by Carl Graves/photos by the author
With an assortment of slide film loaded in my SLR camera, which included Kodachrome, Ektachrome, Anscochrome, GAF Color slide film, and others, I chased, and sometimes cursed (more often than I want to admit), trains from 1971 to 2015. As I thought back over the first two decades of my railfan hobby of seeking out and photographing trains in a number of widely diverse locations, I crafted an essay of memories while pursuing nineteen railroads in eleven states.
In this part, I’m starting in the Midwest as I cover Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. Composing this review brought back memories, mostly good, including trips with my railfan friends Paul Walters, Dale Jacobson, and Wayne Kuchinsky. While some of the slides have faded, most of the railroads have been swallowed up by mergers and many miles of track have long since been removed, the memories are still as clear as ever. Perhaps you have had experiences similar to mine.
Oklahoma
MoPac: Happy and Unhappy Times
An enjoyable place to catch Missouri Pacific in the Sooner State was Wagoner. In this small northeastern Oklahoma community, the MP Kansas City-Little Rock line crossed M-K-T’s main from Kansas City to Texas. Such junctions increased my chances of shooting more than a few trains in the daylight on single-track lines. At Durant, in the south-central part of the state, Katy and MoPac shared track southward across the Red River into Texas. Paul and I following that line until he pulled his car off the highway and we walked through a tree line to the tracks, where we took pictures for quite some time. When we returned to the car, we realized someone had broken into the vehicle and stolen my 300 mm lens and Dale’s tripod.
ABOVE: A red hot westbound Frisco freight from Tulsa led by GP38-2 #671 features a string of open trilevels and bilevels loaded with brand new automobiles. The five EMD’s are passing a semaphore signal between Wellston and Luther on their way to nearby Oklahoma City in December 1971. Railfan companion Paul Walters is barely visible on right. The blades were an enjoyable feature of this line.
Fun on the Frisco
The Frisco line between Tulsa and Oklahoma City was enjoyable to photograph. The railroad kept their motive power clean and semaphore signals gave notice of approaching trains, as did trackside train indicator boxes with little semaphore blades in their windows. I could follow a train in some stretches by motoring on two-lane Historic Route 66. One of my favorite overpass locations was on Luther-Jones Road, also called Hogback Road. In March 1980, I nabbed an eastbound there after following it from Chandler, where the crew went on the law, allowing me to drive slowly southwest to reach this scenic overpass.
Guthrie Good, Big Canyon Bad
I grew up watching and photographing Santa Fe trains in central Oklahoma. Besides shooting around my home in Edmond, I occasionally drove north about 15 miles to Guthrie, where I got many nice pictures around the old Santa Fe depot. In 1973, I decided to get adventurous, driving about a hundred miles south with my friend Dale Jacobson to a place called Big Canyon. As I wrote in a previous TRP article (“Santa Fe in Oklahoma,” First Quarter 2021), I got my father’s Buick stuck after driving through a small creek near this scenic, but isolated, spot and had quite an adventure getting the vehicle fixed. Being older and wiser, Paul and I returned there in the late 1980s and were more successful.
ABOVE: The 1951-vintage Santa Fe F7A 252C leads a southbound freight swinging around a scenic sweeping curve through Big Canyon, Okla, in March 1973. The Washita River is on the left. My first trip to this area put my friend Dale Jacobson and me in a jam, but we escaped unharmed. Years later, older and wiser, I returned with Paul and photographed Santa Fe trains here without getting our vehicle disabled in the process.
Katy was Cool
I was always a fan of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway, and then I really got excited when the John Deere green-and-yellow paint scheme replaced the often-faded Barringer red on its engines. On one memorable July 1986 morning, Paul and I encountered a south-bound coal load at Lake Eufala and followed it to McAlester, Okla., where the conductor caught train orders on the fly from a hoop! We then pursued it south and later that afternoon, we reversed directions, following a northbound coal empty. On that day, Katy was very kind to us, providing us the perfect timing of sun angle and trains. There were also many other occasions where we were able to take advantage of MKT’s bright new paint scheme as they led trains across the midwest.
Kansas and the Kansas City Metro Area
Wide Open Town
In July 1972, I took my first Kansas City train pictures when visiting my sister there. After signing a release, I got full access to a hump tower in Santa Fe’s massive Argentine Yard, where, among other prizes, I snapped a shot of the hump power: an Alco RSD15 and slug. The next day Mr. Beemer, the husband of my sister’s apartment manager, gave me a guided tour of the Kansas City Terminal roundhouse and yard on Southwest Boulevard, where he worked. There I photographed the company’s SW1200 switchers inside the roundhouse. Little did I realize how lucky I was to get pictures in these two locations that years later would be difficult to access.
ABOVE: Milwaukee Road and Kansas City Southern locomotives are about to pass each other at their joint facility, Knoche Yard, in Kansas City, Mo., in June 1974. The highway bridge over the tracks carries the Choteau Trafficway. I do believe that Milwaukee Road crewmember is wearing a Fedora, rather than a hard hat.
Knoche Yard
In the early 1970s, this joint facility was home to two interesting railroads, Kansas City Southern and the Milwaukee Road. When I moved to Lawrence, Kan., in 1973, local railfan friend Wayne Kuchinsky showed me around the city, including Knoche. I was able to get pictures up close and personal of engines at fueling racks, a once-common, accepted and even welcomed at times, activity that is now frowned upon by railroad management. Although I soon shifted my strategy to photographing both lines miles away from this terminal, one of my favorite images was of a moving meet of KCS and Milwaukee Road power near the roundhouse in June 1974.
Mr. Whizwell
While I was taking photos of Missouri-Kansas-Texas and Frisco freights on Frisco’s Kansas City Subdivision, the radiator hose on my ‘69 AMC Javelin sprang a leak. My disabled vehicle slowly rolled to a complete stop near the house of a farmer named Mr. Whizwell. This kind-hearted soul said he would gladly drive me to an auto parts store in nearby Spring Hill and asked if I would help him lift a big lawn mower into his ancient pickup so that he could get it repaired. After I purchased the replacement hose at the local NAPA outlet, he even helped me install it so I could be on my way. What a nice gentleman he was!
ABOVE: Rock Island SD40-2 4794 and a Southern Pacific Tunnel Motor pull a “Spine Line” (a direct route between Kansas City and the Twin Cities) train through wintry conditions at Birmingham Junction, Mo., in January 1974. Freezing drizzle caused my car’s windshield to ice over, making the trip back to Lawrence difficult.
Signal Bridge
In July 1974, Paul and I were taking pictures in the Kansas City, Kan., area. Nervous about entering the Santa Fe’s massive Argentine yards, I got the brilliant idea to head a few miles west and climb a signal bridge at West Holliday. After all, I had been on Santa Fe signal bridges in rural Kansas without incident. We waved at the crew of an eastbound freight, but the crew did not return our greeting. A short time later we decided to climb down, only to find our-selves face-to-face with a stern AT&SF Special Agent, who had received that train crew’s radio message about trespassers. After a lecture, he let us go. We kept to the ground after that…
