# Old Affiliation With Railroads



## Everydaymatters (Jul 4, 2009)

I just read Jackals reply about Spokane and was very interested in his grandfather's history with railroad mail.

It got me to thinking that there are probably a lot of old affiliations others on this forum have with the railroad in one form or another.

For mysel, my Uncle, who is also my Godfather, was a yard boss in Clinton, Iowa. I think it was for the Northwestern Railroad.

Back when my kids were growing up, I was an executive secretary for the Chairman of the Board of a holding company which bought the Katy Railroad for the rail set-aside tax write-off.

Any others?


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## had8ley (Jul 4, 2009)

Everydaymatters said:


> I just read Jackals reply about Spokane and was very interested in his grandfather's history with railroad mail.
> It got me to thinking that there are probably a lot of old affiliations others on this forum have with the railroad in one form or another.
> 
> For mysel, my Uncle, who is also my Godfather, was a yard boss in Clinton, Iowa. I think it was for the Northwestern Railroad.
> ...


Funny thing...in 1989 the UP asked me to go to Enid, OK and run trains. It seems the receivers took the $35 million that the state of OK gave the Katy and spent it on other things. I ran from Enid to Duncan on track that was in such sorry shape that it was mostly 10 mph. You couldn't meet another train at a lot of sidings because there were derailed cars and torn up track in most of the sidings. My wife's grandfather was yardmaster for the SP in Lake Charles, LA She says she can still remember driving up to the yard office and her grandfather would be tending his garden which was right outside the door of the yard office.


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## Bill Haithcoat (Jul 4, 2009)

My maternal grandfather worked for the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad in Chattanooga. He was a passenger car inspector.

He died about 1942, about two years before I was born. Various members of the family felt it was unfortunate that we did not know each other, as interested as I have always been in trains.He did not have anyone to in the household or family to talk to about trains. Which was true for me also.

Mother always felt sentimental to the railroads due to her "papa" working there. I have always felt that had an bearing on my parents being as open to my hobby as they were.

For clarification, he worked at the old Union Station. Not to be confused with the Terminal Station, now a hotel complex known as the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Chattanooga had two stations.


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## Amtrak839 (Jul 4, 2009)

I think my great great great uncle was involved in some way with the Chicago and Northwestern in the 1870s. Not exactly sure what he did, although I do know he had a private car which he often took to New York to visit family. My great great grandfather was a surgeon for the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western in Binghamton, New York. I still have an old wallet of his full of DL&W passes. My great great great grandfather may have been involved with the Erie in some way, as I have found passes for the Erie Railroad with his name on them. My great grandfather also worked for ALCO briefly.


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## Bob Dylan (Jul 4, 2009)

Everydaymatters said:


> I just read Jackals reply about Spokane and was very interested in his grandfather's history with railroad mail.
> It got me to thinking that there are probably a lot of old affiliations others on this forum have with the railroad in one form or another.
> 
> For mysel, my Uncle, who is also my Godfather, was a yard boss in Clinton, Iowa. I think it was for the Northwestern Railroad.
> ...


My maternal grandfather was a 40 year hand on the SP,started out as a laborer after WWI,

advanced to Section Foreman,Superintendint and retired as a put out o pasture "checker"

on the old San Antonio to Fredriksburg line which is famous now for the "bat cave" which was

a tunnel on that line!Most of his career was spent in West Texas where most of the towns were

there because of the railroad, just like lots of small town America!His favorite saying about railroads

was that "no-one is going to say that Felix Garrett's section(s) werent in first class shape!"


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## como (Jul 5, 2009)

Everydaymatters said:


> I just read Jackals reply about Spokane and was very interested in his grandfather's history with railroad mail.
> It got me to thinking that there are probably a lot of old affiliations others on this forum have with the railroad in one form or another.
> 
> For mysel, my Uncle, who is also my Godfather, was a yard boss in Clinton, Iowa. I think it was for the Northwestern Railroad.
> ...


My grandfather was a railway postal clerk on runs between Montgomery, AL and Atlanta; and between Montgomery and Nashville. He died when my mother was 12. My mom told me that she and her brother and sister would take their dad his lunch at a suburban station in Montgomery that was near their house. My uncle told me that he would race my mom to see who would get there first.


