Quote:
Originally Posted by craigster59
Had a friend who was into it, got me to buy an MTH "Nickel Plate Road" engine...
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THAT piques my interest! When I was a little kid the Nickel Plate Road, New York Central and the B&O formed three sides of a rectangle in Painesville, Ohio, where I spent some of my early childhood.
The Nickel Plate was still running steam then, 2-8-4 Berkshire and 2-8-2 Mikado freight locos and 4-6-2 Pacific passenger locos.
I used to hang around the NP station and the NP switch tower a couple miles away at the NP's intersection with the B&O. I got to know the switchmen in the tower and they'd let me pull the switch levers. They were about as long as I was tall and the switchmen used to laugh at me as I struggled, putting all my weight into pulling them toward me then having to literally hang on them to move them toward me. I couldn't push them in the opposite direction because I couldn't hang on them.
I also got to know the engineers and firemen on the Mikado that made the short, local freight runs. They'd let me ride along. They were hand stoked and I'll never forget the first time I saw the raging, roaring inferno when fireman opened the butterfly firebox doors to throw in a shovel of coal. Great memories.
