I'm not a superstitious man, but I almost feel that The Broker's engineer, Joseph Fitzsimmons, is smiling on this project to tell the truth about what really happened that terrible night. I have a search saved on eBay for materials relating to the Pennsylvania Railroad in case there's anything relevant to my book. The other evening, I signed on and checked those search results. What should I see with literally 32 seconds left in the auction but a print of Joeseph Fitzsimmons from the estate of the noted rail historian and photographer, Don Wood! I knew this image existed and had a scan of it from a book, sent to me by Joel Rosenbaum - but this was a print from the negative!
It is said that this picture was taken earlier in the day of the wreck.
Needless to say, I immediately bid on it and since I was the only one, I won it. It's almost as if I was meant to have it. It arrived yesterday and I paused for some time looking at Joe - this was a luxury I didn't have when I wrote about the colonial era printer, James Parker. I had no images of him. Seeing Joe Fitzsimmons reinforced the fact that I'm dealing with a real person's story.
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