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## Bill Haithcoat (Jul 5, 2009)

como said:


> Everydaymatters said:
> 
> 
> > I just read Jackals reply about Spokane and was very interested in his grandfather's history with railroad mail.
> ...


Como, about what years would his trips have been taken?


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## como (Jul 5, 2009)

Bill Haithcoat said:


> como said:
> 
> 
> > Everydaymatters said:
> ...


Bill,

My grandfather died around 1936 so I think his trips would have been from around 1915 - 1936.


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## Bill Haithcoat (Jul 5, 2009)

como said:


> Bill Haithcoat said:
> 
> 
> > como said:
> ...


Thanks for responding to me como. Just curious as to what trains he may have worked.

I would say from Montgomery to Atlanta he might have worked the old original Crescent

(which differs in several ways from today's Crescent,such as the route) and the Piedmont Limited

From Montgomery to Nashville he may have worked the Pan American (once very famous) and the Azalean.


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## Ispolkom (Jul 5, 2009)

My great-grandfather gave the land for the East Shoreham station of the Addison Railroad in Vermont. As a result, he got to be postmaster for Shoreham Town, with the post office in his house. It stayed there until the mid 1930s, when the Post Office noticed that the mail no longer came on the train, and moved the post office to Shoreham village. The railroad is long gone, but the covered bridge over the Lemon Fair (with my grandfather's initials carved into the underside of the roof) still stands.


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## DowneasterPassenger (Jul 5, 2009)

This is my 90 year old mother's fuzzy recollection...Her grandfather and his brother were engineers on the Boston & Maine in the 1890's-1900's. I had heard the story when I was a kid but when I read this thread, realized I had forgotten the details. It's my fuzzy memory of my mom's even fuzzier memory  Mom is going to look through her things for an article about the brothers, so hopefully I can get some more concrete information.


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## Upstate (Jul 6, 2009)

My great grandfather was a freight conductor for Southern. My dad said that his train would always stop on a siding to wait for another train for a good long while right next to a good fishing hole. He would run down, catch him a fish and cook it up for lunch in the caboose.


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## como (Jul 6, 2009)

Bill Haithcoat said:


> como said:
> 
> 
> > Bill Haithcoat said:
> ...


I think he worked the Pan American because I remember hearing my grandmother talk about that.


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## jackal (Jul 7, 2009)

I guess I could add that my dad was a gandy dancer (track laborer) during his college days.


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## jis (Jul 7, 2009)

jackal said:


> I guess I could add that my dad was a gandy dancer (track laborer) during his college days.


My grandfather on my father's side was a permanent way inspector who used to run around on those little trolley thingies inspecting tracks all over the place. This was on the Bengal Nagpur Railway (what is today South Eastern Railway), before 1947, way before my time.

One of my good college friend's Dad used to work for the Great Northern Railroad out of Great Falls MT at the loco shed there in the steam days. As a result, whenever I have visited them in Great Falls, I have had a great time visiting the BNSF yards there with him.

More currently, my cousin's husband is a mid-level executive in Indian Railways working on special projects. Currently he is working on putting together a collection of railroadiana from the period from World War I to World War II from areas of Northeast India some of which was occupied by the Japanese briefly in World War II, for display in a museum that is being built by the Northeast Frontier Railway in Tinsukhia in far Northeast India. He has even found rusting remains of an abandoned old Meter Gauge Garratt locomotive, which needless to say, will form a central attraction in the museum, after it is duly cleaned up and prepared for display of course.


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## the Other Mike (Jul 22, 2009)

For some reason, my parents didn't remember till much later in life that my great uncle on my mothers side was the Pullman stationmaster at NOUPT......(well, the old IC terminal which Frank Loydd Wright helped design )

I overheard this about 15 years ago and was dumbfounded no one thought to tell me about this.

After probing and threating to put them into a nursing home, they sat down and tried to recall everything about him including that in his later years he was promoted to the Chicago office and one of his duties was naming cars.

Now this sounded like BS to stay out of the home but we had a guy in the club that was in his late 80's and had worked as an electrician for Pullman in NOLA in his young days.

