Almost thirty-five years of train photography, well, train picture taking, have given me the unexpected collection of fallen flags pictures. Within this collection is two in particular:
These, for some reason have fired a bit of imagination. First of all on a road trip between my home in Williamsburg, Va and northern Virginia, I took a stop at Doswell. Doswell was the crossing of two railroads, C&O and RF&P. It was 1981 and C&O was wearing the Chessie System colors. I just happened to catch this scene of both awaiting the crossing. They were both waiting for the northbound Amtrak. What makes this picture special is that C&O became Chessie System than Family Lines and finally CSX. RFP was merged with CSX. Both are fallen flags but not one Line.
The early days of Amtrak was fun for a number of reasons. The Amtrak car color had just been developed but the old line cars were still on the road in original colors. It would be some years before Amtrak began to operate their own trains. In this picture, A train making the station stop in Williamsburg, VA, was being pulled by a B&O F unit. However, this was a fallen flag, as the B&O had been absorbed by the C&O. During mergers, as here, you could see off road motive power.
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