Yard Switchers

My dad always had a soft spot for GE 44 tonners, always tracking them down in their off-beat places where the railroading is less glamorous than out on the mainline ... but still where there is work to be done. Perhaps that tender affection began with Southern #6010, above. Delivered to the Southern in the fall of 1945, she was marked CNO&TP and assigned to Chattanooga. By the mid 1960s, however, 6010 could frequently be found drilling the yards of Southern's main-to-Memphis through north Alabama, including Huntsville. My father always told the story of one Saturday morning in the fall of '66 when he took my two older siblings and their pal out the Southern yard in Huntsville to see what they could see. The 44 tonner was working that morning, and the kindly engineman invited the kids to pose on the running board for a series of pictures with the locomotive. My sibs could not have cared less that they were standing on the Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Railway's sole centercab, nor would they have noticed such rare features as the numbered light shroud or the deck-mounted water cooler. Even so, a proud dad and true Southern devotee got his photos, and Number 6010 claimed a place in his heart for all subsequent examples of General Electric's working-man switcher.