About

About Singular Goods

Singular Goods is a small, mom and pop business.

Pop, Bill Rowe, is shown on the left and he runs the business. Mom, Christi, owns the business.

Bill has been interested in and fascinated by railroad trains ever since being a kid.

Bill grew up in Ottawa, Illinois, actually about three miles south of Ottawa along state route 23.

Bill attended the last one-room schoolhouse in Illinois until seventh grade. The telephone system employed an eight-party line, so often people were on the line when one wanted to call out, and you could hear them talking.

The CB&Q (Chicago, Burlington & Quincy) ran a branch line right behind the half acre plot Bill grew up on. The Q used to run a gas electric interurban (there wasn’t really much “urban” in those days in those parts). Bill’s dad called it the “Hinky-Dink”.

As a kid, most adventures revolved around the railroad over the back fence. Walking north one came to a ravine that led to Covel Creek and swimming. Walking south eventually took one to a steel girder trestle over Covel Creek further upstream.

Bill can remember crossing the trestle on the inside, crawling on the bottom flanges of the girders! One slip would mean a fall of over 50 feet into about six inches of water at that spot.

Once, while inside, a train came over the trestle. It was quite an experience for the structure to shake and the space grow dark as the train passed over. It was a
somewhat oily experience as well.

It was a good thing that Bill’s mom never knew what the kids were up to. Of
course, it seems crazy to me now that I did it then. Obviously one should not
trespass on railroad property and one should act is a safe manner.

During high school, Bill would often take the Rock Island up to LaSalle Street
Station in Chicago for the day. The trains ended up at a bumper at the end of
the line. You walked past the trains down the platform, into the station, and
then into downtown Chicago.

Bill can remember Rock Island Rocket streamliner passenger trains with very steep shovel noses. These were either the TA or, perhaps, a DL type of locomotive. When these railroad trains passed through Ottawa non-stop, the
effect was breathtaking as dust and leaves swirled in their wake.

Back then, a trip to Chicago, about ninety miles away, was about $4.80; I believe that was for a round trip.
Today, there is no such passenger train service.

Bill went to college in Chicago and later in New York City. Bill would often ride the subway looking out of either the front window of the front subway car or the rear window of the last subway car. A railroad is a railroad, and these lines with express and local tracks underground and above ground were fascinating to study.

Today, Bill and Christi live in northern California near the Feather River Canyon made famous by the Western Pacific and the California Zephyr. Today, the railroad is owned by the Union Pacific. A connection at Keddie has the BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) running on the railroad today.

As a kid, Bill had a traditional Lionel model railroad layout on a 4×8 sheet of plywood with legs and sideboards, plus a shelf for the transformer. Later, Bill converted to HO scale and had several layouts, including one along the wall shelf model railroad layout. Years later in NYC, Bill built a small N scale layout in the loft he was living in and called it the Franklin & Varrick Railroad, after the street corner he lived
near.

Today, Bill is a retired architect and has a collection of Western Pacific, Union Pacific, Great Northern, and Northern Pacific model railroad locomotives freight and passenger trains. There is really very little room for a model railroad presently, and running Singular Goods leaves little time for his personal hobby of model railroading.

PS The Singular Goods logo is based on an old railroad crossing signal, wig wag. The wig wag swung back and forth to warn of a train. The fact that the logo could also be a Celtic cross, another passion of Bill’s, is a coincidence.