Some of you may remember this submission of mine:

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2586681/

CSX number 5842 was a General Electric B36-7 diesel-electric locomotive that has a special place in my heart. She was, along with B40-8 number 5947, on the very first train I ever recorded with a camera. (The 5947 has since been wrecked and scrapped.) The two of them would frequent Taft Yard near where I live, so I became accustomed to their presence, and even looked forward to seeing them as I approached the yard on my bicycle. There came a winter when I didn't see the 5842 anymore...I thought nothing of it at first, but then overheard at an NRHS (National Railway Historical Society) meeting that CSX had retired all of the remaining GE Dash Sevens on their roster. In a way, I was devastated--I never got to say goodbye. I looked on YouTube--a few railfans had caught 'funeral trains', trains with ten or more of these Dash Seven locomotives, destined for the scrapper's torch in Waycross, Georgia. I saw the 5842 in someone's video in one of these trains and it almost made me cry. There are those that will claim a human can't become attached to a machine...but I'd say they're mistaken...

As expected, CSX decided to destroy the 5842, like most of the rest of their fleet of Dash Sevens. (Some of them were spared from the torch to live out the remainder of their lives on the CVRD in Brazil.) What was NOT expected was that a small part of her would find its way back to me. I received a tip from a YouTube user one day that an eBay seller was listing several number boards from scrapped CSX diesels. I went and checked, and lo and behold--there, in a list of about ten locomotives, was the 5842. I hit the 'Buy It Now' button and secured this number board for $25...I am supposed to be saving all of my cash for my fursuit, but given my emotional ties to the 5842, I simply could not pass this opportunity up.

In the photo linked to at the top of this description, you can see two of the 5842's four number boards. The one I now have was her front left board, closest to the camera. I zoomed in real close on the hi-res original of the photo, and was able to see small cracks in the numbers themselves that match perfectly those on the board I have. Eventual plans for this number board are for it to be framed in a shadowbox with a large print of the locomotive photo, and a lighting system installed behind the board so that it may be lit up, just as it was when the 5842 was in service with the CSX, and the Seaboard System before them.