Across The Fence: The Long Hard Pull

I know that I'm not the only person who, from childhood, developed a lasting love of all things "railroad." At the top of that list comes the old steam locomotives that make my pulse pound a little harder and a bit faster when I watch the sleek black beauties belch smoke and cinders.

I grew up next to the tracks of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe near the town of Nortonville, Kan. The tracks cut through the southeast corner of one section of our land, a little more than 100 yards from our house. The old Nortonville station, torn down in the late '60s to make room for a tennis court, was the...