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St. Louis-San Francisco - Image Gallery
I love the Meteor. The 4500 is sitting in its own park on route 66 in Tulsa, a beautiful locomotive in its original colors. My wife’s great Uncle Elbert Herndon worked for the Frisco and was instrumental in placing it in the Tulsa zoo where it sat for decades. She received a cosmetic restoration and was moved to her new location.
I think the caption for the Oklahoman should read “St. Louis-Oklahoma City” instead of “St. Louis-Kansas City.” I am a native of Springfield, Mo., and my father worked for the Frisco for almost 50 years. Incidentally, in another article about the Missouri Pacific trains you had a photo of a Frisco train pulling into St. Louis in the morning. It was identified as the Will Rogers, but that train arrived in St. Louis about midnight. I rode it in 1941, and I don’t think the schedule was changed later. I wrote you about this at the time the photo appeared, but I am not sure my comment ever went through.
A second comment: the locomotive 4501, usually assigned to the Meteor, was used to pull Harry Truman’s campaign special in 1948. I was there when the train pulled into Springfield from St. Louis.