Miracle at Charlottesville - Chapter 9

[dabug]

                      MIRACLE AT CHARLOTTESVILLE

                                    CHAPTER 9

One of the joint railfan/tourist jaunts mentioned in the previous chapter occurred in June of 1969.  We started very early of a morning, pre-dawn, and drove southwest to Norlina NC.  This is where the old Seaboard branch from Portsmouth VA joined the main line down from Richmond.  Nabbed three SCL passenger trains there.  We then hustled north to visit Appomattox VA briefly, where the Civil War ended, and then on to the Charlottesville area where we played tourist at Jefferson’s Monticello.

Late that afternoon we proceeded to Orange VA, the junction where SOU and C&O split their joint line down from Washington DC, capturing the southbound Birmingham Special.  Next over to nearby Gordonsville VA, where the C&O lines from Washington and Newport News join up (some trappings of the steam age still in evidence there at that time.)  There I caught the westbound Newport News section of C&O’s George Washington, #41.  As it left town we beat it over to Charlottesville where that section of the train would marry the main section coming down from Washington.  I figured #41 would beat us to Charlottesville as it had a more direct shot than the highway provided.

Parking at the station and walking out onto the platform, #41 was, indeed, already there (#1, the main section from Washington, hadn’t arrived yet.)  I noticed a pair of C&O sleepers in the distance beyond the end of #41 and spotted under an overpass.  So I walked down the platform toward them.

As I did so, I noticed a fellow standing on the platform beside #41.  He looked to be around my age, and he had a ticket folder in one shirt pocket and a B&O/C&O timetable in the other.  I figured he was a railfan, but neither of us spoke as I walked past him to get a slide of those two sleepers.  When I returned to the area where this fellow was standing, the two of us fell into conversation.  It turned out we were both in the Navy, both stationed in Norfolk (him) or that area (me), both were railfans, and he was on leave returning home to Staunton VA.  I explained that I was on liberty with the wife, who had stayed in the car, and we were doing the combination “tourist (for her)/railfan (for me)” bit.  All this was interesting to that point, even coincidental, but hardly earth shattering.

Then for some reason unknown, he announced that he had been on the Pueblo.

With that revelation, I became “slightly” more animated (agitated?) as the reality of 2 + 2 = 4 (a railfan… hometown of Staunton VA… served on the Pueblo…) came crashing into my consciousness.  I turned to him and almost demanded, “Your name wouldn’t happen to be Chuck ------, would it?!”  As he admitted it was, I doubt if he had ever been more startled (“How does this clown know my name?”) since he and his shipmates found themselves the unexpected “guests” of the North Koreans.  I then proceeded very excitedly to explain how I came to that conclusion.  Yes, he remembered meeting Steve in Japan, and I told him of my letter to him from Turkey.  Unfortunately, in my excitement at this startling meeting, I honestly don’t remember his answer to my query whether he had ever received it.

Even after all these years, I still marvel at the happenstance of our meeting that evening. Think about it… I had tried to contact Chuck about a year-and-a-half earlier and failed… there were still a few hundred passenger trains operating in the U.S. at that time… there were still hundreds and hundreds of open railroad stations at that time … and we just happened to find ourselves in the same city at the same station at the same time on the same day!  Absolutely amazing!!  And while the whole series of events leading to this meeting doesn’t rank with walking on water or raising people from the dead, I still consider it a “minor miracle” in the history of the world, certainly in the world of railfanning.

Before he departed on #1-41 that evening, I gave Chuck our name and phone number and invited him to get in contact with us after he returned to base from leave.  We never heard from him.  Perhaps he decided he wanted nothing to do with some “nut” who first learned of him from halfway around the world but whom he didn’t know.  Worse, I never tried to track him down in Norfolk before mustering out on 9/15/69 and returning to Ohio.  I’ve long since regretted that failure.

Returning home from Norfolk upon discharge, we again spent a night in Alexandria VA (got a couple of nice slides of SOU 47-37 at the curving station platform), nabbed the overnight Federal Express from Boston near Baltimore early the next morning, and managed to get to Horseshoe Curve later that same day just in time to nab the eastbound Pennsylvania Limited coming downgrade with an anemic 5-car consist; at least it still carried a sleeper.

                                                     POSTSCRIPT

In 2003 I determined I was going to contact Chuck again if it were at all possible.  An Internet search turned up someone I was pretty sure was he.  I snail-mailed him a letter explaining whom I was looking for and that if he were that person, I invited him to respond.  He did… he was that person.  I hoped to establish a correspondence with him concerning any and all things railroad, but he seemed somewhat reticent to correspond, which was his prerogative, of course.  I last heard from him about a year later.  Two emails from me to him after that date failed to elicit a response.

Despite my unrequited enthusiasm not being equaled on his part in this century, I’m still grateful to have run into Chuck at Charlottesville all those years ago under such unbelievable circumstances.  Truth, indeed, is stranger than fiction!

Experiences such as those related here make me feel blessed to be a railfan.  Perhaps you can recall incidents in your own railfanning experience that prompt similar sentiments for you.

                                        The End

 

[daveklepper]

In my undergraduate years at MIT, and later in my early years at Bolt Beranek and  Newman in Cambridge, MA, Aleander Hamilton III was an acknowledged leader of the Boston railrand community.   He was active in the local NRHS chapter, where I became a member, and at the Seashore Trolley Museum.  When my MIT railfan group organized a fantrip on the then MTA, taking a PCC car where it seldom if ever ran, including non-revenue service street trackage, he was helpful and was on the trip.  After moving to the Chicago area and then to NYC, we lost contact.

 

But on my first trip to South Africa in connection with my work for Sun City Hotels on the Sun City Entertainment Center in Boputatswana, we sat next to each other on the airplane, he going for railfanning and I for business but also managing some railfanning.

 

And we did meet again later on a fan trip.   His comment was "We were lucky to go when we did."   I think he was referring to the steam operations.

 

Earlier, returning from Brandon, Manatoba, on a business trip, Canadian to Winnepeg and the CN-GN overnight to St. Paul, I was reading TRAINS in the lounge-cafe car.  All of a suddon a tall man stood next to me, saying:  "I have a picture of mine in that magazine!"   It was Phil Hastings.   And he used his engine pass to share a cab ride with me from Crookston to Grand Forks.   (I also met Golda Mier on a Milwaukee stop-over, but that is another story, on the same trip.   Much the same kind of situation as my meeting Queen Elizabeth in Charlottetown, PEI, Canada.) 

[dabug]

Dave:

Thanks for more examples of the old adage that "truth is stranger than fiction," be it in or out of the realm of railfanning.

 

[Mikec6201]

 I have enjoyed reading your stories, have you thought about righting a book? even a small one....Mike

[dabug]

Thanks for your kind encouragement, Mike.  No, I've never thought about writing a book; wouldn't know how or where to begin even if I thought I had anything good enough to put between hard covers.  (Probably ain't smart enuff to do so anyhow.)  I subscribe to the "Popeye" philosophy: "I can read good writin', but I can't write good readin'."  Or maybe it was the other way around?  Anyway, I think my literary notoriety will have to be limited to public forums such as this.  (To which other readers of this or similar forums will probably breath a sigh of relief, as they'll now know whose prose to avoid!)

Dave