E.M. Frimbo (Rogers E.M. Whitaker) Worlds greatest railroad buff

[groundeffects]

Hello,

I was leafing through a book on the Visalia Electric Railroad today (Southern Pacific's Orange Grove Route in California) and saw a mention of E.M. Frimbo (his pen name) who worked for the New Yorker magazine.  His lifetime goal was to ride every mile of track in the U.S.A.. 

Checking more info on him, one of the internet sites listed he accumulated more then 2.7 million rail miles during his lifetime.  His knowledge of railroads was also put to good use during WW2, as helped plan the routing of troop trains.

I'm wondering if Trains magazine has ever published anything of or about him, it seems like it would be a fascinating read.

Jeff B

[CopCarSS]

Jeff,

There was a book published by by Rogers E.M. Whitaker (E.M. Frimbo, himself) and Tony Hiss. It was called All Aboard with E.M. Frimbo. It might offer some of what you're looking for.

[DSchmitt]

Wanted: a frequent Frimbo plan a frequent-rider program for Amtrak by Thoms, William E.  from Trains February 1988  p. 78 AMTK  opinion

How to be an inveterate train ride remembering trains he rode by Frimbo, E. M. (pseudonym)  Whitaker, Rogers E. M.  from Trains July 1966  p. 20 railfanning  reminiscence  travel

[groundeffects]

Thanks to both of you for the info.  I'll check these out.

Jeff

 

[Firelock76]

I've got a copy of "All Aboard With E.M. Frimbo."  It's wonderful!  Haunt the used bookstores and train shows until you find one, then grab it!  Pay the dealer what he wants (within reason of course) and take it home, you won't be sorry you did.

No, you can't have mine.

[tommyboy]

I agree All Aboard With E.M. Frimbo is a wonderful book. You can get a used hardcover edition via Amazon books for $2.15. New paperback editions can be had for as little as $19.85. If you just want to read it, used paperback editions in "very good condition," can be purchased through Amazon for as little as $0.01. Shipping is usally another $3.00-$4.00.

Here's a link:

http://www.amazon.com/All-Aboard-With-E-M-Frimbo/dp/1568361149

[jdamelio]

I highly recommend it.

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Part of an essay on "Numbers" by Robert A. LeMassena - one of my favorites - questioned the purported precision of Frimbo's mileage, which as I recall was down to 0.01 mile = 52.8 feet.  LeMassena wondered if he took into account such variations as getting off the front of the train instead of the back, the inside track on curves, etc.  Part of that was tongue-in-cheek, but anyone with knowedge of the concepts of "significant figures" and "false precision" will understand the validity of the point.

- Paul North.   

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Having read his article in the July 1966 TRAINS and a few of his articles in the "New Yorker", I found him to be an excellent writer and much easier to read than L. Beebe.  He also came close to his goal of riding every route-mile of railroad in the United States.

DPM also recognized his goal when the approvals were granted for the building of the Powder River Basin line.  He hinted that Rogers Whitaker would now need to obtain a riding pass for the new mileage.

[NKP guy]

Rogers E.M. Whitaker's article in the July, 1966 Trains magazine is indeed a great read.  

May I call on our friend wanswheel to post here Mr. Frimbo's obituary as it appeared on pp.36 - 38 in the June 1, 1981 copy of The New Yorker?  I have no idea about how to do this, but experience (and delight) shows me that wanswheel does.

When The Lake Shore Limited began operating in November 1975, Mr. Whitaker managed to ride in the end-of-train lounge car on the back of the special publicity train the day before regular service began.  He seemed dazed to be lionized by my students (I had my history class meet at the Cleveland Amshack to welcome the train to town) and seemed embarassed by all our attention.  He was dismayed that the CUT company and Penn Central did everything they could to keep Amtrak out of the CUT, and instead plunked down their trailer (!) on the lakefront in what is still a very difficult location to find.  Nevertheless, he was friendly and pink-faced as he talked to us; one could sense this was a great man, whether on trains or behind his New Yorker desk.  

As far as how many miles he had ridden, I think we have to take "the number" with a big box of salt; Frimbo never claimed to be exact and often gave different answers to that question.  He might just have well have said, "An awful lot of miles."

I agree with the contributor who unfavorably compared Lucius Beebe as a writer with E.M. Frimbo, whose lines read like literature.  Finding one of his essays, or one by Tony Hiss about Frimbo, in The New Yorker was a real treat.  I'm sorry I didn't save any.

