Mystery Picture

[NW Mailing List]

I have the Vanishing Vistas card with this photo.  The location is given as
Troutville and the engine is 2123.  The solid train of tank cars is to
transport oil by rail during World War II because German submarines had
disrupted the transport of oil along the Atlantic seaboard.  The peak year
for the oil trains was 1943.  So the correct orientation of the photo is
with the passing siding in the foreground, on the engineer's side of the
locomotive.  The Vanishing Vistas image (copyright 1972) was made from
large size transparencies taken by N&W's company photographers.  There may
be a b&w version of this scene in the Virginia Tech image collection.

Back at the time these cards with N&W images were produced, there was some
question whether the borrowed transparencies were ever returned to the
railroad.  I know they were transparencies because a Vanishing Vistas
representative himself told me so at a convention long ago.

--Rick Morrison

----- Original Message -----
*Subject:* Mystery Picture

    I was over at my son's house on Christmas Eve and went downstairs to
see his tree. While there, I noticed he had a picture of a train hanging
over his fireplace mantle. The room was kind of dark and there were some
tall decorations on the mantle hiding some of the picture. As I looked at
the picture, it seemed that I somehow should know where it was taken.
    I went closer trying to recognize the location but it didn't hit me at
first. It seemed familiar, but, I just couldn't place the location. I then
got involved in conversation with my son and other family members, but, I
kept getting drawn back to the picture. I moved in closer and removed some
of the decorations that were obscuring the locomotive. That's when it hit
me... this photo has been printed in reverse. The road number was wrong
(5123), plus, the throttle linkage and air pumps were on the wrong side.
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