My Dad (Little Joe) was born in Haynes, a coal mining town in Iowa. Like most of the coal mining towns in Iowa, Haynes no longer exists. Even Buxton, which once had a population of 5,000, no longer exists. Albia, the county seat, is still a thriving town.

Dad grew up with trains all around his home. When he was 14 years old he was the surveyor for a new mine tunnel. All the regular surveyors had joined the anny. After World War I the Chicago Northwestern RR got new engines that could not use the soft coal from Iowa, so work slowed down at the mines. Grandpa ran the company store for a while, then the family moved to Des Moines. My Dad got married, started a family and moved to Chicago.

When I was 5 or 6 (about 1934) my Dad bought a model train set and gave it to us boys for Christmas. It was a ‘wide gauge’ train, larger than ‘0’ gauge. My brother Jim recalls that the engine and coal car weighed 18 pounds. We all played with it for many years. I remember that on Saturday afternoons when I was in 311 grade Jim, Rich and I laid tracks to every room in our apartment. Dad would give us tasks such as to take a can of corn from the kitchen, change the position of the cars so that the corn was on the end of the train, then drop the car with the corn on a siding in the bedroom. If it couldn’t be done, we had to figure out what to add to the track layout so that the task could be done. We learned a lot of logic and problem solving. When we moved to a house in Bellwood about 1940 we made a more permanent layout in the attic.

The house in Bellwood was surrounded with trains, mostly using steam engines. The main line of the Chicago and Northwestern ran about 3 blocks north of the house, the main line of the Great Northern ran about 3 blocks south of the house. There was a railroad belt line around Chicago, similar to 1-495 and other beltway roads of today. That beltline was about 5 blocks west of the house. An industrial spur line belonging to the American Can Company ran down the alleyway behind our house, only a few feet from the garage. There was usually one train a day go down this spur track. Thus we heard and saw trains all the time.
On a Saturday afternoon we sometimes drove about 2 miles to the Proviso Yards, the largest freight sorting railroad yard in the world. A sorting yard is made with a slight hump and incline. On the incline there was about 30 spur tracks, each spur would hold the freight cars to go to a particular city. A train that came from the west would have cars to go to New York, to Milwaukee, to Indianapolis, to Cleveland and to many other cities, including cars to go on into Chicago. The operator knew the destination of each car. A switch engine would push a car (say destined for New York City) over the hump, the coupler would be released and the car would coast down the slope. The yard man would throw the switch to send the car into the spur where a train for New York City was being organized. It was interesting to watch.

I went to High School and on to college, losing my interest in trains for the time. I joined the Army in 1946. I was sent on a troop train to Louisiana. I remember leaning out the window to see all the new type of scenery in the South, then looking in the mirror and seeing that my face was black with soot! A few weeks later I was sent on a troop train across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to San Francisco. I was fascinated with the landscape. I rode part of the way on the open platform of the observation car. A few months later I was sent to Pennsylvania to attend a specialty school. This trip was on an ordinary passenger train. It went through the Rocky Mountains on the Denver and Rio Grand line. The scenery along the Colorado River was spectacular, especially near the 6 mile long Moffat Tunnel. On a number of occasions I could look out the window and see the engines pulling us around a horseshoe bend. At the end of my service I came back to Chicago by first going to Spokane, Washington, then taking the Great I’4ofthern route through the mountains of Montana. I enjoyed seeing the West by train.

My first job was at the Armour Research Foundation on the south side of Chicago. At the time we were living with my Folks in Cary, IL. Cary is a small town about 40 miles northwest of downtown Chicago. I took a commuter train on the Chicago and Northwestern RR to get to Chicago. Each day I got to see the steam engine up close as it pulled into the station.

Joanne and I have ridden on trains many times.
When I was 3 we moved from Des Moines to Chicago on the train.
When Joanne was about 6 she went from her home in Bethlehem to New York City to be with her Dad and Stepmother on their honeymoon.
During World War II we visited our relatives by going to Des Moines on the California Zephyr. We usually drove to Iowa, but gas was rationed during the war.
I frequently rode the elevated trains (the “L”) from our home in Bellwood to Chicago. On our first date to the Aragon Ballroom I took Joanne for her first ride on the “L”. It was an exciting ride, we stood at the front and could watch the track and signals.
After we moved to Chicago, we took the train to Cary to visit my Folks.
In 1954 I took the train to New York too attend the Optical Society annual meeting.
On vacation in New Hampshire we sometimes rode on the excursion train in Conway.
In 1977 we took the Amtrak to Washington, DC for Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. We Democrats dubbed it “The Peanut Express”.
We took the cog railroad to the top of Mount Washington with Bob in 1982.
We visited a train museum near Denver with James in 1993.
We visited a train museum in Canada in 1997..
In 1998 we were in Napa Valley, California. Sue came to visit us for my birthday. We took a dinner ride on an excursion train past the Napa vineyards, sipping wine from the vineyards we were passing.
We rode the trains in England to go from London to Mary’s house in Market Harborough. Joanne rode the ‘Flying Scotsman’ to Edinburgh when she was studying in London in the early 1980s. In 2004 we took the train to Cardiff, Whales.
In 2004 we went on a cruse on the Rhine River. After the cruse we took the train to Zurich and a cog train to a lookout point in Zurich.
When our oldest daughter Mary was about 7 years old we got a Lionel “027” train set. We played with it for many years as the children grew. I had the children solve problems, just like my Dad taught me. We did not make a permanent layout, we set up the tracks whenever we wanted to ‘play trains’. Many years later the train set was sent to Bob.
My brother Rich had to quit work in the 1 970s because of disabilities. He built a large train layout in the basement of his home in Colorado Springs. He and Dad would work on it together when Dad and Mom visited him.

My Dad burned his hands in an industrial accident. He needed to do a lot of therapy with his hands and fingers. He bought some HO model trains and worked with them, laying track, building kits of houses and of RR cars and eventually an engine when his hands were better. After he moved to an over-65 apartment in Haverhill, Mass, he suggested that they build a large HO model train set in the basement storage room as a community project. This was his main hobby for the next 13 years. Other men worked on the set and the women liked to donate items for the scenery, but Dad made most of the set. It was well known in town and was frequently visited by school groups, boy scouts, etc. It was written up by the Haverhill newspaper a number of times, see the last 2 pages of this document. Dad also made and donated 2 x 4 foot train layouts that were raffled off at the Haverhill festival each year.