3-day weekend - trains in These titles mean nothing.

Saturday we went to a train show in LaCrosse. It involves a tour of the big old steam loco at Copeland Park and its stockman’s caboose. A stockman’s caboose has accommodations for extra people who come with car loads of livestock to take care of them. One pass per cars. I believe there it included a regular passenger ticket home. My dad went once or twice as a substitute for someone else who had a carload of cattle or pigs. Once he went to the Worlds Fair in Chicago in 1934. He also made it to the one of the big band ballrooms on a stockman’s pass trip to Chicago. The Aragon I think. He wanted to go to the Trianon but didn’t make it.

There is also a swap meet/flea market of train merchandise and there might have been the opportunity to get close to functioning locomotives at the city’s two train yards.

There was an air compressor hooked up to the train’s whistle and kids were allowed to blow the whistle for a buck. The guy in charge, a venerable former road foreman for the CBQ and and the BN, was pretty generous with whistle pulls. He said the locomotive had been manufactured in 1932 and it and a twin had been tricked out to be substitutes for passenger trains that had engine trouble. I asked how fast it would go and he said that either this one or its mate had held a world’s record for quite a while at 114 miles per hour on the run south of LaCrosse to Prairie.

(I couldn’t get the engine in one picture because I was backed up to the fence that surrounds it. Not the best excuse, I realize.)

Diesels came in the late 1930s but WWII also came then, so steam locomotives were used through the war until industry could convert back from making war materiel. He showed us the auger under the floor that fed coal from the tender to the firebox. At the opening into the fire box was compressed air to move the coal in.

Along with the locomotive and caboose is the Grant Crossing switch station - a two story wooden building with windows on all four sides and a dozen or so levers that changed all the switches where the railroads crossed. It’s been moved to the park to save it from demolition.

We didn’t have time to look for the modern day engines but we went to the flea market. Jim bought some more Milwaukee Road magazines and I got a coffee mug that changes images when hot liquid is added to it. I have no idea why I bought it. The husband of the couple selling it was a former SOO line property accountant who had ended up buying all the stock of the raillroad’s employee store and that was what they were selling. There was a really nice pewter Christmas tree ornament - with a long story behind it - that I didn’t buy because it was ‘too nice’.

I talked to the wife of the McGregor bookstore owner who takes train memorabilia that they acquired from an estate to the show. She looked a little bored but she was happy to see someone to talk books with. She asked me what I was reading. I was flattered and told her about Ian Frazier’s Great Plains and my adventures with Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon. We had more lovely talks with a couple from Elkader, the husband MIGHT come to look at our railroad bridge. He thought he’d seen them all, but turns out he hasn’t seen ours. She’s a florist and they have two daughters getting married this summer so we talked flowers and weddings.

On the way out I saw a W whistle sign. I wanted it, but not for $25 so I took a picture of it instead.

Let’s try for a ten things.

1. Finally got to Decorah today. We had rain last night with one really close blast of lightning that must have taken out our landline telephone and answering machine. So I bought a new phone at Walmart.

2. And took the library books back - though I missed the hours it was open this afternoon so I had to put them in the return box. I still have that monstrous fine hanging over my head.

3. Got an inhaler. It’s at its lowest price because the deductible is satisfied. So I want to get some more - one every thirty days - before the deductible resets at the end of the year.

4. Looked at Fitbits but did not purchase. I can get a slim purple one with a watch/time function for the same price as a clunkier one with heart rate. I want a slim one with time and heart both. Guess I’ll wait a while.

5. Met a fellow ex-KG worker and we talked old times a bit. I didn’t find out what he’s doing. His wife/girl friend has a store that sells used stuff and he does carpentry so I really think that is what he’s doing.

6. The oats are all baled. Jim got done before last night’s rain so that’s a good thing. I have some baling pictures (and a movie) but don’t seem to be in the mood to haul them into photobucket.

7. Not sure I’m in the mood for more things to get to ten either.

8. Nope.

9. Still not.

10. Have a good next week everyone. Stay sane. And cool. Or warm if that’s what you need to do.