Met Chip Deyerle at our local writer's club last night (Write at the Rails in Manassas, Virginia) and obtained from Chip a copy of his most fascinating book about railroading in the 1920's. It is about steam rail travel back in the 1920's and follows the life of one particular engineer.  Trains were in their heyday then. I remember the Dixie Flyer coming through Evansville, Indiana back in the 1940's when I was young and it was always a spectacle to see. It came down from Chicago and went on to Nashville, Macon GA, Jacksonville, and Miami.  It was operated by the C&EI railroad and that logo was on the baggage cars.  The train looked to be coming at a hundred miles an hour down the tracks on the west side of Highway 41 north of Evansville and it truly was a scene to behold.  Big black steam engines led the many cars that followed it and it must have had hundreds of people on it, probably as much as a 747 holds now.  The train terminal in Evansville was an enormous hubbub of activity as were many along the way. 

Chip's book is about one train engineer who after a long career with the railroad developed a thyroid goiter, something handled routinely today.  In the 1920's, surgery for those was tedious and dangerous and this engineer, Chip's grandfather, died of post-op infection. A sad story but fascinating in describing the days and the life of a steam railroader.