Bull Durham Sacks and Railroad Tracks

My folks bought a farm near Schellsburgh in 1974 and I used to see the same ad on my way up there from DC.

here's a cool little blog that shows more stuff like that

Preserve

I once let a man talk me into trying a plug of tobacco. It didn't take over two minutes to get me sick enough to miss most of a day of work. And I was a hearty cigar smoker at the time.

My grandfather worked for the railroad for 44 years, 1913 to 1957 (they gave him seniority for his service in the Great War). I saw a lot of railroads and rail yards, and i have seen the interior of a caboose. They had pot bellied stoves (the ones i've seen, at least) which could be fired with the coal they were still burning when i was a boy, although diesels were taking over--every railyard had heaps of coal, though. Anyone who has ever relied upon a pot bellied stove for heat knows you can cook on them, too. We had a small cabin in the woods by a lake, and my grandmother would cook up a meal in cast iron skillets on such a stove.

took this photo of an Atlantic Coast Line caboose in Boca Raton.

There used to be a bar in Aztec, NM called the Dog House. If you knew oilfield terminology, you wouldn't bring your wife. Well, if she had a Harley tattoo with a big red number 1 , maybe. . . .

I seem to recall a fancy little restaurant in Santa Fe which was either in a caboose, or a dining car . . . maybe i can find that . . .

a detroit radio station may years ago had a sunday morning quiz program that pitted two teams of two professors from various detroit universities and colleges to answer questions submitted by listeners, one that i loved presented the panelists with a list of railroad acronyms, and asked not for the real names but the nicknames they were known by, the only one i can remember now is the B&O (Baltimore & Ohio) was know as the "Broke & Owing

I think the stove you are referring to was called a "monkey stove" it was like a pot bellied stove except shorter and usually had a 4 lid flat top

B&O brings back memories. We used to dare each other to enter this tunnel at Harpers Ferry. Flattened a lot of pennies on the tracks.

i wish i could find a list of the acronyms and alternate meanings, some of them were pretty cool

used to see a lot of these come through our town



Chesapeake & Ohio/Chessie System

Naw . . . this is the kind i'm talking about:



I don't think you could have fit the kind of stove you show into a caboose--leastways, not and be able to walk past in the winter without burning yourself. The kind i'm showing here is what we had in our "cabin." Originally, it was a milk shed, and that's railroad, too. Dairy farmers would deliver milk to the milk shed, and stack up the milk cans in them . . .



The milk train would come through first thing in the morning, and pick up the milk cans. They were still doing that when i was a boy, and my grandmother would get a can of milk off the train a couple of days a week. Later, of course, diesel trucks took over that operation.

As you can see, there ain't much to a milk shed . . .



My grandfather bought one from some farmers after the milk trains stopped running, and hauled it up to the lake. We used it for a few years, and then my grandfather build another large room on one side, and the milk shed became the kitchen for our cozy little house in the woods.

My grandfather worked for the C, B & Q.

Did you forget about THIS THREAD already?

damn i love utah phillips

Yeah...the ol' chessie

My grandfather was born in Rockvale Colo in 1883. He went to work for the CrippleCreek-Florence narrow gauge railroad in 1896 as a fireman's assistant, Tossing logs into the boiler of a woodburning locomotive. He continued working most all of the narrow gauge rr's in colorado including the Telluride-Gunnison and then on the standard gauge until about 1923 when he lost his arm in a rr accident east of Trinidad Co.

My grandfather was born the year after your grandfather went to work for the railroad, in 1897. He signed on to the extra board until he got a full-time job in 1913, at the age of 16. He studied and became a telegrapher, and ended his career as a station master and telegrapher. It was good work to get--he worked steady all through the Great Depression.

Rock Salt & Nails



Rock Salt & Nails is a great Utah Phillips song but I don't think he ever recorded it. This is a version by Bobby Neuwirth, Bob Dylans runnin buddy recorded in 1967