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These are Radford Division men. 

Engineman Smith was gone before my time (which began in 1964,) but I remember the others. 

Brakeman Altizer, at far left, was "Ikey" Altizer, an early 1940's hire. Think his first name was William. He was distantly related to my mother and is one of the Altizers (originally Altahusen) who lived atop Allegheny Mountain between Christiansburg and Riner. I believe Ikey had moved to Salem. When I knew him, he was "on the cusp" of working preferred freight jobs and occasionally working passenger runs. Ikey always wore a thin, well trimmed mustache when I knew him. 

Conductor Richardson is Percy R. ("Preacher") Richardson, who was a 1926 hire, as I recall. He retired off one side of 85/84 in the late 1960s. Some of my grandfather's Conductor's Train Books from the 1920s show Percy as one of his brakemen. 

Fireman Blevins is Noah Blevins, a 1940s man. Think his middle initial was W. He worked the Whitethorne Helper crews when I knew him. Lived somewhere around Elliston, as I recall, and was quite an accomplished fiddler. "Nowie" (as his name was pronounced by most of his fellow workers) also had a good head for mathematics, and when he pushed a train on which I was the flagman, I always crossed over to the helper engine and rode up the hill with him to Merrimack. One day he said to me, "Sonny, do you know how to prove addition by casting out the 9's?" Of course, I had to answer in the negative. So he took an engine work report, placed it on the brake stand, and with his pencil wrote a column of four-digit numbers about three inches long. He added the numbers, and then showed me how to "prove the addition" by "casting out the 9's," a process which I wish I could recall. Another trip we were talking about the Virginian's wreck of No. 3 and a coal train at Ingleside. Noah said he had a song about "Dad Aldrich" the Engineman on one of the trains. A few weeks later, he mailed me a reel-to-reel tape recording of his fiddling and singing that and other railroad songs. I think I still have the tape. (This, of course, was before the advent of cassette tape recorders.) 

If you need better initials for Brakeman Altizer and Fireman Blevins, I can look through my old time books. 

Thanks for sharing the photograph. It did me good to see an image of these gentlemen in the prime of their lives. 

-- abram burnett 

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