Continue to remember Ron Stubblefield and Jim Finley in your prayers. Tom Johnson’s wife, Georgeann, received a great report from her last doctor visit. No cancer in the lymph nodes! She will undergo precautionary radiation treatments for six weeks. Tom thanks all for your prayers.
May 31st – June 1st 1886 all the rail lines in the South, including the IC, were converted to standard gauge from the various gauges in use until then. 11,000 miles of rail were switched in 24 hours. Pretty impressive. – submitted by Chuck Hinrichs
by President, Rich Hane
Those of you that made it down to the train station in Hopkinsville for our May meeting were treated to an interesting program hosted by Wallace Henderson. The setting was beautiful, several trains came bye, and the evening was a lot of fun.
The recent floods have severely impacted the Kentucky Railway Museum (KRM) with sections of track heavily damaged and 40 inches of water in the model train center. As of May 15th the train rides have resumed on a modified basis with the trains going to New Hope, KY. The Days out with Thomas the Tank Engine were held on June 5-6 and June 12-13. The train track, museum, and model train center are all in need of volunteers to help restore this wonderful train museum and donations are urgently needed since insurance and FEMA funds will only pay a portion of the repairs needed. You can contact them at 502-549-5470, email at kyrail@bardstown.com and website at kyrail.org. They do a great job of presenting the history and equipment of railroads and are in need of our help. The museum and train rides are a nice way to introduce young people to the great tradition of American railroading. There is a nice variety of diesel and steam powered trains and some well preserved passenger cars.
I am looking forward to seeing all of your smiling faces at our next meeting at The Center here in beautiful downtown Madisonville at 7pm on Monday, June 28th.
Copies of the new book Kentucky and the Illinois Central Railroad are now on sale at Walgreens Drug Stores in Madisonville, KY. These 128-page soft-cover books contain around 200 photographs. Some taken in Madisonville area including West Yard. Books are priced at 21.95. Save postage by buying one at Walgreens in Madisonville.
The May 24, 2010 chapter meeting will be held at the L&N Depot at Hopkinsville, Ky with a program by some of the following individuals: Ed Whitfield, Michael Pape, Wallace Henderson or William Turner. Topics are yet to be determined. Refreshments will be provided by our members from the Hopkinsville area.
SUMMERAIL AT C.U.T. from 1:00 PM to 10:00 PM and RAILROAD SHOW AND SALE 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, in the Rotunda Saturday, August 14, 2010 at CINCINNATI UNION TERMINAL at 1301 Western Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio
Join us at this historic art deco railroad terminal to escape the summer heat and enjoy a day of high quality railroad photography. There will be twelve 222 multimedia digital and dual-projector slide presentations, all set to music. The programs will run from 1:00 – 10:00 p.m., with a break for dinner (on your own) from approximately 4:30 – 7:00 p.m. Admission is $15.
A railroad show and sale will be set up in the terminal rotunda from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Admission is free. Friday August 13 in CUT Auditorium will be some traditional “talkie” programs from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Admission is free. Thursday August 12 in Tower A will be the Cincinnati Railroad Club’s monthly business meeting at 8:00 p.m. Admission is free.
I was headed down to USI for my 1:30 class a couple weeks ago and as I was headed west on the Lloyd Expressway/SR62 I happened to noticed some thick black smoke rolling out of the city from what seemed to be the area around Franklin St. and Wabash Ave. I didn’t think anything of it as there had been some fires in town recently and it is part of the industrial area of town. I kept heading west and noticed the smoke kept moving south. As I just crossed over Fulton Ave., I realized that the smoke was following the main line south into Howell yard! My next thought was “I gotta get a picture!” So I zoomed ahead and turned down St. Joe to cut back up Ohio St just in time to snap these few pics. As the locomotive was limping into the yards, I was honestly looking for a fire to start billowing out the exhaust port anytime, but it didn’t. This locomotive had some serious problems though. The second unit was revved way up to compensate for the loss of power from this one, which sounded like it was only running on about 13 cylinders. Needless to say, an exciting few minutes. – Matt Gentry
BRUSH CREEK, Tenn. – A group of train enthusiasts were among the many people stranded by flood waters on Saturday. Five-hundred fifty passengers were on a train ride from the Middle Tennessee Central Railway Museum. They were trying to make it to Crossville when the train tracks were washed out by floods. Wilson County school buses worked through the evening to take the passengers back to Nashville.
Last week the UP began delivering 35 retired C40-8’s to the CN at Memphis. UP 9065-9099 were built in July-September 1991 as C&NW 8543-8577 (although not in that order), and are now CN 9100-9134, although not all of them are in the correct numerical order. They are still in UP paint. Mike Palmieri – Ft. Worth, Texas
Cliff Downey’s new book, “Kentucky and the Illinois Central,” is now on sale at the Paducah Railroad Museum Gift Shop. The price is $ 23.25, including tax. This is a great book with many rare pictures. The museum is open on Friday 1:00 to 4:00 and Saturday 10:00-4:00. or by appointment by calling 270 559-5253. You do not have to tour the museum to buy the book, but we hope you will want to. Bob Johnston. – submitted by Chuck Hinrichs.
