“Hey Freddy, you wanna go ridin’ Saturday?” asked Ross E. Rowland Jr., a successful Wall Street commodities broker who was able to channel his financial success into his undying love for steam locomotives, preservation and big-time railroading.

I could expect such phone calls on Thursdays from New York.

“Be at Camden Station at 6:30 a.m.Saturday for breakfast aboard my private car and then we’ll go ridin’,” he’d say.

When you’re on the railroad, days start early and chow and pots of hot coffee are the necessary curtain raisers.

He had assembled a staff of retired Pullman porters and dining car chefs who were only too glad to go back on the road again aboard his classic 1920s-era New York Central business car, and prepared a breakfast that harkened back to the luxury days of railroad di

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