Milsurp After Hours

SR NS railfan for years now. I live by an NS main.
I make several railfanning trips a year in the Ky,Tn, Oh area. While in Galesburg,Ill last year I walked across the street from the Amtrak station to Simpson LTD. I could not touch anything in the gun racks in the store as I do not have a F.O.I.D. card. Ill is strange.....................................

Welcome to he forums Walgetty. Haven't got into railroads myself, but I bet it is an interesting hobby.

Friend of mine lives in Illinois and has been to Simpson LLD and was fasinated by the offerings, although he is not a gun nut like me. Simpson is one of the few outfits I know that can import particular guns for you from another country....for a fee.

walgetty,

Next to guns my greatest interest has been trains, I even started work, at 15, as a 'call boy' at a locomotive depot(no smart remarks from the usual quarters ) and it was all steam in those days. Since then I'v enjoyed trips by rail in a few countries. India remains my favourite place though for long distance comfortable travel.

There is something about steam that has always fascinated me. Might be the smell but probably all that controlled power is probably the thing.
Here in France we have the TGV which has no soul to it. There are a few stream preservation societies that do good work, the nearest one to us being in Guitres, about an hours drive. They mean well but the place has more old wrecks that working stock which is sad to see.
Here are a few images from Guitres

Not a big RR fan,but Great Granddad was a station master is it? in Canada in the 30's through the 50's I believe.
Granddad was a station master for the Southern Pacific from the 50's until the early 80's I have quite a bit of stuff they gave him/he "collected" off of old depots through his time with them.

He was in charge of the trains when they built Vandenburg AFB back in the 60's.

*edit*

Oh yea,he was one of the better ones in CA in the 50's and they trusted him the most so when James Dean bought it they called him up to Monterey to ship the body back east.

I'm a bit of a rail nut. Came from a raidroad family, B&O & Western Md. Working on an HO layout that likely will never get finished. But so what?

My grandfather was an engineer on steam locomotives from 1920's to 1950's on a logging railroad in Washington state. I worked on the track crew of the same railroad for 2 summers after high school making college money.
He is leaning out of the cab in this photo from a book, page 64 & description page 65.

Vern


http://books.google.com/books?id=bVVWXj ... &q=&f=true

A sale of old railway posters was held on 15/16 January in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. It came from the estate of a deceased rail fan who collected them in the 1960s when British Rail was disposing of the old Great Western railway archives at Paddington in London. They were going to be thrown away but he rescued them and took them home. He had over 2500 posters and other railway articles in his collection. The first 480 posters sold made £410,000 ($670,000 USD). They still have over 2000 posters to sell and other art work. The top price for a poster was £6,600 ($10,600 USD). The chap lived in a small terrace house in Knaresborough and the collection was found by the lawyer looking after the disposal his estate. The man was a millionaire but he was more interested in having the collection than the money.
A good job he was in the right place at the right time or all this stuff would have been trashed.
Regards
Peter
http://www.morphets.co.uk/News.asp
http://www.morphets.co.uk/BidCat/Catalo ... 0&status=A

I remembered this collection from Antiques Roadshow.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/200302A37.html

One thing I liked about being stationed in Germany 1970-1971 was the Bundesbahn, it seemed you could getlamot anywhere. "Geht's besser mit der Bahn."