HAVE YOU EVER HELPED OUT?

[Anonymous]

When i was living in Brokaw,Wi, during the Summer and on weekends i would watch the Milwaukee Road come in the village to pick up and drop off the railcars for the Wausau Paper Mill.As they would be doing the pick ups and set outs,i would write each car down on a pad of paper,and track as to when that car came back through town.One day the conductor (Clifford Dolloff ) had asked me if i had known what the car numbers were that they picked up,as some trains were too long for him to walk back to the caboose,and write them in his sheet,so for quite a few years i got to help them out by giving the conductor a sheet that had the car numbers and in return they gave me some candy,and then there were times when I got timetables,train rides,caboose rides,train consist reports and lots of other neat stuff as well.Even on school days,the conductor told me that he would leave me a copy of the train consist report on the North side of the switch where the incoming cars would go,and after school i would go for a walk up to the switch,and there would be the list, that the crew would leave for me.Now at 33,I still have those train reports,and soon they will be going to the Milwaukee Road Historical Society,once i get them on compact disc,for my own collection and use.In a way i felt as if I was working for the Milwaukee Road even though i was only 9 at the time.

[Anonymous]

I helped out once. When I was 10 years old, I was admiring a SP stack train sitting in Alta VIsta KS while the crew got lunch. When they came back, they offered me a ride to the bottom of the hill, which I accepted. As we were taking off, the engineer sat me in his seat, gave me a crash course (not literally!!!) on how to run the train, and let me do the running with little assistance from him. It is still the highlight of my life, and it's been 9 years ago!