The Frisco’s Meteor from Oklahoma City to St. Louis comes charging in behind a giant Northern type locomotive. The railroad has on this train as many coaches and baggage cars as it could find and as that big beast of a locomotive can pull. We swarm on board, filling every vestibule and every corner of every car.
Then we are off through the night, following the well-known route out of the Ozarks through Springfield, Mo., to St. Louis. There’s some fast running for a single-track railroad: 311 miles in under eight hours. And of course, while the big Northern can run with this train, there are a few times when it has to struggle to start it—there are just too many of us.
For us 500 there is a sense of escape. We are getting away from good old Camp Crowder and its radio transmitters, teletypes, and the code, plus the chow lines and all that, for just a few hours. Yes, the Sunday night Meteor out of St. Louis will be back in Neosho at 2:40 on Monday morning, and I guess we are all going to be tired.
Tired is not important, though, for we have played a role in the last great hurrah of American railroads in these few years of World War II. Our Saturday night was just one of hundreds, our 500 guys were but a few in millions. The Frisco was but one of dozens of railroads, and its people were doing their darnedest. Yes, it was a mighty big Saturday night.
First published in Winter 2003 Classic Trains magazine.
