Kurt Shoemaker:  

My retirement notice, sort of explains most of my doings for the past 40+ years: ========== To all of those who have had to put up with me... This may be a little verbose, but those who know me being a sentimental, romantic about railroads will understand. It's funny how I was introduced to railroads, it was 1950, my mother was pregnant with me and she fell off of the rear of an Indian motorcycle crossing a set of railroad tracks. Since then, I've had a love for trains. I am technically a 3rd generation railroader, the 1st two generations worked for the Lehigh Valley Railroad (For those of you who were born after 1976, this was a Class I railroad consolidated into ConRail and now part of the Norfolk Southern). My dad, lasted 1 day, thank Heaven, and then, went to work with General Electric as a draftsman working on, believe it or not, the Union Pacific turbines in Schenectady, NY.. Graduating from Millersville, 1973, I was suppose to be a school teacher by training and was told by my advisor I'd better find something else. Letters went out & the Missouri Pacific was looking for "kids" who could travel, stay out for long periods of time and endure long hours. So I left the suburbs of Philadelphia, off to North Little Rock, AR I go. For a "foamer", the field exposure to what it took to operate a railroad including everything from demurrage, rerailing switch engines, to riding the Missouri Pacific Navy was a dream come true. Eventually, most of our group in North Little Rock was rolled over to create the initial Online System Support group on the 13th floor of the Missouri Pacific Building. I was lucky, then, to go back to North Little Rock into the Transportation Department responsible for yard office operations at the Crest Hump. Ahh... The stories & experiences. Then back to St. Louis with a side, 3 year tour of duty in North Platte. Finally, off to Omaha where I became a "FOG" and when you go into the field, the infamous phrase "I'm fro...Expand for more