Return to Gerald M. Best Senior Achievement Awards
 William F. Howes, Jr., 2015 winner |
The senior achievement award is for a significant and longstanding contribution to the writing, preservation, and interpretation of railroad history. The 2015 award goes to William F. Howes, Jr., a civil engineer by education. Howes joined the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1963 following brief employment in the engineering department of the New Haven Railroad. Over the course of his 25-year career with B&O, the affiliated Chesapeake & Ohio and Western Maryland, and successors Chessie System and CSX Transportation, Howes worked in the operating, industrial engineering, passenger services, casualty prevention and executive departments, retiring in 1988 as vice-president research & analysis.
Since leaving CSX, he has been a consultant to the industry and government on railroad passenger and risk management issues. Howes has long had an interest in railroad history. He joined R&LHS in 1956 and helped organize the Southeast Chapter in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1989. He was elected to the R&LHS board of directors in 1991 and has served in various capacities, including newsletter editor, vice-president, and, from 1994 to 2003, as president. He has coauthored three books on railroading: The American Railroad (Welsh, with Howes and Boyd); Travel by Pullman (Welsh and Howes); and The Cars of Pullman (Welsh, Howes and Holland) The full citation appears in Railroad History, Spring-Summer 2016. |