Any railroaders on here?

Don R Brown · Post by **Don R Brown** » 27 Dec 2012 12:53 pm

Wonder how many others share an interest in the other "steel" in my life. I started out on the New York Central in May 1967, and worked for about 18 railroads in 7 states before retiring in July 2011. Did everything from manual labor to President, including being an engineer.

Having such an extended dose of "reality" means I don't care to go out watching or photographing trains, although I AM quite interested in the historical aspect of railroad life say 100 years ago. And I am in the process of writing two books about my experiences during my career - pigs escaping from rail cars, drunks driving down the track, putting a few things over on the bosses, wrecks, and much more.

I do think there is a strong connection between the railroad and music - entire books have been written about train songs, and what is more musical than a far-off train on a quiet night? So I guess the railroad will always be a part of me, I've just traded one type of steel for another.

Any others out there?

Rick Collins · Post by **Rick Collins** » 27 Dec 2012 1:07 pm

"I got pig iron; got pig iron; I've got all pig iron".

There is a certain romaticism about the trains.
You are lucky to have worked for the railroad, Don.
About all I can say is that I've taken one trip on Amtrak.

Larry Hamilton · Post by **Larry Hamilton** » 27 Dec 2012 1:13 pm

Yeah Don, Larry Hamilton here from Amarillo. Nearly 37 years on the BNSF, former ATSF. 34 years as an engineer. Been running from Amarillo to Wellington,Ks. for around 17 years or so. Could be retired but I am waiting a couple more years.
Been playing steel since about 1972. The RR has kept me from playing too many regular gigs. When I didn't have much seniority and workking crumby jobs I got to play more because many of those jobs had weekends off. Thanks to some friends that let me sit in (free) I would get my bandstand fix. But the music country music scene as really gone to hell around here for me. Not too many old timers left to play the shuffle tunes. But I keep the alley cats entertained from my garage.
As you probably remember we lost a great singer and supporter of the steel when Red Kilby from Colorado passed away a couple of years ago. He was one nice guy.

Don R Brown · Post by **Don R Brown** » 27 Dec 2012 3:28 pm

Rick - great song although actually I think the Rock Island Line didn't really go to New Orleans. (I could be wrong on that) 1100 Springs plays a good version on their "Bandwagon" CD and yes, they have a steel in the band.

Larry, we had the pleasure of visiting Amarillo last summer. Took a Corvette trip (my other interest) and saw Agave Posse Band at Golden Light Cantina. A very talented group, and it was about this time last year, while watching a you-tube video of them with Carmen Acciaioli on his Super Pro, that some strange voice first told me I wanted to learn pedal steel.

Unfortunately the Vette was giving us some problems - later traced to a plugged fuel inlet - so we didn't get to see much of the city but it still was a great time. (Altho 103 degrees was a bit much for us Yankees! LOL)

Like you, I worked about 2 1/2 years after I could have retired but hung in there. Despite working my whole life in an industry I loved, it finally got to where it just was not fun any more. When I talked to the Retirement Board, and found I'd make MORE money by staying home retired than I was making driving an hour 1 way to and from work, it took at least 10 seconds to make up my mind. "If you love what you do, it's not work" - but "when it's time to go, you'll know it." Two old sayings but each is very true.

I miss the railroad way less than I thought I would, and a good part of that I feel is because I took up pedal steel. There's just no way to buy 30 years experience, but I'm truly enjoying learning and making progress with it. Stay safe - I worked with a couple good guys who didn't make it until retirement.

Dave Hopping · Post by **Dave Hopping** » 27 Dec 2012 3:46 pm

I pounded spikes on the SP for a summer many years ago.Never had anything to do with the trains,just the tracks,but I'm still just a bit of a railfan and I always look forward to my monthly Trains magazine.Never ran an E9,but I like the tuning

Don R Brown · Post by **Don R Brown** » 27 Dec 2012 4:41 pm

Dave, I've done the spike driving thing too. An interesting skill and one that never totally leaves you, but not a whole lot of fun! I don't subscribe to TRAINS magazine but they will carry a very short article (just a few paragraphs) I wrote, in their June issue if nothing changes their schedule.