Mark your calendars! The Annual Chapter Picnic will be held trackside in Crofton on Saturday, October 9, 2010. Noon til ???
The Illinois Senate today voted 59-0 to create the Illinois and Midwest High Speed Rail Commission with the intent of issuing a roadmap for the creation of bullet train lines in Illinois and neighboring states. Under General Assembly rules, such a commission can be created by a vote in just one of the two legislative chambers. No further legislative action is required. The resolution creating the Commission, Senate Resolution 806, defines the group’s mission as “recommending the best governmental structure for a public-private partnership to design, build, operate, maintain, and finance a high-speed rail system for Illinois and the Midwest.”
The Commission is to be composed of 19 members as follows:10 public members appointed by the Governor; 3 members of the Illinois House of Representatives, 2 appointed by the Speaker of the House and one appointed by the House Minority Leader; 3 members of the Illinois Senate, 2 appointed by the Senate President and one appointed by the Senate Minority Leader; 3 ex-officio members as follows: the Illinois Secretary of Transportation; the Executive Director of the Illinois Commerce Commission; the Executive Director of the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority; Earlier this week, mayors and county officials from across Illinois issued an open letter to fellow elected officials that said, “We urge you to work actively to secure approvals and funding for the planning and implementation of a Chicago-St. Louis 220-mph high speed rail line.
This line would bring our business, research and government capitals within less than 1.5 hours of each other, and open vital new connections to O’Hare Airport.” The letter also was sent to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. The Midwest High Speed Rail Association proposes to transform the Midwest into one cohesive, compact economic entity with a network of 220-mph bullet trains with Chicago at its heart, including a St. Louis to Chicago line that would serve Edwardsville, Springfield, Decatur, Champaign, Kankakee, the Southland, McCormick Place, Downtown Chicago and O’Hare Airport.
Crew members came from various locations on the CSX system to work on upgrading crossings and track along the Henderson Subdivison that runs through Madisonville, Ky. Photos by Bill Thomas and Jim Pearson
April 23, 2010 saw P&L GP40 2119 and slug 2112 leading freshly rebuilt Metra FP40 “Village of Orland Park” #116 and Indiana Railroad’s SD90 #9009 out of Progress Rail and toward Paducah where they would spend the weekend. Monday afternoon both units made their way to Fulton where they departed Tuesday headed north. Progress has stayed busy with the FP40s as many units have made their way in and out of Mayfield. The SD90s are being re-engined with V-12 replacing the ill fated V-16s of the original units. They will be used almost exclusively in coal service. – submitted by James Futrell
Charter members gathered for a group photo (right) during the April meeting of the West Kentucky Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society in Madisonville, KY. These members formed the consist of the chapter’s beginnings in 1985, after several had been active in the Owensboro chapter.
Each Charter member was awarded a 25 Year commemorative shirt and pin. Unfortunately, the cake was devoured before photos could be taken. It was delicious!
We had a very interesting slide presentation by Dr. Fred Ripley that covered some interesting portions of the Pennsylvania Railroad last month. Fred is an accomplished photographer and had some great morning and twilight time photos to show us.
It looks as if The Center will be turned over to the City of Madisonville on July 1st of this year. They could not find a buyer for the old train depot and the City has agreed to take it over for possibly several kinds of future uses. I have met twice with our Mayor and he is agreeable to our continued use of the facilities so we should be in good shape for at least the near future. This is an excellent facility for us and I was able to joke with him about how the train noise does not bother us in the least. I am not sure about the status of the audio/visual equipment so we are trying to put together programs that can be shown without the fancy equipment that we have become used to. Hopefully, we will know more about this in a month or two but for now the June and following meetings will be held as usual.
Remember that the May meeting will be held in Hopkinsville as usual but this year it will be at the old L&N train depot downtown where we have had meetings in the past. Also, because the 4th Monday of May is not Memorial Day this year we will be meeting on this day which is May 24th. So, I am hoping to see all of your smiling faces in beautiful downtown Hopkinsville at 7pm on May 24th.
If you’ve been anywhere near the Henderson Subdivision lately you have noticed the new ties and rail equipment present all along the line, even the supposedly ill-fated Earlington Main through Madisonville (which is also in the process of receiving new grade crossings between Mortons Gap and Atkinson Yard). Chuck Hinrichs sent these shots in from the Hopkinsville area.
Just like the prototypes, running a garden railroad has its hazards. Falling tree limbs seem to be my nemesis lately. I suppose it is due to all the loosely-attached hickory limbs – ice storm damage from 2009. These before and after photos tell the story of the hard work put in by the 2-man (in 1/29 scale, each hand counts as a man) track gang on the Hook Line & Singer RR this Spring. So far the station has been spared, but more wind is probable. – Bill Thomas, President and CEO, Hook Line & Singer RR