4610 (and a tribute to NS steam)

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

Ben,

I understand your feelings. While I no longer hold anything personally
against Norfolk Southern, per se, I do have a grudge and hold bitterness for
a recently retired CEO who shall remain nameless who seemed to be the
primary cause for the end of 611 and 1218's second careers. I will say that
Wick Moreman seems to be a good guy. I had the opportunity to see him speak
at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer back in July for the
rededication of SR FP-7 6133 and N&W heavyweight combine 1506. With this
action of purchasing the F units it seems that NS under his leadership will
show some respect to it's heritage. NS could have done like CSX and
purchased former Amtrak F40PH's if it had wanted to, more modern passenger
locomotives. I want to say that I am both a Southern and Norfolk and Western
fan, I don't think that you have to be one or the other exclusively. Being a
steam fanatic,I really respect N&W for holding out on diesels as long as
they did, where as SR dieselized realitively early. On the otherhand, I
admire SR for holding out on turning over their passenger trains to Amtrak
as late as they did even if the trains were losing money for the railroad,
at least they tried to make the Crescent work independent of Amtrak. Either
way, both railroads along with the rails acquired from the Conrail split
make Norfolk Southern the railroad it is today. I would like to see an N&W
heritage unit, preferably in a Tuscan Red or the N&W black freight scheme of
the late 1950s. That's my two cents.

Steven Ashley
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20061029/3cf9dbc9/attachment.html