Wordless Wednesday #85

CSX 7 at the Exchange St. CPL Signals in Akron, OH July 7, 2016, Chris Ellis Photo

Today's so called "Wordless Wednesday" has nothing to do with the Nickel Plate Road or tiny Southern Ohio coal mining towns. It's about a terribly shot photo that ended up meaning a lot more to me than I would realize. Today's picture is about my co-worker and train watching friend Gary Schott who passed away on Monday.

We worked together at the Akron Beacon Journal for over twenty years, both of us moving up to full time and then he as a mechanic. In the last few years I discovered that he loved watching the trains go by outside our building in downtown Akron. I had just gotten back into railfanning and together we both got scanners to listen to at work and learned a lot about rail operations in and around Akron.

Gary also loved writing the engine numbers on the wall near the door were we would watch the trains rumble by at work. The lower the engine number the more exciting the train was!

I never got to show Gary this photo because the day I took it I found out he had suffered a stroke. I'm not sure if he'd seen a CSX engine with a lower number than seven, but I know he'd gotten a big kick out of the photo anyways.