Ricky Bivins, Chapter President, smiles proudly in front of his O gauge layout in Morton’s Gap, KY. Ricky built his new house with the layout in mind for the 2nd floor area. Making the house location doubly nice for Ricky and failfan friends, is the fact it is located about 100 feet from CSX’s Henderson Sub main, near the cut-off switch. We will hear more about Ricky’s layout as it progresses.
The Club’s February 27th meeting will start at 7:00 p.m at the L&N railroad station, in Madisonville, KY. Rick Bivins will present the program: Green Frogg’s Chicago Odyssey, 1950’s era rail scenes of Chicago, from the collection of the late Dennis Carnal. Keith Kittinger will provide refreshments and the public is invited.
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From Chuck Hinrichs, Hopkisnville, KY. At least the UP recognized that the IC’s whistle was the best one ever built.
by Chapter President, Ricky Bivins
HAPPY NEW YEAR! It is time for “out with the old and in with the….old?” Well that is not how the saying goes but as one would expect, I have a point to make. The November, 2011 meeting drew the year to a close with election of officers. There were no changes as a result of those elections. The month of December saw our annual Christmas Dinner at “The Station” or as many of us are still in the habit of saying, “The Center”. The food from Ballard Catering was very tasty and the visit with those in attendance was great.
The next twelve months can be a banner year for our Chapter if we are so inclined to make it so. One year ago I made the statement that I would be a more aggressive President then the Chapter was used too. Rich Hane and Bob McCracken were Gentlemen as they lead our group. I promised to be a bit more demanding. As time passed I realized just how difficult it could be too balance the Chapter as far as functions and events go. Chapter participation is paramount yet difficult to achieve. Everyone has a life to tend to; our “club” is a small portion of that life. I cannot expect everyone to take time out for every event we participate in etc.
But, it would be nice to achieve a higher rate of member participation. That having been said, I have a question. What would the chapter like to achieve in 2012? I am sure there can be and will be many different answers to that very question. I plan for the Chapter to participate the City of Madisonville’s Down Town Friday Night Live again this year. This is a wonderful opportunity to reach many people and have fun doing so. Last year we relied on Wally and his steam engines which was a good draw. But as Wally pointed out, we need something more to do with trains. If I knew I could count on some help, I would like to set up an outdoor railroad display using G-gauge or Gauge-one trains. This would require a bit of track, a few trains, a power supply and effort….a lot of effort.
We know we can count on our Hopkinsville KY members for the Crofton KY Picnic and the May meeting in Hopkinsville KY. The Clayton/Watts open house in November is a given as well. But what more can the Chapter do? We have access to the rearmost (South) room of the Station to store, sort and advance our achieve. A few members are in possession of Chapter owned items that could be place in this one location to be admired etc. We could build a portable model train layout there in to display at train shows, civic events or Friday Night Live. We could use the room to…… (Fill in the blank here)!
Now back to the question: What would the Chapter like to achieve in 2012? With that I need feedback. I need to hear from Chapter Members. I NEED TO BE TOLD WHAT THE CHAPTER IS GOING TO DO!
The Western Kentucky Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society is a member only group of like-minded rail fans. We have a responsibility to the National Organization to promote and foster an interest in Railway History.
I ask you Chapter Members, are we upholding that Responsibility?
Rick Bivins
In the early 1950’s, the Toledo Peoria & Western advertised itself as the “Magic Carpet of Railroading”. Over the years, this classic midwestern line has rostered red-and-white GP38-2’s, ran doublestack intermodal service, and served as the Santa Fe’s only reach into the Hoosier state.
Now part of the Rail America family, the TP&W can still be considered a “magic carpet ride” among Hooser railfans. On a balmy 60 degree day in early January 2012, TP&W GP 20 #2048, a former Santa Fe unit, rests after a long week of work in Logansport, IN.
Submitted by Chris Dees.
Left: AMTRAKS Hoosier State is racing towards Indianapolis splits the semaphores. Nearly all of America’s semaphore signals are gone. They had motors and mechanical moving parts, the bane of management. Newer models have LEDs and other gizmo’s and are driven by computer chip technology. So capture those digital images soon folks.
