Jane Rice '56 : Since I got "Railroaded" into this exciting subject, let's all get involved in stories about railroads and the good and not so good things we can remember about our associations with trains and railroads!
Did you put pennies on the tracks to flatten them?  (Who didn't?)!

What did CB&Q stand for-----Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy----or, better yet, Clearmont, Buffalo, and Quit?

Now, it is BNSF.
 
Jo Ann Boyd Scott, 53: I don't know what RR I used to take from Wyola, MT. to Sheridan to go to high school when my parents couldn't drive me in on Mon. mornings. I remember getting off at the depot and walking up high school hill to Avon St. and never thinking anything about it. I would sure need a car now to get there!

I think it was the Northern Pacific that I took to go to college in
La Crosse, WI.Would go in the fall, Christmas and home again in June.

It was a fun time as all students along that route took the train. I
miss the trains.

Milt Cunningham,1941:  Who remembers the BC & BM Railroad?? Any stories about it? The funky  little railroad that stretched between Clearmont and Buffalo?  It's track, narrow gauge I think, was so bumpy and uncertain that it  often  derailed. The whole system was quirky, and its runs so unreliable that we called it the Buffalo, Clearmont, and Back& dash;maybe, hence BC&BM.

The steam locomotives, when they ran, often started prairie fires. Then  sometime in the forties some outfit bought it, sent the locomotives back east to have their fire boxes converted to oil. I don't know whether it ever made it all the way between the two megatropolises or not.

I remember the last time I drove along there where the road parallels the RR. An engine had crossed a bridge over a shallow washout perhaps six or eight feet deep. But just as the front of the engine reached the other side, the bridge collapsed, and the engine rolled backwards into the ditch. There it sat, quietly gazing up into the Wyoming sky. I think the line never operated again, but I don't know.

Clara  Blakeman Lehman, 53:  I have forgotten now, over the years, but maybe one of you can tell me.  Some line, Susquehanna or somebody, had a byline of "The Route of Phoebe Snow".I used to watch their cars go by and always wondered, "Who was Phoebe Snow?" Looked in my encyclopedia once, but no help.  Do you guys know?

Jane Willis Hartman, 55: Phoebe Snow Advertising  - "Phoebe Snow" was the great sales device of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, which had the shortest route from New York to Buffalo and the advantage that it burned its own anthracite coal, which made less smoke and fewer cinders than bituminous coal. http://www.nps.gov/htdocs4/stea/phoebe.htm  (couldn't make this site work but if you go to http://www.nps.gov   and search Phoebe Snow, it will be in the 60% summary.

Ed Hartman ,51: That Railroad was before my time but Jane & I can tell lots of stories on the CB&Q.I worked for it for a time and her Daddie worked there from the time he was 14yrs old to his retirement.