As for the E9, good one! For steelers with no railroad knowledge, an E9 was a passenger locomotive - if you picture what a lot of folks would call a "streamliner" it's like that. And in another interesting crossover, Corvettes are informally divided into "generations" as they were changed and improved through the years. The current generation (just ending) is the C6! Mine is a C4, and I have not developed enough theory knowledge yet to be able to tune 'er up THAT way!

Kevin Mincke · Post by **Kevin Mincke** » 27 Dec 2012 7:10 pm

My Dad was an engineer for the Rock Island before they went bankrupt in 1980. I used to travel to El Reno, Oklahoma where my mother is from on the EMD E8/9's. Grandpa also worked for the Rock Island and got transferred to MN "how I met your mother".
(whole nuther series)

I think the E/F series engines with that "bulldog nose" styling and used as leads in the Rock Island Rocket train are forever engrained in my memory.

The Rock had many routes east and west as they split out of Des Moines, IA. I think it went to mid Louisiana, but not New Orleans but could be wrong. Also far southwest as Tucumcari.

My dad's 83 and still talks railroad with whoever will listen. Great years!

Don R Brown · Post by **Don R Brown** » 27 Dec 2012 7:48 pm

Kevin, did your Dad work west out of El Reno? I have run for Farmrail between Wetherford and Clinton, and west from Clinton to Sayre, on the former Rock Island. I wonder if he recalls that stretch of track. It was at one time a very fast line despite the terrain. These days it's 25 MPH in some spots and 10 in others.

For those interested in train songs in American music there is a book called "Long Steel Rail" by Cohen which covers just about any rail-related folk, country song and ballad you can think of. It discusses the history, the songwriter, various versions and lyrics, and has sheet music for many of them. About 700 pages overall.

Dave Hopping · Post by **Dave Hopping** » 27 Dec 2012 8:20 pm

Thanks for the kind words,Don.I'll keep an eye out for the article.Got to thinking about locos....I wonder if there ever were steam or diesels designated C6 or U12

Roger Rettig · Post by **Roger Rettig** » 28 Dec 2012 3:36 am

I love trains and everything about their operation. In particular I enjoy looking at the big articulateds - Allegheny, Y6, EM-1s and Big Boys, of course.

I eagerly await the quarterly 'Classic Trains' magazine and still have some nice scale models here (EM-1, shovel-nose ACL E3 AA set) and there's a great O Winston Link print on the wall by my computer (his evocative 'Northfork' picture showing a Y6b downtown in the dead of night.)

The Es and Fs always entrance me, too - as an English kid I used to gaze at pictures in National Geographic Magazine and wonder why the US had all the really cool-looking trains! And all those terrific paint-schemes!!! 'War Bonnet' takes some beating, of course...

Jack Harper · Post by **Jack Harper** » 28 Dec 2012 6:56 am

i did ride a train once or twice....
i once caught a train and once jumped a train, once!
but
the westerm swing band i play with at the jimmie rodgers t.i.s.b.a. celebration in meridian every year
is appropriately named, the swingin' brakemen

country jack...

Rick Collins · Post by **Rick Collins** » 28 Dec 2012 7:01 am

Roger, I read about the Big Boys and have seen pictures of them.
Here in California, they were used to pull trains up Cajon Pass.
Cajon Pass is about 20 miles east, from where I live here in Claremont.
They pulled the trains up the mountainous pass, from here in the San Gabriel Valley, up to the high desert __ from about 1000 ft. MSL, to over 4200 ft.
They had amazing power.

Union Pacific now, has some double-size diesel locomotives for that purpose.