This line is the former MONON, officially named the Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville Railroad, how dull. No wonder they used the Potawatomi Indian word meaning “tote” or “swift running.” The Monon rails connected Chicago with Indianapolis, and Michigan City and Louisville, forming a big “X.” The City of Monon marks the “X.” Indiana claimed the railroad as its own, calling it the Hoosier Line.
Someone even coined a poem: Up and Down the Monon, everything is fine, cause that root’n, toot’n Monon, she’s a Hoosier Line! What I miss about the semaphores is that as a railfan trekking around the country you could see the position of the semaphore from adjacent highways. The color indicator was not pertinent. If they were pointing toward the sky, tracks were clear. If one was horizontal there was traffic nearby, either coming or going.
(Now maybe one of you can tell me why one semaphore is pointed, and the other squared ?? Really, I don’t know.) The photo was captured by my friend and videographer Tim Lab of Owosso, Michigan. MONON rails have morphed via mergers into today’s CSX Transportation.
| Title | Illinois Central |
| Producer | Green Frog |
| Format | full screen |
| Playing Time | 2 hrs and 20 minutes (2 DVD Set) |
| Purchased From | Green Frog |
| Date Purchased | 10/02/09 |
| Price Paid | $23.97 |
This is a very good DVD covering the Illinois Central RR from the 1950s through the 1980s. It is a two-DVD set and the first DVD is almost entirely devoted to the last days of steam locomotives. At the end of the first DVD we see the transition to diesels.
The video quality is surprisingly good for the 1950s scenes and we get to see 4-8-2 mountain type locos, 2-8-4 Berkshires, 2-8-2 Mikados (mainstays on the I.C.), and even some 2-10-2’s.
There are several train meets, lots of scenes with steam locos billowing huge clouds of black smoke, and some nice high speed pacing shots of steam locos.
Disc 2 shows trains with diesel locomotives from the 70s and 80s mostly shot in Illinois. There is a scene showing the City of Miami on its last run before Amtrak took over.
This DVD set is worth the purchase price in my opinion.
I was catching up on my railfan surfing tonight and ran across a post on the P&L forum that indicated that Dennis Carnal had passed away. I quickly pulled up the West KY NRHS website and saw the information about his death in the newsletters.
I first met Dennis though my quest to complete my collection of L&N Employee magazines. He had posted that he had some for sale and I contacted him and found out that he had several that I needed and I had extras that he needed so we arranged a trade. Dennis and I arranged to meet at his house on one of my visits to Henderson and traded magazines, traded stories, and discussed the Cardinals vs the Reds.
My primary RR interest is in the tunnels [I’ll spare you the long story why] and Dennis and I hooked up on a couple of different trips over the next couple of years to explore tunnels and sites. I had permission from the owner of the land where the original tunnel west of Dawson Springs is located to hike in and check it out and Dennis went with me. On another trip, he hooked me up with one of his friends from Greenville who knew about the buried tunnel on the original O & N alignment near Cleaton. That day we also checked out the daylighted IC tunnel sites on the P&L at Echols, Rosine, Black Rock, and near Stephensburg-that was a fun day.
Enough rambling, I just thought I’d express my condolences to your group on his loss. He was very gracious to me and willing to share any information that he could. He also kept trying to get me to come to one of your meetings, but I was never down on a Monday that you were meeting.
Sincerely,
Butch Adkins, Lexington KY
Hello, I thought that you might want to put a link up to this page http://www.railroadkeys.com/history/EHNRR.html If anyone has other items that they want to put pictures of on the page that would be great. I would love to get some photos of the early lines to add if anyone has one. Thanks, Michael Orange.
FYI: Website and Facebook page for Ozarks Model RR Association. Thanks to Greg Sullivan for Website update and photos for Open House. New Website is: omraspringfield.org Greg took the photos and created the FB page. Good work, Greg. Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ozarks-Model-Railroad-Association/337691496249198?sk=wall. Thanks to Greg for your good work. Rex Easterly.