Ralph “Bud” Linroth has long held a passion for railroads and history as evidence by his second book, “A History of the CB&Q Quincy Branch: The Northern Cross Route Quincy to Galesburg.”
Linroth in 2009 released “A History of the CB&Q Illinois Pea Vine, The Galesburg to Savanna Branch.”
The latest edition is twice as long as Linroth’s first, running 453 pages.
He’s a retired BNSF conductor, who was first hired as a summer switchman in the summer of 1970 and was later hired to work on the road, most on trips to Quincy and or Savannah.
He tells Galesburg’s Evening News on WGIL even then his books were in the making.
“I ask a lot of questions,” Linroth says. “Where’d this track go? What’s that bridge over there with no track on it? What’s all this? So, finally I just decided it was very interesting. I’ve always been interested in the history of the line. I wrote the Pea Vine book before I retired and then I accumulated all of this material about the Quincy line in the process, so, I figured I might as well go ahead and write one on the Quincy line.”
The book is available now at the Galesburg Railroad Museum, the Galesburg Convention and Visitor’s Bureau as well as locations in Quincy and Macomb.
This Saturday Linroth will be signing books in the upstairs meeting room at Galesburg Public Library from 2 to 4 p.m.
