GET THOSE CAMERAS OUT!
How I wish I’d had a camera at the young age of about 10. As I peruse current railroad publications sporting vintage photographs of locomotives, freight and passenger cars, depots, and other peripherally related items, I treasure more and more the ability to at least see in my mind’s eye the gray and yellow L&N F units that frequented my home town, Ellijay, GA’s Hook and Eye line between Marietta, GA, (Elizabeth) and Etowah, TN. Seems the sweet spot was around 1972 or 3, when the line still supported 2 daily freights, South in the morning and north in the afternoon. Much better than the Family Lines/Seaboard/CSX-middle-of-the-night-as-needed runs from Tate, GA, in the early 1980s. I’m not sure of the exact schedule or even the terminal points of the trick, but I assume things began at the Tate yard where Georgia Marble’s short line (with the only 2 switchbacks in the state) still plies the hilly terrain to interchange with the now operating Georgia Northeastern. The accompanying photo shows an Alco FA leading a southbound freight at Tate in 1966, with the depot to the right.
I WAS fortunate to befriend the latter CSX crew as a teenager with a drivers license. I met them one evening in Tate around 8 pm to ride the turn to Ellijay and back. I can’t believe my parents let me, but, I was a pretty good kid in those days. I returned home around 5 am having ridden the 60 some odd mile round trip only to go to work at 8 that morning (summer break) at the grocery store. I was so excited I couldn’t have slept anyway. I rode north in the lead locomotive, a 4 axle “jeep” of some kind. The normal 3 unit consist made fairly easy work of original narrow gauge grades and curves. Only drawback was the often pitch blackness outside. The crew even shared their sandwiches and drinks with me on the return trip in the L&N red bay window caboose.
This story has a tragic ending. Not one photograph or any other form of recording was made other than these words you read now coming from my memory that will leave this world with me. I can still remember the sound of the EMDs grinding up-grade, the smells of the honeysuckle covering the miles of adjacent farm fence rows, and even the sights of the locomotive’s headlight hitting the countless pine tress and red clay embankments along the path, but, oh, how I wish I had taken my camera. Don’t be like me! Get it down on film, digitally, or even write about it while fresh on your mind. Then submit it to your newsletter editor!!! You knew that was coming! Be careful out there!
Bill Thomas, editor