Steve Allen Goen - Railroad Author, Photographer, and Historian
Keynote Presenter for the 3rd Annual Cotton Belt Railroad
Symposium - Aug 8, 2009
Steve
A. Goen is a recognized authority in the topic of railroad history
throughout the nation for a variety of railroads, particularly in Texas and the southwest region.
He currently has eight published books to his credit
including his highly acclaimed
Cotton Belt Color Pictorial.
Other major regional railroads included in Goen’s Color
Pictorial book series include the Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific;
Fort Worth & Denver; Kansas City Southern; Missouri-Kansas-Texas;
Texas & New Orleans; Texas & Pacific; and Santa Fe.
Additionally, Goen has numerous magazine articles published
in various historical society newsletters plus several articles
published in newspapers and approximately 30 different VHS or DVD
programs produced.
Goen earned his BME and MM degrees from
Midwestern State
University in Wichita Falls, Texas.
He has been a guest speaker at the Bush Presidential Library & Museum twice,
Southern Methodist University, Big Spring
Museum, Teague annual Chamber of
Commerce Banquet, Quanah, and was keynote speaker at the 2008 National Rail
Historical Society (NRHS) convention in
Ft.
Worth.
He also served as chairman of the 2000 Burlington Route
Historical Society-Rock Island Technical
Society (BRHS-RITS) Joint National Convention in Ft. Worth.
Goen also held membership in the Cotton Belt Rail Historical Society
for many years and has videotaped every trip of the StLSW-Cotton Belt Steam
Engine #819 since its operational restoration.
Goen is well known as a valued member and active contributor in
several Internet railroad special interest groups (SIGs) including Espee,
mkt, RailSpot, ritslist, TNO, and others.
Goen currently resides in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Read the Bush Presidential Library's 2008 bio on
Steve...
Born in Austin, Texas in September 1956,
Steve Allen Goen took his first train ride that
Christmas when his family brought him home to Wichita Falls for the
first time. During that trip he would ride the Katy's TEXAS SPECIAL
from Austin to Dallas and then the Burlington's TEXAS ZEPHYR
between Dallas-Ft. Worth and Wichita Falls. Who could predict then what
an influence that railroads would play in his life or what an influence
Steve would have in preserving our rail history.
After arriving in Wichita Falls, Steve lived
at his grandparent's house located next to the busy Ft. Worth & Denver
mainline, and within a half block of the Katy's North Yard. With these
being a more innocent time in our nation's history, he would spend his
entire childhood growing up alongside these two lines, as well as down
at Wichita Falls Union Station where his grandfather would take
him almost every weekend.
Steve's earliest involvement in rail
photography came in 1967 when he began shooting trains in Wichita Falls
and in Fort Worth using his mother's camera. Later that September he
would document the final days of the TEXAS ZEPHYR on both film,
and by riding the last train out of Wichita Falls.
For the next thirty years Steve began to
expand his interest in railroads and in documenting the state's rail
heritage. While attending college at Midwestern State University, Steve
began collecting newspaper articles, oral histories and photographs of
many of the now abandoned short lines that once dotted the North Texas
landscape. By the time that he graduated from MSU in 1979 he had already
established himself as an authority on the history of the railroads that
served the territory around Wichita Falls.
Steve has always admitted that he felt lucky
to have grown up during the period that he did. He managed to witness
the final years of steam on the Ft. Worth & Denver, he had the luxury of
watching the TEXAS ZEPHYR pass his backyard twice a day, and
had the foresight to document on film almost every depot within a 100
mile radius of Wichita Falls before most agencies were closed and the
stations torn down.
Steve, who was a music major and played in
the MSU bands, would meet his future wife Marsha while attending
Midwestern State University. Steve played trombone and Marsha played
clarinet. It was on one sunny day in early 1976 that Steve kidnapped
Marsha and talked her into driving with him down to Bowie where they
intercepted Texas & Pacific steam locomotive 610 which was making her
historic break-in run to Wichita Falls for the American Freedom Train
that afternoon. Marsha had a blast and from that day on Steve said that
he knew that he had a "keeper".
Steve would continue his efforts in rail
preservation during the 1980's and 90's when he started up his own
company, Steam Gauge Video Productions which produced almost 30 historic
programs during the next ten years which featured Steve's old 8mm home
movies as well as some of the best video ever shot of the 3751 as it
sped across the Texas Panhandle. Katy fans rejoiced with his four part "Komplete
Katy" video series and his T&P 610,
Rock Island, Frisco and Ft. Worth &
Denver videos showed everyone what the United
States had lost just years before. As for the Cotton Belt,
Steve would travel to Pine Bluff each and every time the 819
would operate and document all of her trips on videotape.
In 1986 Steve led an effort to help save and
preserve Ft. Worth & Denver 2-8-0 304 in Rotary Park
which was rumored to be a possible candidate for scraping by a
former Wichita Falls City Manager. That effort eventually led to
Steve spearheading the establishment of the Wichita Falls Railroad
Museum which he would eventually serve as the museum's president and
original museum director. Between 1987 and 1992 Steve would use his
personal connections with the MKT, Union Pacific and Burlington Northern
to locate and acquire almost 15 pieces of historic rail equipment.
After tinkering with the idea of expanding
his type written histories of the Railroads of North Texas, Steve began
writing his series of books in 1996 with the release of his Fort
Worth & Denver Color Pictorial. In the years to follow
Steve has authored eight books so far, featuring such well know
southwest lines as the Texas & Pacific, Cotton
Belt, Kansas City Southern,
Santa Fe, Rock Island, Texas &
New Orleans and the Katy. As a result of his
efforts in preserving and documenting the histories of so many Texas and
Oklahoma lines, Steve is considered today as one of the leading rail
historians in the entire southwest. As we speak, he is working on
another three titles, with even more projects in the works for the
future.
As a result of his hard work and dedication
to rail history, Goen was chosen to chair the Burlington Route
Historical Society's and the Rock Island Technical
Society's 2000 joint national convention held in Fort Worth and
was later asked to be a special guest speaker at the George Bush
Presidential Library & Museum on March 18, 2006 and again on November
22, 2008.
Steve's current projects include a book on
the Wichita Falls & Southern (the most famous of the
Kemp & Kell railroads), a second volume to his "Miss Katy"
and Rock Island books, one on the Missouri
Pacific, as well as his continued work to document the
discontinuance dates of all post war passenger trains in Texas and
Oklahoma.
In addition to his love of railroads, Goen
is an accomplished musician, trombonist and composer. As a sophomore in
college, he organized and conducted the "Wichita Falls All-City
Bicentennial Band" in 1976. Steve received his Bachelor in Music
Education Degree from Midwestern State University in 1979 and later
earned a Masters in Music degree in music composition from MSU in 1984.
He is a lifetime member of Kappa Kappa Psi, a national honorary band
fraternity. Steve marched and participated in 30 straight Oil Bowl Bands
(1974-2004) and volunteered for eight years at MSU where he assisted the
symphonic and jazz bands. He is a former high school band-director,
elementary art and music teacher, and also taught and directed UIL
one-act plays. Currently he is the trombonist for the Wichita Theater
pit orchestra and has performed this past year in "My Fair Lady", "South
Pacific", "Guys & Dolls" and "Oklahoma".
He often jokes about his desire to one day
receive an honorary doctorate in Ferro Equinology from Whats-a-matter U.
He and his wife Marsha have been married 29 years and they have two
daughters, Kari 19, who is a sophomore at Midwestern State University,
and Katy, 13, who is a eighth grader at Barwise Junior High.
Bush bio provided by Steve A. Goen.
