Hello Forum Members,
A year so so ago there was a guy on here putting out excerpts about a book on the Cotton Belt in Tx. during the steam and early diesel days…Does anyone know if the book was ever published,or remember this person on the forum? If it was publishes what is the name of it? TIA
Ed Cooper (SSW9389) would probably be able to answer your question.
Ed Cooper (SSW9389) would probably be able to answer your question.
SPLENDED ! Thank you very much !
As I told Danny privately the draft book is with an editor in TEXAS at this time for his read. The book is a life and times biography of C. W. “Red” Standefer who started out as an engine watchman for Cotton Belt in his native Hamilton, TEXAS in 1917. When Red Standefer retired from the Cotton Belt in 1967 he was the #1 Seniority Engineer on the Cotton Belt’s Southern Division. He had seen everything from the saturated steam engines of his youth to the second generation diesels in his later years.
See http://www.cottonbeltroute.com/ for a bit more information on how some of this came about.
Ed Cooper
CBRHS #114 Pine Bluff Chapter
The background photo on this poster is of C. W. Standefer with his hand on the reverser of a Cotton Belt L1. The photo is from the C. W. Standefer Collection and the Commerce Public Library. Dr. Jason Davis used it as the background in this year’s Cotton Belt Symposium as both he and I know that in some way C. W. Standefer is driving our Cotton Belt History exploration. The photo was likely taken by C. W. Standefer’s son Harold in the late 1940s or very early 1950s. Harold Standefer was a photographers mate in the U S Navy. Another possible photographer could have been R S Plummer. Plummer let on that he knew Standefer during Plummer’s interview for the oral history project at East Texas State University, now Texas A&M- Commerce. The locomotive Standefer was driving in the photo was identified as an L1 by the late Chuck Harris. The thing that came to the forefront about this photo is the Masonic Ring that Standefer is wearing. It was identified the morning of the Symposium by C. W. Standefer’s grandson Steve Standefer as his Masonic Ring. That very afternoon I was interviewing a retired college history professor and he told me how the Masons influenced life around Commerce, TEXAS.
2009 Cotton Belt Symposium poster on the front door of the Commerce Public Library.