Re: C&S Rotary - just another Beebe Boo-Boo ...

Apparently, some people connect Lucius Beebee with accuracy.

My late friend Ted Wurm, the railroad writer/historian,told me a story about Beebee about 20 years ago. Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ted was a volunteer assistant to Graham Hardy, who published some of Beebee's smaller books about the Virginia & Truckee RR in western Nevada. ted was reviewing a draft of one of Beebee's books (he did not say which one) for Hardy when he spotted some errors in fact. He corrected them on the spot. A little later, Beebee was reviewing the draft that Ted had been working on and saw the corrections. They annoyed him and he changed the corrections back to what they were to start with. Beebee' told Ted, very strongly, "I don't want accuracy, I want ambience!"

In short, Beebee was not interested in accuracy!

In May 1949, Dad and I rode the now long gone Virginia & Truckee for 3 days. On the first day, which was an excursion, lunch was served by the railroad in its very large stone engine house and shops in Carson City, Nevada. After lunch, we went back out into the railroad yards because Dad had seen Lucius Beebee's private car the "Gold Coast" parked on a siding under a tree and he wanted to photograph it. So we walked that way. We soon saw Beebee to our right, also headed for the Gold Coast, and all of us got there at the same time. Dad asked Beebee to pose in front of the Gold Coast which Beebee did, for just one photo. I knew who he was because, at the age of 12, I already owned (as a gift) and had read Beebee's "Mixed Train Daily".

Best regards, Hart Corbett