Tom Stephens, engineer of the NKP 765, passed away around midnight on June 6 after a long battle with cancer. Memorial service arraignments can be seen in the link below:

https://www.earlybirdpaper.com/stephens-thomas-j/

I’m very sorry to hear that. I met Tom & his wife Liz in the early 80’s when NKP 765 was running excursions out of Bellevue, OH. They were two of the nicest people on the crew.

I remember riding in the tool car on one excursion when an N&W road foreman was at the throttle. It started misting rain and the engine went into a pretty severe high speed slip. The train jolted pretty badly and the crew stopped right after to check things over. Tom had been riding in the cab; he came back to the tool car with a look of amazement on his face. He said right that before the slip, the road foreman had really opened the throttle on the engine. Tom said: “I didn’t know the throttle would go that far!” We all got a big laugh out of that.

RIP Tom.

A great man. I had a couple of opportunities to chat with him. Super nice. I’ll post this video here. Here he is with the 92 New River Train with 34 to 35 cars that year, including crew car and auxiliary water tender (you can count the cars on another video that’s posted on YouTube). All business and professional. His courtesy shows at the beginning of the video with him moving his seat forward a little for the pilot engineer without being asked to make sure the pilot was comfortable. Super nice guy and all around professional.

https://youtu.be/OuGLUCSWOyg

Great stuff, Bret. Wish I'd thought to stumble over that for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejDoUpAr0B4

A little memorial/tribute with some interview footage with Tom from 2013.

Brett, thanks for posting that link to the YT video. I've never seen that one before. I had just pulled into the Home Depot parking lot, pulled up RYPN and saw the link. Started playing the video with the audio going through the BlueTooth and the truck speakers. Couldn't figure out why I was getting strange looks from people as the video played, lol.

Tom, we will meet again one day. Until then, heres hoping for clear track and green signals ahead...thanks for all you have done to keep the dream of steam alive in tbe Midwest for the last 30 plus years.

Sincerely,


Rob Gardner
ASR VP and 2100 Project Manager.