Hi Dale,
I grew up in Lincoln Nebraska. My favorite recollection of CB&Q was in 1959
when I was 4 years old. My family had stopped to see my great grandmother who
lived in the German bottoms down around 1st and E Street. While I was in the
dining room stuffing my face with the great German pastries that my
grandmother would make, my dad came rushing in and picked me up. He carried
me outside and we ran across the road over by the tracks.
He told me this neat train would be coming down the tracks shortly and he
wanted me to see it. What I had expected was a set of graybacks, SD-7's or
GP-7's to slide by as did so often blocking traffic in the other parts of
town. Instead this black smoke belching steam engine started to approach us
making an ever increasing loud noise. Since we were standing next to the
tracks and I had never seen a steam engine up close this was turning into a
scary deal for me.
When the engineer saw us waving he hit the whistle and I am sure got a
chuckle as he saw this 4 year old run for cover, worried that this "monster"
was going to jump the tracks and chase him. My dad did not catch up to me
until I was back on the safety of Grandma's porch. The O-5 never did jump the
tracks that day and I never did get to see another CB&Q steamer in action
though my brother's boy scout troop did get a ride about two years later.
After that they were gone for good.
Lincoln was a great train town to grow up in with Rock Island, Missouri
Pacific, Union Pacific, CNW and CB&Q. I wish I had been a little older at the
time to have had a chance to have taken pictures and observed more steam.
Long live CB&Q Lines West,
Scott Arnold
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