Kansas City Southern
Scanned Slides
E-Units

by Mike Condren

The people on the platform are my parents.

During July 1964, My parents went on a camping/fishing trip in my grandparents camper. That week I had the family car in Fayetteville where I was in summer school. I used that opportunity to chase the KCS. Here we see images of that chase.

Note the caboose disappearing around a curve in the distance after this meet with the passenger in the station. This sequence shows the switch being aligned for the passenger train. Then the switch being aligned for the main after the passenger train gets on the mainline.

This is the only shot that I have of a KCS E-unit in Ft. Smith. During the 1960s many troop trains were operated out of Ft. Smith with troops from Ft. Chaffee. Almost all of those troop trains were operated on the Frisco, either as part of the regularly scheduled passenger train or as separate operations.

KCS passenger train sitting in New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal with the World Trade Center sky scraper in lit up in the background.

The loco is approximately on the spot where a 40' box car exploded after a hot box detonated the ammonium nitrate feritlizer cargo, Aug. 3, 1969. The train had stopped and had called the fire department. A pumper was responding down a road to the left of the passing track which luckily had cars parked on it. When the explosion occured, those cars protected the firemen. However, a wheel set from the car was thrown a block away and crashed through the roof of a home killing a woman asleep at the 4am time of the explosion. I went to the site a few weeks after the repairs were made. Luckily the propane distribution center was not effected even though it was soo close to the event.

If you look closely, you can see the mail pouch still in the hook at the RPO door. The train is crossing the Midland Valley mainline this side of the joint agency station.

To take this picture, I was sitting on the banister of the very narrow US71 bridge over the track and this stream.

The chase of the last "Southern Belle" #2 began in Sallisaw and continued to the meet with #1 north of Gravette.

This is the last "Southern Belle" #2 passing the station site just before the meet. I was the only person to walk down into the valley to get the actual meet at the north end of the passing track sse in image KCS-23 above.

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