I would like to know what your favorite passenger train the C&O ran, and why it is your favorite. For me, it is The Chessie. The whole thing is just a wonder. And the fact that hardly any of it is left makes it that much more appealing. For me to walk through the observation dome that the Society now owns was a dream come true. I can't wait until we restore it!
I saw a truck trailer on Monday with the C&O logo on the side of it being used for storage next to someones home in Bangor, Maine. It looked quite old. ------------------ Ship It On The FRISCO!
I guess I'd pick The Sportsman. No particular reason. Just like the concept that it was supposed to be a classy train taking you off to the resorts for a few days of fun and relaxation (if you were one of the lucky few who could afford to do that in the 1930's). However, that was not a very flattering picture of it that was in it in the COHS magazine article about Hawks Nest
The Fast Flying Virginian. Only because I was on it a number of times as a little kid, from Penn Station in N.Y. My father was a Pullman conductor. Now THOSE were the days !! Al
The 6p.m. eastbound Lousville-Ashland section of the Sportsman was in a sense the most aptly named of all C&O trains. Once, Charles P. Castner, the well-know author of books on the L&N were sitting in a upper berth with several young ladies (the curtains were open and our legs were hanging out)drinking cold gin out the cooler's dixie cups. The gin bottle was nestled in the cooler's ice. Earlier (west of Lexington, Ky, there had been a dance in the lounge car. A friend of ours (a gentleman I still often see) was trying to sleep in a lower across the aisle. From the adjoining Pullman came another old friend--thoroughly lubricated--dressed only in his t-shirt and boxers. Screeching "I'm a monkey!" he leaped up to swing hand over hand from the upper berth curtain rods (all the berths had been made up). The would-be sleeper shouted from his curtain lower something like "Shut up ***" The "monkey" said, "Come on up here and make me if you're man enough!" The lower occupant emerged from his berth, shinnied up the swinging "monkey", and decked the latter on the jaw. All fell tumbling down. The train crew locked all the doors on the car; numerous railroad police met the train at Ashland. Charlie Castner and I got out on the platform to watch L-1 Hudsons couple up to both sections of the eastbound train. Such was the sporting life aboard the "Sportsman" in byegone days.
