"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. Attending for the first time 
were Lewis Green and his son David Green. Lewis began his rail career in 
1951 with the Virginian Railway Bridge Gang. He recalled helping construct 
the large diesel fuel storage tank in Roanoke for the brand new 
Fairbanks-Morse Trainmasters. He remembered taking down the old water 
towers along the line. Lewis said that "we would take them apart, put large 
sections on pole flats and take them to a good spot and throw the redwood 
sections over the bank". After two years in the military, Lewis returned 
and hired on the "W" side in engine service and worked his way up to 
engineer. He retired in 1989 with 37 and 1/2 years service from NS. His son 
David is an NS engineer ,who now works out of Brookneal in pusher service 
on the Durham line.

Landon Gregory brought a special display of the news article about our 
excursions to Bluefield and Shenandoah. His daughter works at "The Roanoke 
Times". The front page spread showed Landon boarding passengers on his car 
#8. I showed the Brethren a photo of four young boys and their Mom that I 
took at the Bluefield Railfest last Saturday. They each had a T-Shirt with 
"Thing-1 through Thing-4" on them. Also passed was an email about a "busy 
day (11-5-09) on the NS from our good friend Steve Smith, Engineering 
Technician on the Track Geometry Car. The first incident concerned a nude 
blood covered fellow claiming to be Jesus Christ who had just jumped from a 
train. He was traced back to trains near Toledo. The second was about a 
trespasser on NS train 287 near Columbus Ohio. The trespasser had 
previously robbed a bank and crossed NS property before being struck on the 
CSX and killed. The FBI is on the scene recovering money that was scattered 
across both right of ways...

At the Bluefield Railfest train show last Saturday I met Virginian carman 
Ryan Lawrence who hired on in Princeton in 1948 and retired from NS in 1992.

 From last week and the "Straight A's and Slanted Sixes" discussion. Bud 
Jefferies, distinguished author of books on Steam Locomotives, corrected my 
description of the "Slanted Sixes" exhaust. The exhaust was actually 
slanted toward the FRONT of the N&W Y-6's.

I showed a slide that I recently purchased on ebay of a Fairbanks- Morse 
Trainmaster with a cut of coal cars under the wires, apparently in Roanoke. 
The Brethren identified the location as east of "AG" and the Wasena Bridge 
in Roanoke.

Our good friend Bill Honeycutt gave away nice NS logo and spike pins at our 
monthly Retired NS Mechanical Department breakfast last Friday at the 
Roanoker Restaurant. Naturally, I thought of the Virginian Brethren and 
asked if he had extra. He was gracious enough to share with us and I was 
able to pass out pins to the Brethren last night.

We talked about the robbery that occurred sometime last weekend at the 
Roanoke Chapter NRHS 9th Street Siding, probably during the excursion 
trips. A brass bell was stolen from the Chapter's GP30. If someone 
approaches any of you VGN fans with a 12" locomotive bell marked "C&O" 
please get as much information about this person as possible and contact me 
or your local police.

Rufus Wingfield wore a very special cap to the meeting last night. He 
bought it sometime in the 1950s from Jack Frank, conductor on the VGN New 
River Division. It is black with a yellow screen printed VGN logo and now 
supports several nice pins also. Ruf promised that one day it will be on 
display in our Roanoke Station. Ruf and Scotty were discussing with our 
guest Lewis Green about the differences of working on the railroad and 
being retired from it. Scotty said "now that he is retired, he has no paid 
vacation and can't mark off sick".

Landon and I were discussing the Roanoke Chapter NRHS meeting tonight. Our 
president Jeff Sanders has announced that instead of a program we are going 
to "debrief" everyone about our recent excursion trains. I asked Ruf what 
he thought of the debriefing and he replied "I just changed my shorts this 
morning..."

Time to pull the pin on this one!

Departing Now from V248,

Skip Salmon



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