The first night of my Texas/Oklahoma mini-tour was an event in the booming Dallas suburb of Frisco, bringing together two area rail museums. The event was held in the brand-new Frisco Heritage Museum, a little gem of a rail museum, but sponsored by the Museum of the American Railroad, which is planning to move its great collection of rolling stock from its Fair Park location to the Frisco site soon–according to its director, and my gracious host, Bob LaPrelle. This would be great because Dallas/Fort Worth has a lot of trainiacs, and is also the HQ of the BNSF.

We had a really nice, diverse and engaged crowd for the event, some of whom came to see my fellow author Don Alderman, who went on first talking about his resonant memoir of trains and dads and missed connections, Letters to Jud I also got a chance to finally meet Fredhead extraordinaire Michael McMillan (pictured below), who runs the Fred Harvey yahoo discussion group and a fine Harvey House site that combines his amazing Santa Fe postcard collection with photos of what various Harvey locations look like now. (Another highlight of the visit was being babysat by my old summer camp pal Jim Rosenthal, who put me up and put up with me for the day. Thanks, Jimmy.)

Being at the Frisco reminded me of the debate I’ve been having with a couple of trainiacs about the details of the Fred Harvey/Frisco relationship (which an academic reviewer recently chided me for not writing enough about.) There is, I will admit, a bit of squishiness in certain parts of the Harvey/Frisco story, and no underlying documents I’ve ever seen. If any railfans have documents or source material in their collections, please feel free to post on the site or contact me.

And now, off to Temple, TX!

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