As this forum invites its readers to share their recollections of railroading, the serialized story that follows evokes pleasant memories for me. This tale demonstrates that sometimes a railfan is blessed to be in just the right place at just the right time. It occurred on the Santa Fe Railway in August 1961. In fact, it happened not once but twice… on the same trip! All aboard!
CHAPTER 1
BACKGROUND. I’m Dave, from Columbus OH. My paternal grandparents lived in Columbus as well. In the mid-50s (I’d guess '54 or '55) they traveled to Los Angeles by train to visit another son and his family. They traveled via the Pennsylvania RR to Chicago and the Santa Fe’s El Capitan</
The railroads of the past did it with people…lots and lots of people.
In the late 40’s the B&O employed approximately 50K people. The C&O, ACL, SAL and L&N, which are the major ‘fallen flag’ components of CSX at it’s inception had relatively similar employee counts during that period. Add in the territory that came from the ConRail acquisition and the employment counts that those areas had and the total employment of the properties that are today’s CSX would have been well over 200K and probably over 250K. CSX today has less than 30K employees.