A Union Pacific MOW train makes its way into the town of Tehachapi, CA. on the afternoon of February 1st, 2015. I had spent about 3 hours in Tehachapi waiting on trains and none had come by. This train rolled into town right as I was about to leave and, once I saw what it was, I knew why the tracks were silent. So, I snapped my shots and headed back towards Anaheim via Mojave where there were a few trains sitting in the yard wasiting to move, but not many. – Matt Gentry
CSX #5417 leads its train south, coming out of the Madisonville cut off at Morton’s Gap on a cold January day. – Rick Bivins
Gold-N Chees on the Central of Georgia Shortline conglomerate Genessee & Wyoming is making gold out of cheese and peanut butter in Columbus, GA. Two Columbus & Chattahoochee Railroad SD40-2s painted in the GWI family scheme rest up next to Lance Snack Foods plant in Columbus on 18-Jan-2015. – Chris Dees
By Bill Farrell, Chapter President
We are heading into our second month of the New Year and things are looking great. We had an informal executive board meeting at the Ideal convenience store in Nortonville on January 31st. This was in an effort to save time at our regularly schedules meetings. The two hours the officers spent in that meeting were well worth the time. We worked on the club calendar for this year and tried to remove any obstacles or duplications that might occur in the next 11 months. With that said, anything we worked on or put on the 2015 calendar is subject to approval by the membership, at a regularly scheduled meeting.
In the board meeting we discussed the possibility of what to put in the second case in the Parkway Plaza Mall. One thing led to another and before we knew it we were talking about a back drop in the display case with pictures of all the train stations in Hopkins County printed on it. We decided to contact WTTL radio station 106.9 fm to see if we could be on, “Coalfield Comments”. Wally has most of the pictures of all the stations but there are a few that eluded him. So Wally, Ricky, and I will be on the show Monday, February 16th at 8:00 am. The show will be hosted by Lori Pendley, an executive with the station. Our pitch will be to explain what our chapter is all about and to get the word out that we need pictures of Hopkins County railroad stations (the ones Wally is missing). Be sure to listen in on the 16th of this month.
March is one of those months that you never know what the weather is going to bring on any given weekend. The board is looking at a one day trip to the National Transportation Museum in St. Louis, MO. next month. This is something we can discuss in the next meeting and decide if it holds any merit. Most of the board members said they had been there before but it has been a long time ago and they would like to go back. This is an event that we can move anywhere in the month of March, if the weather doesn’t suit us. We can leave early on a Saturday morning, carpool together and get breakfast along the way. I think if we all kick in for gas of the vehicle we are riding in, it would work. If your wife has any interest in our hobby, invite her to make the day long outing with us. I will be in touch with the museum this week to see if there are any discounts for the membership.
Our video library is coming together real fast. If you have any railroad related DVD’s that you wouldn’t mind in the library bring them to the meeting so we can get them cataloged in the case. At the present time we have twenty DVD’s cataloged in with room for another sixty five. We need to discuss how many videos a member can check out at one time.
If you know someone who is in good standing in the community and has interest in railroading or model railroading, please invite them to the February meeting. Organizations such as ours eventually “falter and fail”, without membership growth. We also need, “Show and Tell” items for the meeting. Do you have a raffle item?