Does anyone out there have an index or listing of the "Interesting Railfans" series that ran in the old Railroad Magazine, from about 1964 to at least the mid-1970s?

I have inquired with one of the current "Railfan and Railroad" staffers, and they could not find anything.

Thanks,

Howard P.

Are you looking for someone specific?

I really enjoyed this series in the back issues I've found. Two particular favorites were Earle Gil of the Morris County Central and Kristoffer Miller of Pine Creek. The issue with Earle Gil had a great picture of MCC 4039 going over the Passaic River trestle.

John

Quite a few of the pre-1961 or so Railroad Magazine (and Railroad Man's magazine as it was called originally) issues are available online for free, but I haven't found any after that:
https://readitfree.org/PU/RRS.htm
https://archive.org/details/pub_railroad-magazine
It was around 150 pages each in the early 1950's, though most of that was ads unrelated to railroads.

The Stephans folks produced an index to Railroad Magazine in the mid-1980s which i have in my personal library that indexes all of the "Interesting Railfans" articles and the issues in which they appeared. Send me a PM and I can look up the ones you are inquiring about. The Railroad Museum of PA Library has a nearly complete run of Railroad Magazine if anybody wishes to track down an old issue for reference.

K.R. Bell

Thank you so much for this link. If you’ve never read the stories, they’re…something else (definitely not fot the easily offended, product of their times, rich on the railroading and plots and kinda lumpy in the character development.)
It’s also fun to look through the trade sections and the pen pals wanted. About ten years back an elder mentioned contacting someone who became a pen pals. They still were in extreme old ago.

My understanding is that Railroad was a magazine for railroaders, not railfans, and like everyone they didn't necessarily want to talk or read about work all the time. The lingerie ads and so forth can be explained that way, and I understand that later Railroad had photos of female models next to locomotives. That makes sense from a marketing perspective, I recall what sort of "literature" railroaders liked to read in the late 1970s when I was a young teenager, they shared it with me sometimes, lots of photos of models, lets put it that way.

Thanks to Kurt Bell for coming up with the information needed!

Howard P.

I used to have an article about Alice Ramsdall; who was one of the few female railfans. She was the owner of the WW&F #9 ex Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes #6. And some other cars
that eventually went up to Alna, Maine. sorry but I forget the date of the issue.

Ted Miles, WW&F Member Build 11 contributor

You MIGHT be thinking of August 1983 Trains, not Railroad? Not so much on Alice, but the guys who got permission to get #9/#6 out of the barn for photos?

I unearthed the Alice Ramsdell article much to my surprise. It is Interesting Railfan #61
in the January 1968 issue of Railroad Magazine.

After her passing the farm and house built in 1740 went to Thompson Historical Society. They moved the house out of the way of the water way built by the Army Corp of Engineers.

I also have the trains article mentioned above. There are some good pictures of the
Sandy River locomotive before it was restored by the WW&F Railway Museum shop. In
my opinion, they did a first rate job on her.

Ted Miles WW&F Life Member Build 11 contributor narrow gauge fan