Wonderful story, with cultural/historical significance far beyond railroading.
Goin' Railroading is a great book, btw, full of real nuts & bolts stories from
75 years on the C&S and its predecessors.
Burlington management took pride in having the only "diagonal transcontinental"
route, so it's not surprising that the C&S should have hauled many troop
trains. As for there being other better E-W cross-country routes, no doubt. But
the volume of traffic (human as well as freight) was so great during WW2, the
military probably used whatever routes they had at their disposal, whether or
not they were always the first choice.
Jonathan
--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, Kenneth Martin <kmartin537@...> wrote:
>
> In his book "Going Railroading" Sam Speas said the C&S carried a lot of troop
> trains.
>
> He recounted one trip he had stopped in Fort Collins to take on water when a
> young soldier came up and asked "Where are we?"
> "Fort Collins" he told him
> The soldier shrugged "where's that?"
> "Colorado" Sam replied "Where you from?"
> "Hoboken" He replied.
> "Where you headed?" Sam asked.
> "San Francisco" the soldier called back.
> "you're about half way there" Sam told him.
> Shaking his head the soldier said "I had no idea the country was this big."
>
> Ken Martin
>
>
> On Apr 14, 2012, at 8:03 AM, rgortowski@... wrote:
> > In looking through the Kalmbach Burlington Route book we have been
> > discussing, one of the photos is an O-5 leading a troop train from Chicago
> > passing the articulated 2nd TCZ bound for Chicago - in Minneapolis. Since
> > the book was copyrighted in 1947, this photo has to be sometime between
> > 1944 (there are the Pullman-Standard troop sleepers) and early 1947. I've
> > often wondered about the frequency of the Q hauling troop trains in WWII
> > and the Korean War. It seems like there would be better routes than the Q
> > for troop trains, though I suppose that the Q/GN or Q/NP route would be
> > fine for the Washington state camps. Any comments on the Q and troop
> > trains?
> >
> > Rich G.
>
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