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Re: [BRHSlist] Lines West

To: BRHSlist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [BRHSlist] Lines West
From: arnold299@a...
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 16:26:07 EST
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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