Burlington Route Community-
It is with a heavy heart that I report Pat Egan sent out an email on the passing of Joe Legner, longtime CB&Q Historian, Railfan, Modeler and Supporter.
Joe was taken to Loyola Hospital yesterday morning with massive intracranial bleeding and by the time he arrived was unresponsive. Joes passed away that morning. There will be a memorial service in a month or so and I will relay details as soon as I learn them.
Joe was a good friend. I first met him at the Illinois Tech Model Railroaders. We did some rail fanning in addition to the club activities and rode many of the CB&Q 4960 Excursions together. Joe was the manager of the legendary All-Nations Hobby Shop in Chicago and since I worked nearby I would see Joe before, during lunch hour, and after work almost every day for the better part of two decades…and I worked with him part time on Saturdays during Train Season for a few years.
Joe was a modeler but mostly an accumulator. When a new car came out he would first figure out what percentage of the real railroad’s fleet he had to buy. This was a bad habit he taught me. Visiting Joe’s house was always a treat….he had railroad books, kit boxes, boxes of slides and other train stuff floor to ceiling in a couple of rooms and pretty much everywhere once he was living alone after his parents had both passed.
Joe managed to accumulate a large collection of CB&Q drawings. At one point the BN came into the shop and asked him if they could borrow some of his Waycar drawings as they needed to do some major rebuilding! of some of the cars. This was about the time the C&S acquired some AT&SF steel waycars so maybe that is the reason the program never happened. I had a collection of CB&Q drawings as well and Joe and I melded our drawings and I had (most of) them microfilmed on 35mm aperture cards which was then state of the art technology.
Joe was behind End Cab Models and had a number of HO freight cars produced that were accurately decorated for Burlington prototypes. This was back in the days when Athearn and Model Die Casting were the major players in the HO kit market and there were only a few companies offering well-researched decorated cars. Later Joe got into being a seller of railroad books, largely at RR Historical Society Meetings, of which he was a member of quite a few. His fellow ITMR member, coworker at All-Nations and best buddy Pat Egan was usually his helper at these meets.
Joe was a good friend….the kind that you could not see for months and you’d pick up the conversation as if you had been together the day before.
Rest in peace, Joe.
Charlie Vlk