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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by farmer03 i'm jealous. you guys got to see all this back in the 'glory days'... by the time i developed a somewhat healthy interest and when i could finally drive to go do some snoopin around it was 1996, not much left in the way of variety. [/quote] that's something. Back in '65 we were standing around telling older folks we were jealous because they got to see the glory days of steam, and standard weight passenger trains. But back in those days, and well into my railroad career, the only thing that was different was the motive power. We still had to catch train orders on the fly. There were still 5 man crews in Wisconsin. The early Amtrak jobs that I worked still had steam heat and real diners. On number 7 we would have dinner out of Wisconsin Dells. On those days that we headed down to Tolono our first stop was at Kankakee to see the All-Pullman Panama. Then we would see IC no 1, the City of New Orleans fly by with about 16 cars including a round-end observation. All the equipment matched perfectly. A-B-A E units and a shiny string of brown and orange passenger cars. Then we would stop at Gilman. We saw The Green Diamond on its way to St Louis branch off to the west. It still had its parlor car along with a diner and coaches. A bad day on the IC would be when there was a lash-up of E units and the grills didn't match. Next, The Seminole, with heavy-weight coaches, an old diner, and a Pullman would stop at Gilman. When we got to Tolono we saw the Wabash Cannonball. It had 2 passenger Geeps, an RPO, a diner-lounge, and 2 coaches. The brakeman was old enough to have been the ring bearer at Mathuzalah's wedding. The conductor was old enough to be his father. Just think. an obsure train from Detroit to St Louis had all that service. the agent at Tolono was very good to us, as were a number of agents and operators at the time. They all had a refridgerator full of soda and always would let us help ourselves. We would bring them sandwiches. Those really were the good old days, as impractical, and un-profitable as they were. there was a distinct railroad flavor that captured some old and true Americana that's just plain lost. Mitch
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