OBITUARIES

Don Heimburger, longtime railroad publisher and author, died June 10, 2022, at age 75. An avid model railroader, the Urbana, Ill., native started S Gaugian magazine when he was 15 years old. He worked as a newspaper reporter while earning a journalism degree from the University of Illinois in 1969. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1970 and served as editor of the newspaper at Fort Knox, Ky., for two years. He was also a press representative to the Illinois Central Railroad. Heimburger was the author of more than 14 books, on subjects including the Baltimore & Ohio, Illinois Central, Wabash, and East Broad Top.

Hays T. Watkins Jr., a soft-spoken Kentuckian who made the CSX merger a classic success, died July 29, 2022, at the age of 96. In 1978, Watkins, chairman of the Chessie System, approached Seaboard Coast Line about a union. He and SCL’s new CEO, Prime F. Osborn, negotiated the deal. Two years into the merger, Osborn, 67, retired, and Watkins became CSX’s sole CEO. One of Watkins’ greatest achievements was the transformation of the railroad into a multi-modal corporation. He bought a gas company to hedge against rising fuel costs, and with it came a pipeline company and the nation’s largest barge line. Then he formed a trucking subsidiary and bought Sea-Land Service, the world’s largest container line. Watkins retired in 1991 after a 40-year career that spanned some of the industry’s most tumultuous years.

William F. Howes Jr., a longtime Baltimore & Ohio, Chessie System and CSX official, author, and president of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society from 1994 to 2003, died in Jacksonville, Fla., on July 30 at the age of 83. In his career with B&O and Chessie System, he enjoyed a front-row seat at one of the most pivotal stages of Eastern railroading. He also was instrumental in two of the most successful railroad public-relations projects in the 20th century: Creation of the Chessie System Chess-C cat logo in 1972, and planning and operating the popular series of nearly 100 Chessie Steam Special excursions in 1977-78. During Howes’ period as R&LHS president, he played a major role in addressing the direction of the organization, overseeing a period in which it turned from long-held plans to create a museum, found a home for its archives, and sharpened its focus on publications, including its magazine, Railroad History.