I live along an old Illinois Central line. It's time I took some more interest into that. I've never been a whole Illinois Central railroad fan, but I've found some neat things. I never knew the whole story... I definitely knew the song, but if you have the time, it makes for a decent read.

http://www.watervalley.net/users/caseyjones/cj~long.htm

Enjoy! Makes me wish Bachmann still offered that Casey Jones set. 

Cheers,
Joshua

That's a great read. I was looking at the whole web site.
There's a photo of his wife and a model of 382 in Bonne Terre Mo. in 1949. That's just up the road from me.

A friend of mine used to work for the Illinois Central.  At the time he worked for them, Casey Jones' grandson was working there too.  He worked on a train crew with him out of Memphis.

I never worked for the IC, but I used to run trains on another railroad route that Casey used to run on (ex- Gulf, Mobile and Northern).

Les

TRAINS Magazine had a SPECIAL EDITION ISSUE just recently on Famous Train

Wreaks and the Casey Jones Story was one of the stories included.

The kids today are not taught much "real" history about their nation so after I had read

the story to my kids my 7th Grader did a report on it. The teacher asked him to read it

to the class!!!!!!