Great, Rick. Thanks.

In the SRHA Archives, we have photographs of at least two Ts-class Mountains, 1453 and 1454, in black paint with dog houses on the tender decks. These are the only two 4-8-2s I know of that got the bl

Mike Schafer and I are co-editors of SRHA’s quarterly journal, TIES. We are distant cousins. If you have an interest in the fascinating Southern Railway, you should consider joining SRHA. You can do s

1910 - SOU ran three each way daily into/out of St. Louis - trains 7-8, accommodation trains Mt. Vernon, Ill.-St. Louis making all local stops; trains 1-2, overnight to/from Louisville with connection

The Brotherhoods’ National Diesel-Electric Agreement of 1937 established the less-than-45 ton limit on drivers and specifically required firemen on “streamliners” (regardless of the UP’s trademark). S

Power truck at rear was A-1-A, with only two of the three axles powered. My understanding is that it spread the weight on drivers sufficiently to keep that weight under 45 tons. That way, SOU could ge

As far as I can tell, SOU had no coaches in the 4500-series. The few passenger cars numbered 4500s were some heavyweight Pullmans acquired in the Pullman split of 1948. Also, a couple baggage-RPOs and

This photo was taken probably on August 6 or 7 1970 at what was left of Terminal Station, Birmingham, when Pullman-Standard’s 200,000th boxcar, SOU 555055, was on display (right in picture) in the thr

Jim: The red and white “signs” were vinyl decals. Back in 1975 Graham Claytor, Southern’s president, realized that there were 17 signers of the Declaration of Independence from the states that were se

Well, well, well, Mark, How fortunate you shot the rear of the train at Peachtree Station, Atlanta. It prompts me to amend my earlier comments about the train based on your earlier photo of the front

Mark: Interesting info, Mark, The March 31 train with the two E8s probably was a special of some kind. The giveaway is that the first, or regular, section had four E8s, and it had a long train because

That’s a typical school kids special. The kids ate simple meals in the dining car, but those trains tended to run with a lot of dining cars. The Birmingham students may have made their annual trip to

In the Southern Crescent era, the DeKalb County and Fulton County safety patrol trains operated in early-May, and were always special trains. While similar school groups may have been carried on the S

Begin forwarded message: From: Linda and Bill Schafer <bill4501@...> Subject: Re: [SouthernRailway] Message Approval Needed - conductor7@... posted to main@SouthernRailway.groups.io Dat

Jason: Heavyweight cars on the Southern Crescent were not common but not unknown. More common were the ex-CofG lightweights off the Nancy Hanks, City of Miami, and/or Man O’War. You’d likely see the h

Because there has been some recent interest in actual consists of the Southern Crescent in its glory days (1972-1979), I have consulted some of my old pocket notebooks and transcribed the consists of

I have no idea why the gray 70 ton hoppers were painted that way, but I remember seeing them occasionally in Lamberts Point mixed in with black N&W hoppers in the 1980s. As for the Silversides, I’m li

David: The Royal Palm, the Peach Queen, and the Piedmont Limited of the 1960s all carried a lot of head-end traffic, typically in heavyweight cars. The Palm usually had lightweight coaches, but the co

Initial comments: The prewar Southerner would not have run with any full baggage or mail cars. Its original consist just had a combination baggage-dorm-coach ahead of the Jim Crow coach, then two full

When I was stationed in Selma, Ala., 1972-1973, I would see these cars come through Selma occasionally. They looked much different from the new aggregate cars then arriving on the property. When I ask