This is something of a rambling story and probably of little interest to most of you, but it brings back a lot of memories to me.
Yesterday I got together for lunch, as I do every Tuesday, with my good friend Bob Jensen. Bob and I met as teenagers on a Burlington-sponsored excursion from Denver to Colorado Springs and return behind O-5-B 5626 in June 1959 and have been friends ever since. Bob's father immigrated from Germany in 1926 and worked in the joint Q-C&S shops here in Denver until they closed in 1955. At any rate, when I got home after lunch I had an e-mail waiting from Coi Gehrig, who manages that magnificent photo collection of the Denver Public Library's Western History Department. She thought I might he interested in the attached news photo, now in their collection, taken by a Rocky Mountain News photographer on February 3, 1962, when the Burlington turned over the keys to office car 96 to the Intermountain Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. And in the photo, Bob is at the far left, while I am at the far right. (We both look nearly the same today!
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The Intermountain Chapter had been formed in the summer of 1961 (we actually waited until June to file the papers with the national office because I had just turned 16 in May and thus became eligible for membership), and among our founding members (in addition to Bob Jensen and me) were three others seen in the photo -- William "Bill" Jones, the first president; Robert E. "Bob" Wood, and Bob Richardson of Colorado Railroad Museum fame. We thought it would be a good idea to acquire a private car for excursion service, and since the Burlington was then so active in operating railfan and other excursions, we thought that was the place to start -- and we had a contact there. Bob Wood (second from left in the photo) was the grandson of Gen. Robert E. Wood, board chairman of Sears from 1939 to 1954 and founder of Allstate Insurance -- and a good friend of Q President Harry Murphy. So Bob Inquired of Harry if the Q had a surplus office car it would be willing to sell us. Murphy offered us a choice of two cars: the 92 and the 96. The 92 had been built in 1903 for Charles Elliott Perkins as the "Black Hawk," had later been the first "Burlington" and was now an extra car, used only occasionally. The 96 was nearly 10 feet shorter than the 92, had been built in 1886 for the president of the Chicago, Burlington & Northern as its B-99 and had been completely rebuilt at Aurora in 1906 into its present configuration. The railroad, Murphy told us, would sell us the 92 for $10,000 or the 96 for just $2,800, as it had "fire damage." That so-called damage was from a smoldering fire that had started behind the kitchen stove, which burned coal or charcoal; a hole had been chopped through the stainless steel plating of the refrigerator framing and the wood underneath on the front platform of the car and a fire extinguisher used to put out the smoldering wood that never burst into flame. There was minimal damage -- none of it structural -- and we repaired it by screwing a stainless steel plate about 4x10 inches over the hole. Clearly, Harry Murphy could see that we were a group of mostly young men and boys with little financial means, and he was making us a real deal -- which we jumped at. The 96 was moved to Denver from dead storage in the Aurora shops, and we arranged with the railroad to store it in the 23rd Street roundhouse here. On February 3, 1962, the car was switched onto the Uncle Sam track (a short stub track at the southwest end of Denver Union Station that was used for business cars and was named for the long-gone D&RG train of that name that had run several times a day between Denver and suburban Fort Logan) and we invited the public to the ceremony in which Mark Modglin, the Q's general passenger agent in Denver, would turn over the keys to the car to us. Surprisingly, a Rocky Mountain News reporter and photographer showed up, with the attached photo with a caption appearing in the next day's paper.
Mark Modglin -- and others in the Burlington's Denver city ticket office -- were fishing buddies of my father, and they are largely responsible for my interest in the Q. I had played Cub Scout softball with the son of one of the ticket agents, and that's where the whole fishing thing began, with my father becoming the cook for a big annual fishing trip involving several members of the ticket office staff (including Earle Carter, traveling mail, baggage and express agent of the C&S-FW&D) and employees of the Denver Post Office who were involved in the Railway Mail Service. My father was the only "outsider," and the trips lasted for nearly 15 years. I was an early beneficiary of my father's new-found friends, receiving tickets for the pre-inaugural excursion from Denver to Tampa (some 40 miles east of Denver) of the new Denver Zephyr equipment in October 1956. So by the time he turned over the 96 keys to us in early 1962, Mark had become a close family friend and I regularly visited the ticket office to talk with him and others. Earle Carter became a particularly close friend of our family, and we occasionally visited the Carter home and talked trains and fishing. Fond memories!
Hol
