The Norfolk and Western had the mighty 611 coal burner, but since the merger with Southern Railway it has been somewhat neglected, with very occasional excursion runs.
The opportunity to chat about coal burners doesn't often present itself!
I have never been completely immersed in trains the way I became with aviation, but I find something compelling about trains with regard to history, culture, and design.
Like so many, there is a perceived romance of trains. Hurtling through the night, the swaying, the sound, looking out windows and seeing intersections, cones of light, small towns. They appear and disappear.
Funny. In my head, I get the same kind of feeling about that vignette that I get when I am on an airliner, coming in on final approach, and looking down at the cars when they become visible. Each one of them has some anonymous person, pursuing their affairs, going somewhere in a dark, headlight lit world.
In my mind, I often think of those small towns and streetlight-lit intersections that fly by in the night, the darkness containing that same multitude of anonymous people, living their lives, oblivious to you.
It is an odd feeling, a weird combination of both solitary loneliness and warm comfort.
No...I have never been a train person, but I do appreciate and enjoy the the train culture and mythology. And when I see that big honking steam engine, well...it does reach me. I have always thought too, as a former sailor, how interesting it is that seagoing vessels are perceived as feminine, but a train is nothing but masculine.
They are filthy things…..I grew up with them.
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