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Fellow Burlington Fans, If you want a really strong shot of Burlington Route passenger train nostalgia on this Wednesday before Thanksgiving, let me recommend to those who have the book, Chapter 8 from "Overnight, Every Night" in David P. Morgan's Diesels West. This wonderful description of the preparation and operation of the two sections of the pre-Thanksgiving westbound Denver Zephyr was commissioned by President Harry C. Murphy and penned, in the present tense, by Morgan in 1963. From my own experiences on all the Burlington's trains to and from the Twin Cities (except 45 and 52) beginning in 1956, I have no trouble believing that Morgan's words accurately reflect practices and events on "Denver One", which I never rode until the summer after Amtrak took over in 1971. In my teaching of a January-Term course on U.S. Railroad History at Gustavus Adolphus College eight times from 1980 to 2005, I would read selected portions from this chapter to the students as part of coverage of post-war passenger service, in a much broader context, of course. I also chose these passages because they were and are such darn good writing, as many of us recall from Morgan's decades as Editor of Trains Magazine. With special greetings to all who have warm memories of travel on the Zephyrs, North Coast Limited, Empire Builder and the Q's other top trains in their finest years, Dennis Henry __._,_.___ Posted by: "Dennis C. Henry" <dennis@dennischenry.com> __,_._,___ |