Rogers Whitaker was a credit to railfans and is still missed very much even 34 years later.  He was one of a kind...the best kind.  There ought to be a statue or bust of E. M. Frimbo in Grand Central Terminal.  

 

[wanswheel]

Excerpt from The New Yorker

Rogers E. M. Whitaker, who died on Monday, May 11^th, at the age of eighty-one, was best known to New Yorker readers for his many appearances in The Talk of the Town under the thin disguise of E. M. Frimbo, world’s greatest railroad buff. Less visible until now has been the fact that in his fifty-five years at this magazine Whitaker’s presence and intelligence permeated almost every part of The New Yorker, contributing to, among other things, the way this page looks and reads. The semi fictional Frimbo, dapper and impeccable in his black homburg, the tails of his old tan mackintosh swirling in the steam hissing from a mighty locomotive, sometimes seemed larger than life. The real man was not always as endearing, but he had more sides to him and he attained greater stature.

Rogers Whitaker was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, on January 15, 1900. His father, Charles Harris Whitaker, was a vivid man, a lecturer on architecture, who crossed the Atlantic fifty times on steamships, and who, as editor of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects, was an important figure in American architectural publishing. When Whitaker was nine, his father told him he was old enough to travel by himself on trains. At the end of Whitaker's sophomore year at Princeton, his father declined to pay any more tuition fees and gave him forty dollars and letters of introduction to three New York publishers. The young Whitaker's reaction was to plunge into publishing, dedicate himself to his work, learn whatever he could. "Work, for the night is coming" was one of his watchwords. From then on, he cherished his ability to pay his own way, and always dressed like someone with a large private income. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken an interest in his wardrobe; one of his handmade Bernard Weatherill tweed sports coats, with buttons on the sleeves that really button, has gone over to its Costume Institute.

When Whitaker got to New York in 1920, he immediately adored it. He felt, as so many did then, that he had permanently acquired the freedom of the city — to go anywhere, at any time of the day — and that intelligence, wit, and a certain blend of tolerance and nerve would see him through any situation. He lived in a theatrical boarding house, down the hall from Mae West, and, later, in a Greenwich Village apartment with fifteen Persian cats. He sold advertising for a trade magazine, and he worked at the Times checking bridal announcements for hoaxes placed by rejected suitors. In 1925, he bought the first issue of The New Yorker and decided he had found the place where he wanted to work. A year later, he landed a job here as head of the makeup department, and he spent six years laying out each issue and refining the format. During this time, he also helped found our fact-checking department, teaching checkers that a fact is only as pure as the disinterestedness of its source. Then, as chief proofreader and head of the copy desk, he worked to develop the editorial query as an instrument for polishing a writer's intentions. Eventually, he was made an editor and worked directly with writers. Harold Ross bragged about Whitaker's eye for the bad, the flat, and the inapposite in a piece of writing, and attributed much of the magazine's early success to Whitaker and his colleague Hobart Weekes — two men who together could tussle with the prose of a loosely trained newspaperman and turn it into language. Whitaker was a big man — six feet two and built like an ex-football player. He had pink cheeks, a large head, large features — except for narrow, hooded eyes — and a large stomach. He got handsomer with age. He spoke in a sort of gruff drawl. Some of the thirty or more writers Whitaker worked with over the years were scared of him, but many of them felt blessed. "He always got my point, and he was always interested in what I was trying to say," one of those writers has said. "He showed enormous courtesy to my writing."

Another writer recalls, "He had such superb confidence in the language that it never crossed his mind it might be impossible to say whatever it was I was trying to say. So when I floundered he just fixed the sentences. 'There's always a way,' he would say, and then he would find it.”

"He had something of the great, crusty authority of Dr. Johnson," still another writer has said. "Our phone calls were a genuine education. His attention to grammatical detail ultimately had a kind of moral force, because to his way of thinking each issue of the magazine had to be as nearly perfect as possible. It might be the only copy of the magazine some reader would see.

In 1934, Whitaker while continuing to serve The New Yorker in other capacities, began forty-six years of covering college football for the magazine — signing his columns “J.W.L.” because an early managing editor liked the look of these letters. Whitaker bought a huge pair of binoculars and wore a vest of real tiger skin under a big raccoon coat to Princeton games. He preferred to write about colleges that didn't give athletic scholarships, because he enjoyed watching games played without hope of reward or fear of punishment. Harvard's head coach, Joe Restic, said last week, "Whenever I talked to him, I felt I was talking to another coach — one who appreciatedthat when football is played by young people who love competition it serves them well the rest of their years.

