Thunder wrote:We certainly are a different bunch Great stories!! I like the Southern and your right GF, you dont hear much about her.I am a born and raised Rock Island Lines man!But I see a SD 40 in that Tuxedo scheme a bell on each end ( horns on each end too!) and I get weak in the knees. That has to be one of the BEST diesel paint schemes ever.
Does anyone remember the Southerns ad campaigns in the 70's? Old Trains magazines of that era would have them on the back page or a center spread. Pretty cool that in the 70's when everything was going to hell in a handcart around the NE and other locales that you would have a railroad advertising how good it was.
I get to see a ot of old Southern cars in Joliet here. They are full of paper rolls for Smurfit and another paper company. Still neat to see the Southern gives a green light to innovations logos. Just for grins my switchman said Ok ahead for the south yard lead. I came back with look ahead, look South.He got a chuckle out of that.
I went to the "Heritage Gathering" at the NC Transportation Museum over the July 4 weekend. Present were at the "family" of lines represented by the Norfolk Southern Corporation. And, of course, on each flank, was the blue Norfolk & Western engine, and, on the right facing towards me was the oh-so familiar Southern Green and Gold paint that I saw so many times while loading baggage on The Crescent. It really took me back to those years of E-8s, and handing up orders, riding the cabs of the engines, and OS-ing trains in and out of Charlotte Yard. These two were the original merger partners in '82. I was assigned to Hayne Yard, Spartanburg, SC on June 1, 1982 when the merger took place. It was met with mixed emotions by all of us at Southern, who felt that something was being lost in the deal. Most of us were very proud of Southern Railway System, and proud of our association with it. It was a tough, no-nonsense company to work for, BUT they were, for the most part, quite fair. They were rougher on the T & E folks than clerks, but *some*infractions were kinda overlooked. Now if you ran thru a switch, or put an engine on the ground, rupturing the fuel tank(s), well, you'd see some "whammy" time. Southern was very stubborn and independent, known for shrewd management and solid profit-making. It had one of the best expense versus income ratios in the industry, and many competing railroads wondered just how they did it, secretly envying Southern. It consistently was listed on Standard and Poors and not as only one of the best-managed railroads in the US, but was one of the top FIVE corporations of all kinds in the nation--something other railroads couldn't even come close to. They generated enough cash that they ran a successful steam excursion program that carried over into 1992. And they did so in such a way that the steam program paid its own way. AND, when Amtrak came with demands as to what Southern Railway System *had* to do to satisy them, Mr Claytor very impolitely told Amtrak where they could stick it!
He'd run the Crescent for FREE before Amtrak would tell SR what to do!!!!!!!!! And yet, this particular railroad, the railroad responsible for many Innovations (Southern Railway-Look Ahead, Look South) is generally ignored by the fan mags, overlooked in documentaries. and glossed over with quick blurbs on TV.
Seeking help with out-dated management techniques and bloated plant, Conrail sought relief from what seemed to be another Penn Central debacle save continued government feeding, they turned to L. Stanley Crane to reverse the red ink. Recently retired from Southern Railway, Mr Crane did exactly what the doctor ordered, turning Conrail into a worthwhile property---patterned after that of Southern Railway!
Like other railroad men, I am proud of the road that paid my bills and put a roof over my head. It became Norfolk Southern. I recently sent a book to a publisher entitled, "Crescent Memories". It chronicles a life on the railroad (ME), and how it was in those days pre-computer when *some* things were done "the old way", but computers were slowly coming on line to do jobs done for near a century. I have told the story from the standpoint of a clerk, and illustrates that everything isn't *just* trains and engineers. There are photos of regular operations, pics of steam trains coming by my station, train orders in the hoop, and all sorts of things collected over 30 years. There's tales of trudging thru the yards, getting the **** scared out of me by "unathorized persons" who sneaked up on me from nowhere. So I am hoping that the publisher will see the merit in my story, and that people everywhere who have curiosity about trains will be able to "live" the life thru my eyes and the things that happened to me out there. Maybe it will be appropriate in this 30th year of the Norfolk Southern merger. Wish me luck!
Gadfly