General Discussion (Classic Trains)

Blue ridge, you seem to have posted without any text.  You can edit your own post (find 'edit' in the bar just above the text box) and add the text, then click on "post" at the bottom of the text box once more.

-Crandell

Double or nothing

Doubleheading:

     Belonging to two of the Brotherhoods at the same time.  For example an engineman to the BLE    and BLF&E.  Or a trainman to the BRT and ORCB.

Double heading is generally meant to be two locomotives each with its own crew and operating independently of each other as opposed "mu'ed" or radio or othewise controlled.  Your meaning of holding membership in two unions is not one I have heard of.  However, it would seem likely that two cards might be held because of promotions, etc.  or if one moves from one road to another or if the merger of two companies with the different unions occurred.  Anything is possible and probably there is no reason why not.

 I recall that when Casey Jones was killed his wife rec'd double benefits since he had continued paying his dues to the fireman's union even though he had long since been promoted to engineer and was also a member of the BLE. The unions are the same regardless of the company, an engineer moving from one RR to another would still be in the same union. (I guess you could have an exception like the old Erie Mining Co. in Minnesota, whose railroad crews were members of the miner's union and had to wear hardhats when operating trains...but that's not a common carrier railroad but a private co. railroad.)

wjstix:

I guess you could have an exception like the old Erie Mining Co. in Minnesota, whose railroad crews were members of the miner's union and had to wear hardhats when operating trains

Before my Mother married she worked as a nurse at the hospital in Canmore, AB. This was before government health care came in, and the hospital was owned and staffed by the coal mine at Canmore.

My Father used to kid her about the fact that the only Union Card my Mother ever held was with the United Mine Workers! She didn't have to wear a hardhat, nurses still wore those little white caps.

AgentKid

You had similar company clinics and Doctors in Minnesota's Iron Ranges too. Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham was maybe the best known on the Mesabi Range. There are still probably hundreds of people alive who he helped bring into the world. He was of course featured in W.P. Kinsella's novel "Shoeless Joe" which later became the movie "Field of Dreams"...although in the movie he's portrayed as being alive in 1972, he actually died in 1965.