This past October, I had the privilege of spending a day of photography with my friend Andy Morang. That’s him in the the photo, bending over his camera bag by the tracks in Monroe, Louisiana. Andy wrote about our day out on his blog, Urban Decay. We reprinted his post here a couple of weeks ago and he now has part two up. (See Part One and Part Two.)
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On the morning of Tuesday, November 22, 1994, a friend of mine who was the environmental manager at the Southern Pacific in Denver, Colorado, called me at my office at the Transportation Technology Center to say that there had been a derailment early that morning on Tennessee Pass. The air brakes on a train load of taconite pellets failed to function after cresting the top of the pass. Almost the entire train derailed on a 10 degree curve, he said, and that there were some injuries but fortunately no lives were lost. I wanted to see the aftermath but couldn’t get away until Sunday morning.
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Formerly Fort Miro and now the seat of Ouachita Parish, Monroe is the “big city” of north central Louisiana. The family and I used to attend theater productions at the Monroe Civic Center and have flown out of MLU airport, but otherwise have not spent much time there.
A Virginia friend asked about someplace to explore, and I suggested Monroe. We drove there on a sunny warm day and headed to the Ouachita River at the historic city core.
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If you were to visit the town of Herndon, Virginia today, you would think of it as any other town. It has a town center, houses, stores, and main streets. What very few people know is that this suburb of Washington D.C. has a deep-rooted history.
Who is Herndon named after? It is named after William Lewis Herndon, the commander of the S.S. Central America, a ship that sank in 1857 in a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean while in route from Panama to New York City. It is said that Commander Herndon saved his crew as he went down and perished with the ship.
It is named for a sea captain, but there is no navigable waterway in the town. How is it named for a sea captain? William Herndon and his wife were born in Virginia. He was born in Fredericksburg, and she was born in Culpeper.
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Unlike most industries with a footprint measured in square feet, or perhaps several acres, the railroad reaches out into the American landscape to touch lonely rural outposts, big cities, and small towns. The railroad pushes over mountains and through uninhabited deserts. It spans rivers and streams as it stitches the country together with steel rails. And every place the railroad touches is changed by it, and the railroad is altered by each place it passes through.
Read moreOne of the things I regret is that I did not take the time to learn more about my family history from my parents when they were still living. Now I have a lot of questions and it is too late to ask. One of the best ways to learn about earlier times is to talk to the people who lived through them.
A while back, John Springer, who is a regular contributor the The Trackside Photographer, phoned me and said that he knew of several retired railroaders who had worked at a time when telegraphy and morse code were still in use by the railroad. A few weeks before Christmas, we had the opportunity to record a conversation with three “old-timers” and listen to their stories. This is history—living history.
Their stories are fascinating, and provide a vivid glimpse into a time when railroad operations were more akin to the 19th than to the 21st century.
Edd Fuller, Editor