Finneyville and beyond

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

       I think that I wrote about this many years ago and it's buried 
somewhere in The Arrow. Everyone familiar with O. Winston Link's photos knows where 
it is. They might not realize it though. Does that give you a hint?
       We railroaders have come to give certain places names for one reason 
or another. In the '70s, up on the hill above MP H188 was an old farm house 
that had been turned into a frat house. Now back in those days the older folks 
referred to anyone with long hair as a "Hippie". Well, with the antics of the 
long haired hippies up on that hill, that area quickly earned the name "Hippie 
House". 
       Walter Finney was the engineer in several photos Mr. Link made of 
passenger trains on the Roanoke Dist. He was a good friend of Mr. Link. If you 
were to stand behind the cameras at Gooseneck Dam as he took his famous picture 
of #2 across the river, then turn around 180 degrees, you would be looking at 
the house of Walter Finney. Hence the name "Finneyville".
       When trains were making a meet at Buena Vista, the southbound train 
would ask the northbound train where he was located so that an attempt could be 
made to stay off of road crossings as long as possible. The northbound's reply 
would be "we're by Lone Jack or Buffalo or Finneyville or the Hippie House 
and the southbound would know exactly where they were and when to pull into the 
clear.
       Sadly, these names are getting lost on the newer generations of 
trainmen that don't seem to care about such things as history.
Jimmy Lisle
       
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20050622/13866b8d/attachment-0001.html