In the early thirties, Whitaker had taken on another chore for the magazine, which lasted forty years — going to supper clubs and cabarets and writing short reviews of them for the Goings On About Town section. (From 1943 to 1963, over the initials R.E.M.W. or R.W., he also wrote about these clubs and cabarets in the column Tables for Two.) Whitaker found that he liked nothing better than dining in the Persian Room, taking in the midnight show at the Copacabana or the late show at the Blue Angel, and then trundling off to an after-hours spot in Harlem or the Village before diving into a big breakfast of turkey hash and orange muffins, ducking into a hotel barbershop for a quick shave and a shine, and reporting to his desk promptly at 10 a.m. He quickly made friends with the musicians and comics he wrote about, and he was often invited to climb on a train with Duke Ellington when the Ellington band went on tour. He helped a number of performers — Harry Belafonte, Debbie Reynolds, Orson Bean, Jonathan Winters — get their first Broadway-musical parts. He gave Cy Coleman, the composer of "Little Me," "Sweet Charity," and "Barnum," his first rave when Coleman was a very young jazz pianist. "Growing up," Coleman has said, "I had always wanted to be a concert pianist, and Whitaker's praise really got me started on a career I wasn't yet quite sure I wanted. It sent me spiralling in a strange way." (Coleman later wrote "On the Twentieth Century" with Whitaker in mind.) Whitaker also gave Lenny Bruce his only good notice when Bruce first opened at the Blue Angel. In the night-life world, for reasons that are lost to history, he was known as Popsie. "Popsie Whitaker reigned supreme," Bobby Short has said. "He was one of the few who knew, one of the few wise men I've met, and it was gratifying to know we were getting across to someone as intrinsically stylish as he was. The little blurbs he wrote were actually brilliant reviews that exerted a terribly important influence, because in two or three words he had it out flat exactly what you were up to. If you were bright, you picked it up and went on from there."

During all these years, Whitaker never stopped taking train trips whenever a moment opened up — an evening ride to Philadelphia, a weekend ride to Chicago and St. Louis, a week of rides in Switzerland or India or Japan or New Zealand. His totals were staggering— 2,748,636.81 miles by train formally accounted for (and he confided a few months ago that he was at least several years behind in his arithmetic), seventy-eight trips across the Atlantic, twelve across the Pacific, but in his view he was always only doing something sensible and practical. “If I rode around in a Buick all weekend," he used to point out, "no one would say a word."

And Whitaker put his knowledge of trains to good use. During the Second World War, the United States Army commissioned him in the rank of major in the Traffic Control Division of the Transportation Corps, so that he could help plan the routing of troop trains. (Trains accounted for more than ninety-seven per cent of the troop movements in this country during the war.) In 1970, he was a key witness at an Interstate Commerce Commission "train-off" hearing that denied the Penn Central Railroad permission to discontinue all thirty-four of its long-distance passenger trains west of Buffalo and Harrisburg. In the mid-seventies, he worked as a secret consultant to Paul Reistrup, then the president of Amtrak: Whitaker would ride on troublesome trains and report privately on their problems. "Service is better today because of the work Frimbo did," Reistrup has said. "It was really beneficial to riders — particularly in scheduling and marketing. He would tell me it was no wonder our morning train to Princeton had no business, because there was no evening train back from Princeton. Our schedulers had never round-tripped it. I spotted him one day when he was on an unannounced trip out West — he booked tickets under forty-eight different aliases, so no one would know what he was up to — and I thought he was sort of nodding off. Only to be expected, at his age, I said to myself. Then he looked up and saw me, and I noticed that he had his pocket watch — set, as always, to New York time — in his hand. ‘Just judging our speed by timing the catenary poles,’ he said. He never earned his living on railroads — though for a couple of weeks in the summers of 1957, 1958, and 1959 he volunteered his services as a dining-car steward on the Western Pacific's Cariboo Country Special — but whenever I talked to him I thought I was talking to a real railroad man, and, specifically, to an employee of the New York Central passenger department. Each railroad had its own personality in the old days, and the Central had real class. It wasn't uppity, like the Pennsylvania.”

At the end of 1975, Whitaker retired as an editor and, at the age of seventy-five, settled down as a full-time reporter. He wrote Talk of the Town pieces and pieces for the Times, Travel & Leisure, and The Official Railway Guide. In addition, he wrote a book, "Decade of the Trains: The 1940s;" he was consultant editor to “Fodor’s Railways of the World;” and he wrote the foreward, the song blurbs, and the singer’s biography for the forthcoming "First Blossom Dearie Songbook." Not long before his seventy-seventh birthday, he test-drove a moped in Central Park for another piece. A Baltimore & Ohio railroad car was named in his honor; a musical comedy about him — "Frimbo" — played last fall in Grand Central Terminal; and last October the National Association of Railroad Passengers presented him and Frimbo with a joint certificate of appreciation for “their vital contributions” to passenger service.

