"Taking Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren

[NW Mailing List]

Last night I had the pleasure of "Takin' Twenty" with eleven of the
Brethren and Friends of the Virginian Railway. I showed them a response to
last week's story about large men who worked on the railroad by Abram
Burnett. Abe told about Radford Division trainman Leonard Hodges. "One day
there was a run-away at Bluefield and Hodges was the Fireman. Everyone
jumped off before the train was moving too fast, except for Hodges. By the
time he squeezed thru the door and wobbled to the steps, the speed was too
great for him to jump. He rode it out". Thanks Abe for the kind words about
Raymond East, he is truly in the "Gentlemen of the Old School club". Ruf
Wingfield, Raymond and Landon remembered Abe and some of their comments
will be in future reports...

I showed the Brethren Norfolk Southern's new "text message live chat
support" where a customer can locate their cars, containers or trailers at
any time. NS will also alert the customers of any changes in shipment of
their merchandise such as shopped cars,delays, and ETAs. All this can be
done with cell phones or blackberries. I asked the Brethren what method was
used on the VGN to obtain the same information for customers. Ruf Wingfield
said that they had a "Camp Book" where each car was tracked through
interchange and terminals except for Sewalls Point coal. Landon said that
the "backtracking method could take days to locate a specific car where NS
customers now get this information instantaneously". Ruf said that the
"Camp Books" were updated each shift and each year they were "stored under
the yard office". I asked did he meant in the basement and he said no,
shelves were build out in the open under the building. "The big flood
washed them away" he said.

As we ate our dinner, the news was being shown on the Restaurant TV. When a
story spoke of our troops Rufus remembered rail cars that carried troops in
WWII being called "forty and eights". Someone asked him why they were
called this. He said that "each carried 40 G Is and 8 mules".

The ebay report this time includes: "The Virginian Era" by Lloyd Lewis,
$33.00; slide of EL-2B $13.23; VGN red short globe lantern $306.84; 1915
VGN Pass $28.77; slide of a 2-bay VGN hopper $11.49 and Aubrey's VGN
Calendar $9.99.

We also discussed a recent news release stating that NS earnings were down
for the 3rd quarter by 29% over 2nd quarter earnings.

Passed around was Aubrey Wiley's 1961 photo of VGN B-23 Jordan Spreader and
Ken Miller's VGN "Plow Car" drawing (photo on this site under rolling
stock). This related to the snow removal discussion of weeks past.

Since Halloween is this Saturday, I asked if the Brethren remembered any
extra security being used on Halloween past on the VGN. Landon said that
sometimes if they could locate a "cinder dick" (RR Police officer) "we
would get him to check on high priority box cars".Raymond East remembers
hitting hay stacked on the track and torpedoes lined up for our trains and
nearby street cars to explode on Halloween. I showed the Brethren a
"Roanoke Times" story "The devil's route?" about Route 666 in nearby
Bedford County near Forest. This road near Thomas Jefferson's "Bedford
Forest" summer home runs parallel to the NS tracks and some say it is
"haunted by old NS workers who helped build the railroad". "Many rumors
surrounding Route 666 in Forest also known as Elton Road, tell of strange
happenings at night".

Someone mentioned that because spanking kids is now politically incorrect,
a lot of parents yell at them instead, and now yelling at them is "under
fire". One of the Brethren, I will not mention his name, responded "until I
was nine years old, I thought my name was 'Gitwood'".

Time to pull the pin on this one!

Departing Now from V248,

Skip Salmon





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