Tuesday, July 7, 2009

RPO Days at IRM

As promised, here are views of our RPO Days from Charles Amstein. This material is copyrighted by Mr. Amstein and may not be reproduced without permission.The CD contains 275 stills and 12 videos, so it will take me a while to go through it all.

Here are some links to Chuck Amstein's videos:
From inside the car
From trackside
I then noticed there are some other YouTube videos on the same subject.
308/309 runby
There are also some nice cab ride videos taken in the 309 that day here. Enjoy!

Now for the stills:

Chuck may have to help me with identifying some of these pictures, but I believe this must be the group of retired mail clerks who participated that day. They're posed in front of Burlington RPO #1923, which has complete interior arrangements.




Look out below!
A clerk prepares to throw out one mail bag
while picking up another one.



Another clerk prepares to make a catch.



Now we just have to sort it all out:







Inside the car, talking over the good old days.






Update: Jon Habegger writes:
The former RPO clerks in your blog are as follows from left to right:
Bill Killen
Don Bliss
Darrell Mack
Al Horne
Cortie Rolison
Don Lauder
Bob Burkman

I know that five of the gentlemen worked the Chicago & Council Bluffs RPO on the CB&Q (Bliss, Mack, Rolison, Lauder, and Burkman). Al Horne worked the Chicago & KC route on the CB&Q and on the Chicago, Fort Madison, and Kansas City Route on the AT&SF. I am not sure which route Bill Killen worked.

This was a great weekend with these men. While I was pleased to have been able to arrange for them to visit IRM and make another catch, they were thrilled with the fine treatment that they received by all at the Museum. They were very happy to be able to ride in the RPO and remember their days in the RPO, but the five gentlemen from Iowa (the Chicago & Council Bluffs men) were extremely excited to be able to enter the Nebraska Zephyr again since many times they returned home from being on the road via the NZ. When we entered the NZ and were walking to the back, one saw them looking everywhere and remarking that the train looks the same as when they rode it. IRM brought many great memories back to these men. I am most thankful and excited about that.

Hopefully, we will be able to have another RPO weekend in 2010 and have many of these men back along with a few more former RPO Clerks. To these Iowa men (and the other clerks), this was their "Field of Dreams."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've just spent the past 4 hours (minus 45 minutes for dinner) watching videos on Your Tube thanks to the link you provided from the Trolley Pageant. Thank you. Wonderful stuff to watch. Some quite old, some taken very recently. Not all IRM but there is a lot of it.

My wife and I intended to be at the museum Saturday for the pageant and got as far as Algonquin when it poured so hard we stopped, had lunch and then headed back home.

Our loss.