Mallory Hope Ferrell passed away on Christmas evening.

His obituary was published on January 8, 2024 in The Citizen newspaper of Fayette County, Georgia:
Lt. Colonel Mal Ferrell, USAF (Ret.), 88, of Peachtree City, Ga.

He was the author of 21 books about narrow-gauge railroads.

I met Mal a few times and we corresponded for years. He was a great guy.

Great writer and historian too.

Mal Ferrell led a most interesting life. While his accomplishments as an author are well known in our hobby, he was also an aviator.

While in the USAF, he flew aerial combat over Hanoi numerous times. His bio states that he flew the F-105, but I recall during a phone conversation that he also may have flown the F-101.

When the subject of the MIG came up, I mentioned of stumbling on one at Edwards in the mid 60's. He exclaimed to me that he had flown mock combat against that same aircraft several times there at night. This was to avoid any detection back then. Mal was stationed at Edwards in the early 60's, a short time before I was.

We had a number of phone conversations over the years. I learned that he was friends with the late Dick Truesdale of West Side Models. Both were airline pilots at the same time and both liked modeling. Dick gave Mal a custom model of a rare CO locomotive and he prized that for the remainder of his life. Like Mal, Dick had flown combat, that in WW2 in Marine Corsairs.

Mal displayed great enthusiasm for most things; collecting annual passes, walking old right of ways, etc.

A sincere, generous guy with a life well-spent.

Chicago, Wisconsin and the Soo Line Railroad send their condolences.

Many years ago I was doing my officer's advanced course in Anniston, Alabama and I was planning to visit my mother in New Jersey over the Christmas stand down. Since I only had a week and I did not want to spend three days of it driving I took a look at the options. The winner, which beat out the Crescent in both time and cost, was to drive to Atlanta, fly to Washington National, and grab the next Metroliner to Trenton. In those days Delta was the primary carrier between ATL and DCA with what was very close to being a shuttle service.

Unfortunately the plane I was on sat at the gate without a flight crew for almost an hour after the scheduled departure. My Metroliner connection was getting tight. Finally a very unhappy looking 4-striper boarded followed by another officer who looked like he was trying to stay out of the line of fire. The 4-striper nodded to the passengers, had a quick word with one of the flight attendants and almost slammed the cockpit door shut. The gate agent shut the door and almost immediately the cabin crew was ordered to secure. Once we were in line he came back on the P.A. As best I can recall his announcement was something like this "Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ferrel. I'm Delta's senior pilot in Atlanta. I apologize for the delay. I realize that it's Christmas Eve and I see an awful lot of short hair out there. I've been exactly where you are. I will see to it that all of you who are taking Christmas leave will get home tonite." He did.

Thank you Captain.