With all of the trains rolling by every day, you probably don't even look up when you hear one approach. Sometimes, you should. If you happened to be in town yesterday afternoon, you might have seen a steam engine passing by on the Norfolk Southern tracks, it was Nickel Plate Road #765, offering some lucky bystanders an opportunity to see and hear the historic sights and sounds of an earlier era.
It passed by going east at the end of July on its way to New York where it was running passenger excursions and it was now on its way back home to The Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society in Indiana. If you were anywhere in the vicinity, you could have heard the steam whistle blowing, a very different sound than the horns you usually hear and you may have seen a big trail of smoke. It was American history on wheels.
Number 765 is a Berkshire 2-8-4 and this type of steam engine made regular runs through North East 60 or 70 years ago on the old Nickel Plate Railroad.
While I was snapping the photo that appears at the bottom of this article, another photographer, Jon Pippin, was there as well. He took the photo that now appears at the top. Nice shot Jon!