I was pleased to receive a DVD today from Steve Goen, I was proud that Steve used about all of the footage my Grandfather took and I subsequently was able contributed to the project. It covers some of the not so traditional Frisco lines. I was also pleased to see he had a camera too. A very well put together effort and a joy to view. Well, that is right to the very end, where it kinda made me sad, as I had been to so many of the places where trains or these rails have not been seen, nor will be seen, for so many years. Try one if you get a chance; Memories of the St, Louis- San Francisco Railroad From Steam Gauge Video Productions I was pleased to view it for sure.. Tom Holley
copied and pasted with permission from Steve Goen. Tom Holley Below is a little story on the SL-SF QA&P fottage and ordering info. DVDs are $20.00 each. Texas residents must add 8.25% state sales tax. Shipping is $3.00. Send checks to: Steve Goen 1519 Sweetbriar Drive Wichita Falls, TX 76302-2911 If anyone has additional questions please contact me at texaszephyr@sw.rr.com. Yes, I shot lots of Super 8mm movies back then. Up thru 1976 I had never shot slides or movies except for a few slides taken on my uncle's borrowed camera around 1967. Instead I mainly stuck with my mom's old Kodak 126 Instamatic camera. But things would soon change for the better. In 1976 they brought T&P 610 up to Wichita Falls on her AFT test run and I saw others out shooting movies and slides. I mentioned to my wife (girlfriend at the time) that I sure wished that I had had a movie camera that day. That's when she dropped the bomb on me that her family had a movie camera that they had won in a contest years earlier and had never used it. She gave it to me and it was a piece of crap. It was standard 8mm which meant that halfway through any shoot you had to take the film out and flip it, then shoot it again. Naturally opening the camera up allowed unwanted light in. So not only was the resolution terrible, there were light spots all over the place where sunlight got to the film when it had to be removed and then flipped. After a few months of just dismal results I found a nice Super 8mm camera that September that was pretty good. The results weren't all that bad and more importantly no more flipping film since Super 8 film was in nice little cassettes that all I had to do was pop in, shoot and then pop in the next one. The first movies I shot that afternoon was of a Rock Island freight at Waurika, 30 miles from Wichita Falls. I would shoot Super 8mm movies with that camera from that September until I graduated up to VHS in 1986. Movie film wasn't cheap, developing it was even higher. Plus one cassette would only last about 4 minutes. So I basically only shot movies when it was something REALLY important. Luckily I considered the Frisco, Rock Island and Katy a subject important enough. As for still images, I finally moved up to the big leagues in December 1978 when I got a Pentax 35mm SLR for Christmas. I shot strictly 35mm slides after that, stills in yards and movies of any action. More importantly no more borrowing my mom's or uncle's cameras. I guess you noticed that the scenes of the QA&P train at Quanah Jct. and later passing the Quanah depot were shot on my wedding day. I married Marsha, my girlfriend who I had met in college, earlier that morning in Wichita Falls. We visited Marsha's grandmother in Frederick and had just drove to Quanah to check out the railroads and later eat supper at the Pizza Hut when I stumbled onto the train arriving from Acme. I had attempted to get a shot of anything passing the depot for years but this was the one and only time I ever caught a moving train down at the depot. Living in West Texas was a brief part of my life but it enabled me to be really close to the QA&P for two key events. The first was when the Quanah agent called me early on the morning of May 5, 1981 to tell me that the last run from Floydada would be that afternoon. So my wife and myself headed west to Floydada. When I arrived the train was at the depot with the crew playing cards in the caboose. I asked for permission to "doctor up" the train with some "QA&P" subletters. Don Hofsommer mentions this incident in his book but never mentioned me by name. But it was little ole me who added the QA&P signage, which was a fitting touch. Later that afternoon I would add another event to my bucket list when I finally caught a train on the historic Groesbeck Creek bridge at Acme!!! The following year found us teaching at Patton Springs ISD located in Afton, Texas, about six miles south of Roaring Springs. With the last run taking place the year before I didn't really consider that I would ever get a chance to shoot anything else on the line. All of that changed one clear Sunday in February. The day was already nice and warm by 11:00 so Marsha and I decided to have a hamburger cookout on the front porch. So I started up the grill while Marsha drove to Roaring Spring to buy some meat. She left and about 10-15 minutes later came racing back in our car. She said to hurry up and put out the fire, that there was some type of train in Roaring Springs tearing up the railroad. A train in Roaring Springs???? So the fire was extinguished, lunch was cancelled and off we went, with movie camera in hand. No sooner than we arrived the BN salvage train passed the depot. I basically took up a vantage point just west of the depot and during the next two or three hours the QA&P simply vanished one rail at a time, being sucked up like spaghetti by the BN's ribbon rail train. This was extremely good heavy rail, having been laid just years earlier when the QLA, QSF and CTB all racing across the Quanah Route on a daily basis. Looking back at it now I thank God that my life took me down a path between July 1980 and February 1982 that allowed me the opportunity to shoot all three key events on the QA&P... a train passing the Quanah depot, the final run of the QA&P, and lastly the salvage train. Had I stayed in Wichita Falls and not moved west for those two years I would have missed all three. The fact that I shot the train passing the depot in Quanah on the day I married Marsha will forever have a special meaning... two gifts from God on that day. Back to the DVD, I deliberately chose the last two scenes. The first to show how the Frisco was now fading fast into the BN and the last scene because it was at Frederick. My wife's grandmother was from Frederick and this was the last time I ever saw anything SLSF in town. It was trips to Frederick that enabled me to get all of those scenes between Davidson and Snyder during the Frisco's final wheat harvest. If you could, please post this response on the Frisco site. Others might enjoy reading how those final scenes on the QA&P all came about and how living in the right places at the right time allowed me to capture this all on film. Take care and Merry Christmas! Steve Goen
