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Indiana Jim and the Lost Card PHOTOGRAPHY: STEVE BARRY
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Terry Respondek, president of Respondek Rail Services, gives a thumbs-up during a night photo session at Respondek’s Squaw Creek Southern in Boone, Ind., on August 12, 2012.
THE TRIP TO SUMMERAIL (see MARKERS on page 54) was certainly fun. Associate editor Otto Vondrak and I enjoyed a variety of rail- roading and Cincinnati-style chili, and the show itself was great. But there was another adventure that took place later on the trip. On the morning of Sunday, August 12, Ot- to and I loaded up on supplies (cans of Sky- line Chili, bottles of Ale-8-One, and more) then headed into Kentucky to shoot the Short Line of the former Louisville & Nashville (now CSX). In LaGrange CSX trains share the main street with auto traf- fic (the street running has become the town’s biggest tourist draw) and we got one train each direction there. There was quite an assembled throng of photographers in town, and while most shot an eastbound train from the sunny side at the east end of the street running, I opted for a more un- conventional angle passing the town clock. We needed to head further west for a night photo session in southwest Indiana, and the intel was that a Norfolk Southern heritage unit (No. 1066, painted for the New York Central) was working in helper service out of New Albany, Ind. Even though the heritage unit would be facing into the train while pushing, we decided to check things out and headed to New Albany. Much to our surprise, a young railfan there informed us that the next westbound train had locomo- tive trouble, and the two engine helper set (the heritage unit and one other engine) was going to be split up, with the NYC engine as- signed to the point! We couldn't believe our luck. However, the images from this chase (or temporary lack thereof) would cause a great deal of angst over the next couple of weeks. After a spectacular chase across Indiana, Otto (who is not into night photography like I am) opted to stay at the motel while I headed out to Boone, Ind., and the Squaw Creek South-
ern for a night photo session organized by Mark Mautner and graciously allowed by Respondek Rail Services. In fact, company president Terry Respondek even posed for a photo, giv- ing a thumbs-up to his locomotives (above). I hadn't downloaded any of my photos so far on this trip to my computer and my digi- tal cards were filling up fast. I had to pause twice during the night photo session to change cards, and during the first of those changes I took out the card containing the NYC heritage
chase and unknowingly
dropped it (I would not discover this until I was back home in New Jersey and found a gap in my photos). The next day, August 13, we rocketed
back home to New Jersey. Once there, I downloaded all my photos and noticed everything from the NYC chase was miss- ing. I immediately knew where I had dropped the card — in the Squaw Creek Southern yard — and I pretty much knew where I was standing when I likely dropped it. However, my card was now 800 miles away. What to do?
After some thought, I remembered that Carstens Publications had an employee liv- ing in central Illinois about 200 miles from Boonville, FLYING MODELS associate editor Jim Wiggin (who is also a railfan and model railroader). In my capacity as editor of RAIL- FAN & RAILROAD, I “assigned” him a day of work to go down to Boonville and track down my card. Eager for a chance to spend a day on an adventure, Jim headed for the Hoosier State and dubbed himself “Indiana Jim” for the task.
Meanwhile, Terry Respondek graciously had his crews look for the missing card, but they turned up nothing. Compact Flash cards are pretty durable (they’ll even sur- vive going through a washing machine), so I wasn’t too concerned about the card being
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