Re: Almost 50 years ago - a small, sad farewell . . .

guymonmd Wrote:
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> I love those shots Russo.  Thanks for re-posting them.

You're very welcome, Guy - thank you for the compliment.

> I know I've seen the one with the brakeman walking
> on top of the boxcars before.  Who was that brake-
> man?   If this question has been discussed before,
> please point me to the thread.


I almost didn't take that one, Guy -

And now it's one of my lifetime favorites.  It was drizzling pretty hard, and I was VERY tempted to just hike back to my car and leave.  But I knew the D&RGW had decided this would be the last week of n.g. freight operations, so I huddled over my camera to keep it relatively dry, and while killing time waiting for the train I carefully positioned the tripod so I could swing around for the going-away shot and flip the camera from portrait to land­scape all without re-adjusting anything else.  "Slippery Footing", with the brakeman unexpectedly on top of the cars, was just a very lucky accident; here's a b&w rendition of the one I was planning on:


The brakeman was identified a few years ago, and I recall not having any luck when trying to track down his descendants, but now I have forgotten his name again.  I think it was either Earl or Jimmy who provided the information, so hopefully one of them will chime in here.

- El Abuelo Loco y Viejo

p.s. I just did a rough NGDF search for "brakeman Sublette" / "All Dates" and got more than five pages of hits.  Among them was [ngdiscussion.net], which does have some info about the crews of #483, #484 and #498 between Alamosa & Chama on 08/28/68 and between Chama & Alamosa on 08/29/68, and [ngdiscussion.net] which was focused mainly on the hazards of being a brakeman.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2017 05:06PM by Russo Loco.