On at least one occaision Harry arrived in Aurora 1st thing on a weekday
morning from points west in his business car attached to
end of a Q thru passenger train. My uncle, Ed "Smitty"/"Red" Smith (at the
time working as a Trainmaster on the C&I) was on the
platform, Harry detrained, apparently just to quickly stretch his legs, saw him
& invited him aboard to travel on in to Chicago (also
encouraged him to have the Steward to cook up whatever breakfast he wanted). I
would not be surprised if Harry would have taken a
commuter in-bound on occaision as C&NW's Pres. Provo occaisionally & later
Wolfe regularly took the Q to travel from their west
suburban homes to & from Chicago. Word was on C&NW that Q/BN trainmen knew who
he was & insured he was given a good ride
just to remind him that they had as good or better service than C&NW!
(Conversely C&NW suburban staff knew that the 'boss' knew
how the competition was doing). The great thing about the Chicago commuter
service is that a great many 'name' people from LaSalle
St & other places could be just as easily found on a commuter coach as could
their most jr mgrs, I by luck of the draw sat with the
Chrmn of the Bd of Northern Trust Bank once; only learned who he was as noted
he was reading a No. Trust prospectus so I
commented my sister worked there as a Trust Officer and it was a good financial
institution. His reply was to take a pocket notebook
& note her name. He then explained who/what he was and his interest in knowing
"his" people thought well of their employer! No.
Trust was one of the 2 principal institutions the Q financed much of their
rolling stock purchases thru. Gerald
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