At the end, there was yet another transformation — one that surprised those who had never seen sweetness in Whitaker. His greatest strength for many years — his pride in making his own way in the world — had also kept him at a distance from some whose company he might otherwise have enjoyed. He was stubborn, and he could often be harsh and wounding. But when he was hospitalized with cancer a few months ago and started to lose a great deal of weight he somehow at the same time shed the large burdens of hurt and suspiciousness he had carried ever since he was yanked out of Princeton. He endured a great deal of pain in the hospital without complaint, and the Whitaker of the final days was a tiny, bright-eyed man — alert, valiant, courteous, and endlessly kind.

[NKP guy]

Thank you very much, wanswheel.  Once again, I tip my hat to you.

[Uncle Jake]

Maybe Joe Boardman should hire Fred W. Frailey to do the same thing.

[switch7frg]

Another great read is , Decade of Trains -- 1940s. His Photo Essay and text is very interesting. It is a large paper back edition. I have a first edition dated 1977 bought in 1979.Does any one else have one?

[Firelock76]

switch7frg

Another great read is , Decade of Trains -- 1940s. His Photo Essay and text is very interesting. It is a large paper back edition. I have a first edition dated 1977 bought in 1979.Does any one else have one?

 

Yep, I've got one, "Decade Of The Trains - The 1940's"  by Don Ball Jr. and Rogers E.M. Whitaker, the hardcover first edition from 1977.  Lucked into it at a train show back in December. In as-new condition and paid $25 for it. 

Man, did I get lucky!  I wouldn't part with for the world!  Not yet, anyway...

There's deals out there boys, but you have to get out and look.

[DSchmitt]

Firelock76

 

 

switch7frg

Another great read is , Decade of Trains -- 1940s. His Photo Essay and text is very interesting. It is a large paper back edition. I have a first edition dated 1977 bought in 1979.Does any one else have one?

 

 

 

 

Yep, I've got one, "Decade Of The Trains - The !940's"  by Don Ball Jr. and Rogers E.M. Whitaker, the hardcover first edition from 1977.  Lucked into it at a train show back in December. In as-new condition and paid $25 for it. 

Man, did I get lucky!  I wouldn't part with for the world!  Not yet, anyway...

There's deals out there boys, but you have to get out and look.

 

Currently listed on Amazon.  Used - 1980 paperback edition  under $1.00 + $3.99 shipping.     1977 hardback under $6.00 + $3.99 shipping.

[Firelock76]

Basically $10 on Amazon including shipping?  Get to work and grab 'em boys, you won't be sorry.  I'm not sorry I paid $25 at any rate. 

I'm surprised Amazon has hardcovers, unless they're reprints.  I would have assumed any books from 1977 would have been remaindered a long time ago.

[wanswheel]

[DSchmitt]

Firelock76

Basically $10 on Amazon including shipping?  Get to work and grab 'em boys, you won't be sorry.  I'm not sorry I paid $25 at any rate. 

I'm surprised Amazon has hardcovers, unless they're reprints.  I would have assumed any books from 1977 would have been remaindered a long time ago.

 

 

All the books listed are used.   A few in that price range.  But prices go up from there to $30.00 or more.  Condition of used books vary, but paying more does not guarantee better condition.

[Firelock76]

DSchmitt

 

Firelock76

Basically $10 on Amazon including shipping?  Get to work and grab 'em boys, you won't be sorry.  I'm not sorry I paid $25 at any rate. 

I'm surprised Amazon has hardcovers, unless they're reprints.  I would have assumed any books from 1977 would have been remaindered a long time ago.

 

 

 

 

 

All the books listed are used.   A few in that price range.  But prices go up from there to $30.00 or more.  Condition of used books vary, but paying more does not guarantee better condition.

 

Which is why I like to see something before I buy it. 

[Firelock76]

Wanswheel, thanks so much for posting that video!  It was fun seeing Mr. Frimbo "in the flesh" as it were, and also Oliver Jensen of American Heritage, and how I used to love American Heritage.

I was struck by a few things..

Rogers Whittaker was 6'2", but doesn't come across as a big man at all.  Also how old he seemed at 75.  My grandmother (no kidding!) could have run rings around him at the same age.  My grandfather at 75 still had a right cross that would have knocked down a wall.  Oh well.  People age differently I suppose.  My parents are in their 80's and have a lot more energy.