"So, George, did you remember a man by the name of Henry Antz at UPT ?"

"Mr. HENRY ?..........

Long story short, it seems like it was all true

Who would have thunk ?


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## JayPea (Jul 22, 2009)

I had a great-uncle who was a structural engineer for the New York Central, He lived in Hammond, IN and would catch a train east to Erie, PA during the week and come home on weekends. I remember him talking about his days on the railroad and I heard everything there was to know (and more) about Ashtabula, OH, as that was where most of his work was concentrated.


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## sky12065 (Jul 23, 2009)

This thread has brought back memories from when I was a young child. My Aunt Rose and Uncle Joe worked back then at the railroad yards in Selkirk for the New York Central Railroad and each summer I got to enjoy a week with them. They lived just a short distance from the yards and their house was right across the street from a manual switching tower where the rails approaching the yard were controlled.

I would frequently go over where I could see some of the RR construction equipment, watch trains going by up close up and I even got invited into the switching house where I was shown how they did the manual switching. As I recall it, there were a long row of what I can only describe as 8 foot 2x4's with a handle on the end of each. When given the direction by whatever phone like communications they had back then, the person working there would go to one of those handles and either pushed or pulled it to switch the track as needed. I don't really know how they worked but I'd imagine there must have been a long cable system of some sort that ran from the control handle to the track.

I don't know exactly what my uncle Joe did except that he worked in the yards. My aunt Rose worked in the YMCA at the east end of the Selkirk yards. Now I don't know why the YMCA was named a YMCA because it was not what you would think of as a Y. What it actually was, was sort of a hotel for train crews while off duty and away from home.

As you came to the front entrance of the Y you would find large long porches on both side where there were several large comfortable rocking chairs where the crews could just sit, rock and relax. Going inside there was a cashiering station with different snacks and good of interested to railroad workers. It was at this station where my aunt Rose usually worked. To the right there was a darkened lounge room where crews could relax and watch TV, and further down the hall were small rooms with beds where they got their rest.

Straight back from the front entrance and past the cashier was the cafeteria and my aunt had also worked back there on the counter on occasions. And to the right of the cashier there were more comfortable chairs, a recreation area with a couple of pool tables and a few places where the crews could play checkers.

The property had a lot of fields out back where I loved being able to run around and I also recall picking pears fresh off the tree. I never found pears to taste as good as they did off that tree.

Not too many years after I no longer spent my summers with my aunt and uncle the YMCA was torn down and a smaller, much less functional facility was built. Today I don't even know if that is still there or what is there now!

Going back even further in time, shortly after I had learned to walk, my grandfather Mike had also worked for the railroad and he lived on the same road as my aunt and uncle, just a few hundred yards down the road from where my aunt and uncle's house would one day be built.

I was once told that on one particular day when my grandfather was on his way back home from work he found me walking in the middle of the road somewhere between his house and the switching station. Now it's not that this incident is any big deal; the street was a quiet one with very little traffic at the time. However there was one thing that made it interesting. I didn't have a stitch of clothes on... nada... zip! :blink: I got a feeling that my mother (we were living with them at that time) got a good piece of his mind when he and I got to the house! Anyway, you'll be happy to know that I no longer have those impulses... or at least you should be! 

For those with more technically inquiring minds you can read more about the Selkirk Yards at the following website:

http://members.localnet.com/~docsteve/railroad/se_2.htm


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## printman2000 (Jul 24, 2009)

Everydaymatters said:


> I just read Jackals reply about Spokane and was very interested in his grandfather's history with railroad mail.
> It got me to thinking that there are probably a lot of old affiliations others on this forum have with the railroad in one form or another.
> 
> For mysel, my Uncle, who is also my Godfather, was a yard boss in Clinton, Iowa. I think it was for the Northwestern Railroad.
> ...


When you say "Katy Railroad", are you talking about MKT?


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## MrFSS (Jul 24, 2009)

printman2000 said:


> Everydaymatters said:
> 
> 
> > I just read Jackals reply about Spokane and was very interested in his grandfather's history with railroad mail.
> ...


Yes - Katy is the nickname for the MKT railroad.


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