From 1966 until 1972, my parents rented a camp along Lake Pennesseewassee, in Norway, Maine. For my father, it was a break from his responsibilities on the Long Island Rail Road, and a chance to spend hours bass fishing, alone with his thoughts. When I wasn’t fishing or swimming, I’d head to Grand Trunk station in the adjacent community of South Paris. It took a bit of courage, but armed with a file of 8” X 10” glossy prints, I walked into the station and introduced myself to the block operator, a genial Quebecker named Guy Pomerleau. Guy smiled as he thumbed through the prints and told me to wait until the local switcher returned, as there was a conductor I should meet.
It started with plans to drive to Chicago to attend the Center for Railroad Photography & Art’s yearly conference. The trip quickly expanded to drive across the prairie states to Colorado, from there to Santa Fe and then back east through New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee to arrive back home some 4700 miles and three weeks later. As much as possible, I stayed away from the Interstate Highways and followed the tracks through the small towns that once defined life in America.
Mural on 2nd Avenue – Montgomery, West Virginia
My Father’s Streets
The exit sign on the Interstate pointed to Montgomery and I turned onto a two-lane West Virginia road that I imagine had changed very little from the days when my grandparents lived in Montgomery. My father graduated from Montgomery High School during the war (WWII) and went into the Navy, where he served in the Pacific. My grandfather worked in the mines and when Dad came back from the service, they were living in Virginia.
Montgomery is a railroad town, and at one time was a major shipping point for coal mined in the Kanawha Valley. In the late 1800s, the town’s growth was spurred by the construction of the Kanawha & Michigan Railroad. By the 1940s, when my dad lived there, Montgomery was served by the Chesapeake & Ohio. Today the CSX Kanawha Subdivision and Amtrak run through Montgomery.
New York Central F7-A #1745 – Dickinson Yard, August, 1967
Dickinson Yard, located approximately fourteen miles east of West Virginia’s capital city of Charleston, was the largest yard of the former New York Central’s Kanawha Secondary. The secondary ran from Corning, Ohio, about 60 miles south of Columbus, through Charleston and Dickinson to Swiss about 10 miles beyond Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. Under Penn Central the secondary was known as the Southern Branch.
Rio Grande Southern #20 In Her Stall July 8th, 2020 Rio Grande Southern number 20 sits in her stall at the roundhouse. Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden Colorado.
It was July 8th, 2020, when I went down to the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado. Rio Grande Southern #20 was finally doing some test runs after years of being totally rebuilt—from running on the Rio Grande Southern, to a static display, to running again at the CRRM.
The railroad runs through the most interesting parts of town. Jefferson City, Tennessee – October, 2021
I am on my way to Chicago to attend Conversations 2022, the annual conference of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art on April 8-10. The event is being held live again after a couple of years of virtual conferences made necessary by the pandemic. I look forward to seeing some old friends, meeting some new ones, and attending the many presentations that make up the conference schedule.
A few weeks before Christmas, my good friend Connor Taylor texted me, inviting me on a road trip to visit some of our friends in Pennsylvania during the first week of January, 2022. The first week of January? I thought he was crazy. All I could picture was our car sliding off the side of a cliff in the icy mountains and falling hundreds of feet into a dark, snowy abyss. Perhaps I am crazy myself, for after being informed that the Reading & Northern Railroad was on the list of places to visit, I agreed to come along without any further hesitation.
