Fwd: [VirginianRailwayEnthusiasts] "Takin' Twenty with the Virginian Brethren"

[NW Mailing List]

--
Skip Salmon

=============
To: VirginianRailwayEnthusiasts at yahoogroups.com
From: "Charles E. Salmon, Jr." <gkholine at cox.net>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:31:12 -0000
Subject: [VirginianRailwayEnthusiasts] "Takin' Twenty with the Virginian Brethren"

Last night I had the pleasure of "Takin' Twenty" with 10 of the
Brethren and Friends of the Virginian Railway. I told the Brethren
about the passing of Tommy Wright, VGN Road Conductor from Victoria,
this week. Several expressed their personal grief and told of knowing
and working with him.

We signed a Happy Birthday card for Ernie Hubble, son of Ernest
J. "Red" Hubble and nephew of John Rufus Hubble and Ralph E. Hubble,
both Virginian machinists at Victoria and Roanoke. "Red" started as
a machinist at Victoria and worked his way up to Roundhouse Foreman
on the "W". He was my RH Foreman in 1963 when I hired on in January
of 1963 at Shaffer's Crossing.

I passed on to the Brethren about the upcoming Lynchburg Rail
Day, August 9 and invited all to attend. This is the Blue Ridge
Chapter NRHS annual day with trains, contests, displays, with
programs and is one of the best rail events in the state. For
details, location and directions you can go to:

www.blueridgenrhs.org/rail_day.htm

Also passed was a photo I took last Saturday at a work session
of the Roanoke Chapter NRHS. It was a little "test" for the
Brethren. It showed the Chapter N&W Alco T-6 #42 and caboose #518409
on the Silk Mill lead beside a grain train that is sitting on the old
VGN Main line. The grain train was having power removed (probably a
BO unit). I wanted the Brethren to identify the location. Cornbread
and Ruf immediately remembered the local and told of hundreds of
occasions where they were working the same location. Raymond East and
Scotty Scott also recalled "hogging" Alco switcher sisters of the #42
on the "W" side.

Landon Gregory shared with the Brethren an account of his
attending the Crewe Chicken Festival last week and meeting a lot of
former rail friends both N&W and VGN. He also brought photos taken
of our VGN safe, that was once in the Jarrett Station. It is now at
9th Street for sandblasting and painting. The photos will help us
have the gold leaf "Virginian Railway Co." put back as it was in 1959.
This safe will be displayed at the VMT in our Virginian Railway Room.

The Spring 2007 (latest) copy of the "NRHS Bulletin" was passed
as well as the August 2008 "Trains". The "Trains" has a good article
about CSX stack trains that highlights the NS Heartland Corridor
project and a new NS connection into Boston. I wonder if Henry
Huttleston Rogers even gave a thought that one day the VGN would
deliver to "Beantown"?

Most of our waitresses at Country Cookin' are now out of school
at the beach, "preparing for college in the fall". Our new one,
Melissa, showed us her new tatto...I can't tell you where it is
located and what it is. Cornbread was very impressed and this lead
to the discussion of tattos in general. I couldn't resist telling
the Brethren about my bride Judi's expressing her wish of a tatto
once and what happened next. I told her that "wherever it went on
her body was where I would put the bullet" and she hasn't talked
about tattos since.

Time to pull the pin on this one!

Departing Now,

Skip Salmon

=============
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20080626/9b3779f9/attachment.htm>