It was AWESOME.

 

I waved at all of the people on the train -- thirteen cars of them -- and at the nabobs on the rear platform of the observation car, and then I turned my attention to the mother and her son again.  I handed her my business card and said "Drop me an e-mail and I'll send you a copy of the photo I made."  That night Donna Oxner did, and I did.

 

I remember that experiences have happened but not really the experiences themselves -- I do not FEEL them in my memory -- and almost all of my mental images of experiences at trackside come from the photos that I have made.  I hope that Donna's son has a better memory than I do, because he saw something AWESOME that day, and from right up close, with his mother's arm around him; a memory like that could warm him for his whole life.  Donna plainly feels that awesomeness; her e-mail to me read thusly:

 

"We live right in town and have been watching the steam trains come through town for so many years.  We can see the tracks from the front of our house.  When the neighborhood kids were all little they would hear the train whistle blow and run to the front of the house to watch it along with our dog.  The kids are mostly 13 and older now except my youngest who is 8.  Even though the kids don't run to the front our dog is still train crazy and will run up to see it.  There is just something about a steam train that is just magnificent.  Thank you for taking the time to take our picture."

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Two weeks later, going out to chase another Reading-to-Jim Thorpe, Pa., fall-foliage trip, one location stood out as the most important, and not one that I chose myself: My friend Christopher Bost had told me that he and fellow R. & N. engineer Steve Gilbert would go to Dauberville, along the former Reading Company main, to watch the train go by before chasing it up the line, and I wanted to make a photo of Chris with the locomotive that he has more than a third of a century of experience firing and running.  (At the time, Chris held seniority position number 2 on the R. & N.)

 

And I wanted to take the opportunity to catch up with Chris, whom I had not seen since the previous summer, when Railway Restoration Project 113 gave him the proceeds from the benefit train ride that they and the R. & N. collaborated on to raise funds to help Chris and his wife through Chris's CIPD -- Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy, which Chris developed in fall 2020 after his flu shot.  (Exceedingly rare, CIPD afflicts about one in six million people.  The sold-out train in June 2021 operated from Minersville to Port Clinton and return, with more than 400 riders, 50 of them who paid extra to ride in two open gondolas -- great fun until it started to rain in mid-afternoon, but so far as I know no one complained.   The local newspaper and TV news gave good coverage the next month when Project 113's Bob Kimmel handed Chris a check for $12,000.)

 

Chris and Steve arrived in Dauberville well before the train even departed North Reading, so we had fifteen or twenty minutes to chat.   Chris has maintained a 100% positive attitude throughout his illness, and he talks about all of his trials and tribulations and treatments with stoicism, confidence, and good humor; I admire him greatly.  We also talked about trains too, of course, on the R. & N. and elsewhere.  While we talked, I knelt alongside Steve's car, the composition of my photo falling right into my lap, although I did have to ask Steve to adjust the sideview mirror a little to make it work.

 

Presently, we heard the whistle coming up the valley as the engineer blew for the three crossings in West Leesport, just over a mile away.   Then we could hear the exhaust, the magnificent roar that only the 425 can make.  The Bellemans Church Road crossing has lights and gates, but oddly no bell of its own, so it gave us only the visual cue of the imminent arrival of the train -- but the increasingly loud whistle and stack talk left no doubt that we would witness something utterly grand momentarily.

 

As the 425 came into view around the curve, I started shooting; the image here has the best overall composition, but the sequence shows Chris sitting up a little straighter in his seat as the engine nears -- his excitement at the sight undiminished after all of these years.