| Chuck reports: "It is the morning of January 5, 1971. Yesterday, we worked north from Pontiac to Pigeon, MI on Train #549 (Work Extra 4540) and tied-up in Pigeon. We stayed overnight in the Pigeon Hotel, which was only a block to the west. This morning, we will switch the elevator and the C&O interchange and then depart south as the Work Extra 4542, Train #552. Two items to notice...on our train. We have one of the former ATSF steel cabooses. These were originally very rough riders; however, the ones used in local service were re-equipped with archbar truck removed from the GTW wooden road cabs and rode much smoother! Also note in the back left, the joint C&O(PM)-GTW Freight House. This stood directly across from the joint C&O-GTW el-shaped depot, which was behind our train. I think that this may be the only photo that I ever shot that included the freight house. It was very small and I believe did not have any windows. I wish that I had taken a photo of it specifically...no foresight! Also in the background is our southbound train, which we left in the siding south of the diamond. This siding incidentally also had an adjacent dirt with wood-cribbing loading platform to unload flatcars and boxcars. The platform was on the north end of the siding and on the west side of the track. You see how much snow is on the units...you should have seen them by the time we got back to Pontiac! I had to crawl out the window and shovel off the walkway! I wanted to take a photo of them then; but it was dark, and I did not have a tripod...another missed opportunity. Lastly, you will notice the white flags on both units...they just came out of the roundhouse that way and the engineer just never removed the unnecessary ones. The PO&N was always my favorite job!" |