I was a "guest conductor" for one leg of this bad boy's journey into history ...
Still got my uniform and ticket punch! Still spittin' clinker too! <G>
More memorable moments ...
- One of the last coast to coast trans Canada ... Line's been broken up, so you can't do that anymore.
- Last run of the Michigan Northern. They put the word out and got a bunch of loaner passenger cars from around the Midwest, some of them quite nice. That's now a bicycle trail. One of these days, gonna have to drop butt on the mountain bike and see how far I get. 100 miles, but it's set up to do it in stages.
- Done most of the Amtrak routes at one time or another. Still plan to get a rail pass now that I'm retired and see how many miles I can roll before it gets old, or I get much older. My favorite is the California Zephyr between Chicago and San Francisco. I even had the company pay for a few of those heading west for conferences. Fly out, and leave SF on the Zephyr Thursday afternoon, and back home Sunday night - I let the budgeteers figure the cost of round trip air fare, and then pay the difference on that and a private bedroom. All sorts of stuff you'll see along the way from a unique perspective. One interesting moment on that run was splitting a herd of moose ... and watching them hose down the bits and pieces off the front of the lead engine in Omaha ... I passed on the stew that night in the dining car ... <G>
- I also played hobo many a time, hitching freights just outside the local yards. Easy to do back in the day, and if you got caught, they'd usually just let you go, especially if you did it often enough you knew the crew by name. <G>
Not sure if this counts or not ... rode passenger a few times during ferry crossings over the Lakes ...
They never actually tipped the boat over loading the big iron ... <G>