Jerry Van Hoose · Post by **Jerry Van Hoose** » 28 Dec 2012 7:09 am

In 1973, at age 19, I became the youngest locomotive engineer for C&O, Western Maryland & Clinchfield RR (Chessie System & CSX), later, became an engineer instructor. Qualified on steam (special excursions) as well as both GE & EMD diesel electric (freight & Amtrak). I primarily worked along the eastern U.S. corridor as well as the coal fields of Ky, Va, & Tn. When buy outs were offered for those employees with 20+ years service, I was one of the first in line to accept

.

Roger Rettig · Post by **Roger Rettig** » 28 Dec 2012 8:39 am

Yes, Rick - the Big Boys were immensely powerful and able, it's said, to pull five miles of freight at up to 80 mph! These days it takes three diesels to replace them but with far less labour-intensity, it must be said - still, a glorious era!

Here's my EM-1 made by Third Rail Brass in '0' scale - this work-of-art is three feet long and beautifully detailed. I wish I had room to run it!!!

Don R Brown · Post by **Don R Brown** » 28 Dec 2012 9:32 am

Roger, that's quite some model, and you'll throw your back out trying to move it around! Gotta weight more than a D-10 steel! They say those things literally shook the ground when they were working hard. Awesome!

Jerry, you covered a wide range there, and I don't blame you a bit for taking the buyout. I'm sure you were singing "Go on, take the money and run!"

Rick, I've never seen Cajon Pass but have heard a lot about it. Getting up it is only part of the challenge - bringing a long heavy train DOWN safely is even more fun.

Roger Rettig · Post by **Roger Rettig** » 28 Dec 2012 9:55 am

It is, Don!

I must just add here that when I first came to the US to work in Summer of 1998 my first gig was at Mill Mountain Theater in downtown Roanoke, VA. Roanoke is a lovely city and is set amid some beautiful scenery but its main attraction for me was that it was the HQ of was used to be the Norfolk & Western Railway: aka 'The Last Steam Railroad In America'!

NS still run trains all day and all night and they criss-cross the city mostly at road level - I never minded being held up at a crossing and watching a coal train or a time-freight passing in front of me. There was the NS Shop, too, where they still build coal hoppers. Within its wall lay the preserved A Class articulated loco #1218 (it's now on display at the Virginia Museum of Transportation along with J-Class Northern #611 - also in Roanoke).

If you go there today don't miss the Winston Link Museum housed in the old passenger depot.

I spent countless hours driving to the various locations I'd hitherto only seen in photos - from the picturesque Virginia Creeper Trail (Abingdon up to Green Cove) to the coal towns of West Virginia where it took some imagination to visualise life in those communities when the N&W's massive articulateds would haul coal-hoppers right along Main Street. I wonder how they kept their washing clean???

I've loved that area ever since - from Bristol and Johnson City in the west to the Elkhorn Valley to Bluefield in the north. Happy days, but how I wish that I'd seen it fifty years earlier!

robert kramer · Post by **robert kramer** » 28 Dec 2012 9:58 am

I'm not a railroad man but there’s lot of train lore in and around Nashville and I can hear the L&N from my house: two longs - one short - one long.

Between 1933 and 1945 WSM radio opened its broadcast of “On the Bandstand” with a live feed of the Pan American as it approached Nashville up from New Orleans. The shack they recorded it from is gone but of course the WSM radio transmitter is still there still broadcasting the Opry over the Air Castle of the South.

Deford Bailey got train sounds into his harmonica by standing underneath a train trestle while the Dixie Flyer passed overhead. Here is Deford's trestle at Newsom's Station:

The Dixie Flyer:

When the Sho-Bud factory was in its Nesbitt Lane location it was next to a railroad track. The building is gone now but here's the site - now the back parking lot of Crown Ford:

I think we lost a lot when country songs stopped being about trains and train sounds.

