(erielack) Erie steam

["Janet & Randy Brown" <jananran_@_mymailstation.com>]

In 1935, when I was three years old, we moved from Sarasota to Radburn, in Fairlawn, NJ, on the Erie's Bergen Line.  Two years later, we moved to Tenafly, on the Northern.  Some time in that prewar period, I attended a day camp in Allendale, right beside the Erie main line.  Already familiar with White's system of locomotive classification, I came home extolling the 2-8-4s I had seen.  My father, who came from a Southern Railway family and summered in the South Carolina piedmont and knew SR power, said I must have seen 4-8-2s.  I perservered; he went and witnessed; and he was introduced to the Berkshire.

In Tenafly, the trains ran our days.  There were three down in the morning and three up in the evening.  The first down and last up was a 5005-series gas-electric.  When it went down, it was time to get up.  When it came back, you'd ____ well better be in and eating spper! The middle train was a K-4 and seven Stilwells; most daddies rodethat one. The late down, early up, was a K-1 and five Stillwells -- kind of a "Bankers'".  In the morning, that meant you were late for school.

Freight was mid-day -- I know now that it was the second Northern: the first worked the south end of the branch.  Ours usually had a K-4 with foot boards.  The day an N-1 showed up, I went wild and took pictures.  They are 127 b&w; I have the prints and the negs.

My first job was in Brooklyn, in 1948, at the branch office of my father's company headquatered in New York.  We commuted from Tenafly to Jersey City behind that K-4, and either ferried or "tubed" to Manhattan, where I picked up the mail and continued to Brooklyn.  Homeward was the reverse, with the pressure of knowing that missing the train would immediately complicate a number of lives. 

The earnings from that summer sponsored a trip on the Erie (#1 and 2) to the Chicago Railroad Fair, where my father introduced me to the "step up":  We rode coach (no hardship in those newly rebuilt heavyweights) to Elmira and then stepped into the Pullman for the night.

In college times, I found myself with time to kill between the two second halves of my freshman year.  On the last Erie steam fan trip, with a K-5A in charge, we met a fellow townsperson who co-owned a hardware store and was looking for somebody for the fall season.  I got the job.

That put me in Tenafly, downtown and upstairs in the barn, every morning at 8:15, as the K-1 brought the last train down with its calcified chime whistle screeching the most beautiful music I had ever heard.  I was also able to watch the bus from Cresskill come in and let off the cute young daughter of one of the old hands at the store.  We would meet in the "pot and pan" room, exchange a smooch, and continue with the day.

The steams sounds were ordinary, run-of-the-mill.  Then we heard the first diesel horns.  They were new!  They were modern! They were progress!

They were the voice of doom!

The Army called; I answered. The cute young lady said "Yes"; we got married in 1954 and ended up in Alaska.  When we got back in 1956, steam was gone.

But I can still see that K-1 coming around the curve, hell bent for election and blowing everybody out of its way, as if it was the most important train in the world!  And, to its passengers, it was!

Randy Brown, 73 and counting in NH

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