Month: April 2025

Many of my pictures and stories come from my magazine archives. Thumbing through the editorial comment section of the October 1951 TRAINS & Travel (before the name change to TRAINS) I came across today’s story line. I said to myself, “classic David P. Morgan….” whereupon I went to the masthead and low & behold, Morgan was listed, but only as one of four associate editors under Editorial Director Linn Westcott and Editor Willard V. Anderson. Not sure what to conclude, but prefer to think his fingerprints are all over this story. To those of you old enough to have experienced our beloved long time TRAINS Editor, David P. Morgan and the steam era, this will jog memories. You simply had to be there to fully appreciate…….. Railroading by Ear.

A dozen years or more ago, when the diesel was still a precocious doodlebug, someone said the
internal combustion locomotive would at least make less noise than a steam engine. Listening now
to the sounds that float on the night air, we wonder if we haven’t only traded one sound for another.
And the new sound is about as interesting as the boring drone of a DC-6 at 5000 feet.

The steam locomotive can play upon its exhaust nozzle in any major or minor key. Remember
the sharp, window-rattling staccato of the high-pressure Hiawatha engines as they hit the curve at
Grand Avenue, picking up from the junction slowdown? And remember the way an overloaded
Mikado every now and then would lose its footing on the grade up out of town and shatter the quiet
with a sudden cacophony?

Indeed, as we come more and more to live in a diesel desert, the sound of the steam locomotive
will be missed almost as much as those other sensations, the smell of steam and hot valve oil and
bituminous smoke, and the sight of flashing valve motion and side rods. It will be hard even for
modern efficiency and bright Duco finishes to recompense for the waltz-time beat of a three cylinder
Union Pacific 4-12-2 or the syncopated rhythm of an articulated, now in step, now out of
step. And when will a diesel ever equal the purring of a lightly loaded engine loping along with the
Johnson bar up close to center?

BTW: DPM’s brother “Len” was to airplanes, what DPM was to railroads. Go to Google: Len
Morgan.

credits: Pix & story verbatim – TRAINS & Travel, Oct 1951

“A sad sight at the Northern Pacific’s South Tacoma Reclamation yard in the spring of 1957: headlights from scrapped engines. Recognizable are lights from venerable Ten-Wheelers (1376 , 1387), husky Mikes (1700’s 1800’s and 1900’s) and of course, a Z-8, No. 5130.” That’s a direct quote in the Railway Post Office feature (letters to the Editor) in TRAINS Magazine in August 1958 from a Mr. H. A. Durfy of Seattle. The heyday of steam was over and other than a few donations to city parks, the bean counters dictated that
they be scrapped.

The Northern Pacific had a headlight style of its own on its steam locomotives. What you see here is the typical arrangement on NP steam; the headlight, engine numbers squared on the sides, and the number facing forward above in a wedged design. Would I like to have one of these on my wall of treasures in my “Man Cave..?” You bet. -Gary Ostlund
Photo credit: H. A. Durfy