%Thomas The Tank Engine

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

So, it has come down to this, has it?  "This" meaning Thomas The Tank Engine.
It's not enough that today's government schools are filling kids heads with
politically correct liberal garbage instead of the truth.  We have to
demean the
railroad industry by putting a stupid face on the front of a steam locomotive
to bring the subject down to the level of a child.   That is utter
nonsense!  I
started railfanning during the depression 30's around an all steam original
Norfolk Southern Railroad, and Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.  I was to begin
the job of locomotive fireman in 1941 with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad
out of Rocky Mount, N.C. on the south end of the Richmond District between
Rocky Mount and Florence, S.C., with rights also on the Wilmington District.
When I was a kid, nobody tried to bring the railroad down to my simple
level.   The very thing that had appeal was the fact that a railroad was a no
nonsense "grown-up" mechanical marvel that moved freight and passengers
with the skill of special craftsmen who seemed  born to work at their jobs as
they appeared to me to be having a good time and actually getting paid for it!
For one of them to take time to look down and talk to me made the likes of
Babe Ruth look like a nobody.  I gained respect for the railroads, not because
they looked down at me, but because I looked up to them as a mechanical
marvel of sights, sounds, smells, and the ability to tingle my spine by just
doing their job, rain or shine, hot or cold.  I was drawn to trackside just as
a moth is attracted to an open light.  True, steam has gone, but to watch a
local freight come into town and pick up and set out a few cars, has the same
facination today that it had 50 years ago, and  as a bonus  today you have the
added convenience of listening to the engineer and brakeman talking to each
other on a scanner.  No, we don't need funny faces on locomotives.  You
only need an appreciation for a flanged wheel on a steel rail, and the sounds
associated with them, even down to a flat wheel or a flange squealing in a
tight curve.  If those sounds have no appeal to you, then you are in the wrong
hobby.  Bill Sellers, Norfolk Southern Railway ( Ret.) Gainesville, Ga.