FL9

A busy week at the office means a visit to the slide boxes for today at least.  First our time machine takes us back 33 years to the south end of Ray Yard at Denison, TX on 7/13/74 as three “screaming eagle” SD40-2’s lead a southbound freight towards Fort Worth.  The sky is not perfect, but where else are you going to find those neat three digit numbers today?

Thirteen years later on 9/17/87 we are trackside near Durant, Oklahoma as the end of a loaded coal train passes by, trailed by a manned caboose instead of a DPU.

Which do you prefer?

Monday January 8th, our last day on the road, dawned bright and clear.  The radio indicated the maintenance window was already in effect when the sun came up, so no pictures of KCS trains over the Mississippi.  We headed onto I20, and roughly 200 miles later stopped once again in Gibsland, Louisiana to check on the Louisiana & Northwest, hoping to have better luck on a weekday.  Nothing was outside, but there were automobiles at the shop building.  Stepping through the little door, I found myself face-to-face with GP38 #56.

(Read on …)

Sunday was planned to be a shorter day as we only wanted to cover about 250 miles to Vicksburg, MS where we had spent the night a week earlier.  This turned out to be a good plan as we drove through heavy rain for most of the way.  We checked into the motel around 3:00pm, and Judy decided to rest while I wanted to explore since this was my first daylight visit here.  I really wanted a picture of a KCS train on the Mississippi River bridge in spite of the overcast, but the radio indicated otherwise as a maintenance window had the line to the west shut down until 6:00pm.  I drove to the bluff overlooking the bridge at the tourist center anyway, and took this shot of one of the Civil War cannons on display.

(Read on …)

I drove the short distance from Foley to Ken Kanne’s country home outside of Silverhill, Alabama and only had to call him back once for directions, so I did fairly well.  At his shop I was reunited with two of my old friends from Nathan made roughly 30 years apart, an ex-Southern Railway M5 and an ex-CSX K5LA.  I had been willing to risk shipping them to Ken awhile back for cleanup and repair, but I did not want to chance their being damaged in shipping on the return trip since we were passing right by Ken’s shop on the way home from Florida.

The M5 needed to have the threads repaired on one backcap along with cleaning and tuning.  The K5LA had been wearing the same grey primer since I had removed it from FWWR’s ex-CSX GP38-2 #2163 in a trade for a Leslie SL-3, and I had asked Ken to go through it and then paint it in a close approximation of FWWR colors with blue on the outside and yellow inside the bells.

After visiting for a while, I took my Sony minidisk recorder and moved to a location about 75 yards away while Ken first tested the K5LA and then the M5.  They both sounded wonderful in the cool night air, and as of today the recordings are now the ones you will hear when you go to the “Horns” tab at the top of the page and then click on either the K5LA or the M5.  I needed to get back and take my wife to eat while Ken’s wife was under the weather, so we reluctantly loaded up the two horns and we shook hands before I headed back to Foley.

Ken Kanne is no less than a master craftsman at his trade, a true mechanical genius in my book.  I know he is one of this site’s regulars, so I dont want to embarass him too much.  Just follow the link at right to “The Horn Doc” and look at some of the restoration work he has done, and its perfection will speak for itself.  I sincerely look forward to our next visit.  With apologies for the bad pun but in all honesty, I will say “If no one else can, then Ken Kanne”!