MIRACLE AT CHARLOTTESVILLE
CHAPTER 9
One of the joint railfan/tourist jaunts mentioned in the previous chapter occurred in June of 1969. We started very early of a morning, pre-dawn, and drove southwest to Norlina NC. This is where the old Seaboard branch from Portsmouth VA joined the main line down from Richmond. Nabbed three SCL passenger trains there.
In my undergraduate years at MIT, and later in my early years at Bolt Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, MA, Aleander Hamilton III was an acknowledged leader of the Boston railrand community. He was active in the local NRHS chapter, where I became a member, and at the Seashore Trolley Museum. When my MIT railfan group organized a fantrip on the then MTA, taking a PCC car where it seldom if ever ran, including non-revenue service street trackage, he was helpful and was on the trip. After moving to the Chicago area and then to NYC, we lost contact.
But on my first trip to South Africa in connection with my work for Sun City Hotels on the Sun City Entertainment Center in Boputatswana, we sat next to each other on the airplane, he going for railfanning and I for business but also managing some railfanning.
And we did meet again later on a fan trip. His comment was “We were lucky to go when we did.” I think he was referring to the steam operations.
Earlier, returning from Brandon, Manatoba, on a business trip, Canadian to Winnepeg and the CN-GN overnight to St. Paul, I was reading TRAINS in the lounge-cafe car. All of a suddon a tall man stood next to me, saying: “I have a picture of mine in that magazine!” It was Phil Hastings. And he used his engine pass to share a cab ride with me from Crookston to Grand Forks. (I also met Golda Mier on a Milwaukee stop-over, but that is another story, on the same trip. Much the same kind of situation as my meeting Queen Elizabeth in Charlottetown, PEI, Canada.)
Dave:
Thanks for more examples of the old adage that “truth is stranger than fiction,” be it in or out of the realm of railfanning.
I have enjoyed reading your stories, have you thought about righting a book? even a small one…Mike
Thanks for your kind encouragement, Mike. No, I’ve never thought about writing a book; wouldn’t know how or where to begin even if I thought I had anything good enough to put between hard covers. (Probably ain’t smart enuff to do so anyhow.) I subscribe to the “Popeye” philosophy: “I can read good writin’, but I can’t write good readin’.” Or maybe it was the other way around? Anyway, I think my literary notoriety will have to be limited to public forums such as this. (To which other readers of this or similar forums will probably breath a sigh of relief, as they’ll now know whose prose to avoid!)
Dave