Kevin Mincke · Post by **Kevin Mincke** » 28 Dec 2012 5:04 pm

Don, my dad (also Don) never got that far south. The Rock was divided up into division points and his went as far south as Des Moines and west/east some. On occasion, he would have to take a train outside his division and would head south. We're both familiar with the track in Clinton as my uncle lived there when he was working for the FBI. We visited quite often.

Lowell Whitney · Post by **Lowell Whitney** » 28 Dec 2012 6:28 pm

24+ years with ATSF (now BNSF) mostly in Ft Worth/Dallas. Special Agent (railway police). Lots of boxcar burglars and thieves in that area.
Lowell

Don R Brown · Post by **Don R Brown** » 29 Dec 2012 11:05 am

Lowell, my hat's off to you but that's a job I would not want. Too many crazies out there! The hobo may have been the stuff of songs and stories years ago but these days there's just no telling. By the way, you've probably heard the terms "cinder dick" and "gumshoe" for railroad cops. On the NY Central they were known informally as "softheels". Never heard the term used elsewhere. Guess that could make you "The pedal steel softheel", and there's a song to be written there for sure!

Robert, it was a different world back when we could set a watch by the train passing a given location. Those old timers took real pride in sticking to a schedule to the second. Nowdays the top level is looking for ways to CYA and to many of the workers it's "just a job". And I didn't know the old Sho-Bud plant was near the tracks - they must have soaked up a little of the sound as they were built.

Mark Greenway · Post by **Mark Greenway** » 29 Dec 2012 11:26 am

I am here visiting in Clovis, New Mexico which is a BIG Sante Fe railroad town.

Don, I share your love for trains also. There is something fascinating about trains. I love to hear them in the middle of the night. As a young boy, I was in Montana on a wheat harvest that had just ended, and I remember wanting so bad, to jump on one of the trains and just go wherever it went . I wanted to see if I could ride one all the way back to Oklahoma. I was 20 years old back then, and now I am 55 and regret not jumping on that train. I ended up hitchhiking all the way back.

How do you get that train whistle sound on a steel guitar???

Don R Brown · Post by **Don R Brown** » 29 Dec 2012 1:06 pm

Some nice pictures there Mark. And I AM missing the rails just a bit the last day or two. I always enjoyed running right after a big snowfall - all the woods and fields covered with snow, not to mention busting through the drifts.

As for the steel, I'm a n00b but think I heard a good place to start was anywhere about the 15th fret, slant the bar, and use the bottom 3 strings. Play around with various slides and volumes until you find the sound which appeals to you.

Lee Baucum · Post by **Lee Baucum** » 29 Dec 2012 2:22 pm

My grandfather (on my Dad's side) was a section foreman for MoPac. He was transferred here to South Texas back in the 1920's. My Dad was a very small child at the time. They lived in a little foreman's house, right next to the track.

Scott Denniston · Post by **Scott Denniston** » 29 Dec 2012 5:49 pm

I was a "Carman 154" I think at Union Pacific RR @ the Swan Island yard in Portland,OR in about '76 or so. I was a welder then & we must have welded up 500 new coal cars that year. That did permanant damage to the tendons in my right (welding gun/pickin) hand. The "Brotherhood of the RR" lawyer got me an operation that helped quite a bit. Still locks up on me sometimes but doesn't really affect pickin. That was an ok job at the time but not like going down the rails as an engineer or anything. I was always told back then you had to be family or close friend of someone to be trained as an engineer.

Gene Jones · Post by **Gene Jones** » 6 Jan 2013 2:50 pm

My only train riding job was in South Korea while with the 728th MP Bn, where we provided security for the supply trains.

From the southern most city of Puson, we had a diesel engine until we reached Seoul, where it was exchanged for an old steam engine for the remaining trip to the DMZ. Reason being, if the train was hi-jacked into North Korea we wouldn't lose a diesel.

I loved that old steam engine...it was the warmest of the two! $:\$

The Steel Guitar Forum

Any railroaders on here?

Any railroaders on here?

David Allen Coe's mother got run over by a damned ole train