I can recall playing on retired steam engines on the shop track, after working hours, in the town we were living in.
Well, I guess I have to fess up. I, too, rode behind steam when mom sent me to my uncle’s farm for a few weeks so she could have some peace and quiet. The last revenue run of steam I can recall on the line near me was in the early sixties. I still miss how those engineers could play a steam whistle. Each one seemed to have his own signature on it.
I know that feeling, too, Jeff, about working with “kids”. There were two milestones there: working with people born after my seniority date, and working with people younger than my own kids.
Of course, the opposite held true, too: I worked with people who had been around before I was born (including one old-timer who was around before Proviso was built, and lasted well over 60 years), and whose kids were older than mine (in fact, there was one father-and-son combo on the roster, both of whom predated me).