Industrial Odds and Ends

There's little to say on US Army #3000 (above, right) because little is known about this locomotive. During a 1959 visit to the tourist railroads of Colorado, my father snapped a 120 negative of this unusual diesel-electric at Silverton. Unfortunately, the lens afforded a light leak, but the unit is so unusual -- a 36" gauge C-C switcher letter for the U.S. Army -- I had to include it here.

Tea kettle #1 (below) has little significance in and of itself, strewn as it is among the rusting appliances and scrap metal of a salvage yard along the Mississippi River near New Orleans. But relative to our photo collection, the little 0-4-0 tanker is an important specimen: She's the first locomotive my father ever photographed. The story goes that not long after purchasing their first new car in 1947, dad's family decided to go for a drive and to venture across the Mississippi River on the Huey P. Long bridge -- a massive steel structure named for Louisiana's notorious governor. While following the mighty Mississippi along River Road through Westwego, Louisiana, my father -- in 1948, 15 years old -- spotted the loco in the Westwego Salvage yard. "It was the smallest locomotive I had ever seen," he later recalled. My grandfather pulled over to the side of the road and dad convinced my grandmother to let him take a few photos with the family's Kodak folding camera. Thus began a 60 year interest in railfan photography -- appropriately, I suppose, with little #1.