Re: McAllister's RR

Thor,
I believe that the middle whistle was probably used on a C&S engine. At the bottom of the long lever you can see the CB&Q style device that held the lever in place. My Dad had three whistles, two were from 900 class engines and one was one from #807, one of the "Q" 5500 class 2-8-2's. All of them had that style of bracket to secure the lever.
The whistle in the picture was probably was put on one of the 5500's in late days, like the one that was on #900, which was from a long scrapped 4-8-4 from some other road.
I never saw a whistle that large that I can recall on any of the C&S engines, with the possible exception of #900. Now that I think of it, #5506 had a really distinctive whistle as well, but I don't know if that one was the one. I remember that it was a long tube whistle with a flat top, painted black. This could be it, perhaps. I'll have to look and see which number 5506 was in the 800 series. #807 was the old #5508. Howard Fogg recorded 5506 many times, it had a most unusual whistle.
Speaking of Howard Fogg, he had Mickey Hansen's favorite whistle mounted in front of his house for years. It had been used on #638, but was also from another road.
We must have crossed paths many times around Boulder in those years, but I'm probably older that you by a pretty good ways.
Thanks for posting all the great pictures. They all bring back a lot of memories for me too. I was in High School when old Mac was well underway on the Yellowstone, maybe even nearing completion in '68.
Mike Trent