I was wondering if this footage was shot on video  or on 16mm film and then transferred to a 1" video master at the NBC studio.  1975 was kind of a cross-over time and it would be interesting to see if the 16mm footage is still around.  Reason I bring this up is the video quality is rather poor compared to what we're used to now.  The 16mm footage (if any) would make a pretty good rail DVD.

A bit sad.  Tom Snyder, Rogers Whittaker, Oliver Jensen, all gone now.

Again, thanks for posting!

[wanswheel]

Whitaker may have been a bit subdued in the Blue Comet video, because, apart from cutting his finger, he was then (Christmas 1975) being forced to retire from his editorial job at The New Yorker. New management was instituting a policy of mandatory retirement at 65, effective January 1976.

Excerpt from Here at The New Yorker by Brendan Gill (1975)

Over the years Whitaker has edited a great number of my “Talk” pieces, Profiles, and book reviews, and our debates over certain sentences and even certain words in certain sentences have sometimes lasted for days, but it is fair to say that he has never failed to improve my handiwork. Decade after decade, he has sat hunched like Bartleby the Scrivener in a revolting hovel of an office on the nineteenth floor, working away on galleys while all round him rises a flood of yellowing newspapers, magazines, and Penn Central timetables and other railroad memorabilia. The latter are the outward and visible signs of what has been Whitaker’s lifelong passion; he is the foremost railroad buff in the country and perhaps in the world, and every moment that he has not devoted to The New Yorker over the past forty-odd years has been devoted to railroading.

Long ago, I did a couple of pieces about him in “Talk”; because of our wise prejudice against writing about each other in the magazine, it was necessary to disguise him under the name of Mr. Frimbo and to supply him with lexicography as an appropriate profession. His two habitual nicknames on the magazine are Frimbo and Popsie. Frimbo is borrowed from the name of a bloodthirsty African witch doctor, who was a character in a play given in Harlem by the W.P.A. theatre group, back in the thirties; Popsie was bestowed on Whitaker in his comparative youth, when, after a severe illness, his hair turned prematurely white. No one in or out of the office has ever been known to address Whitaker by his proper first name, which is Rogers.

A book by Whitaker and Anthony Hiss, entitled All Aboard with E. M. Frimbo was published in 1974. Much of the book appeared originally in The New Yorker, having been written for “Talk” by Hiss. On the credits page, the authors give thanks to “Dr.” Brendan Gill for having contributed a portion of the first chapter of the book. A doctor at last! I am very proud.

[Firelock76]

Yeah, having the rug pulled out from under him after being on a job he loved for 50 years certainly would have bummed him out.  I wouldn't think a "boo-boo on da widdle finger" would have affected a tough old guy like him. 

Forced retirement?  That's another matter. 

[Howard Pincus]

RE: The "Tomorrow Show" Blue Comet trip-- 

We were pulling out of the yard, into the CNJ Raritan station to board the passengers, on a very foggy morning, when the train went into emergency at about 10 mph.  Rogers was standing up in the CNJ 1178 obs car/coach and when the train stopped, he did not.  Afterwards, we always said "Rogers never flies, except inside CNJ coaches".  Fortunately, he was a very good sport about it.

When we met with Tom Snyder while setting the whole thing up, I suggested Rogers and Oliver Jensen as good interview guests for Snyder.  Certainly a difference from the average railfan of that time!  The show was shot on videotape, not film.

[RON SALTERS]

I met "Frimbo" several times in the 1970s thru a friend who was one of his travel agents. We had dinner with him once in NY. One winter (Feb/March in 1976, I think) he was a member of a small group traveling in the then-East Germany to ride on rural lines, narrow-gauge lines, country trolley lines, etc. There were still steam locos there. He was a nice guy, very pleasant, but if things went wrong, he had a temper!   I think he thought of himself as an "Old Curmudgeon" (like the late Andy Rooney of "60 Minutes".)  He did not really keep a close watch on his rail mileage. He told me that often when riding sleeper trains in Europe between pairs of cities where there were some alternate routes here and there, especially on the approach to a city, he had no idea which route his train had taken at night, and just estimated the  mileage.  When we traveled on an evening train from Gotha, East Germany to Frankfurt in west Germany, I tried to keep watch at the window because there were 2 approaches to the city. I was surprised that he did not care which of the two routes we used, even though they resulted in slightly different "Mileages". So, yes, his Mileage Log was not 100% accurate. He was always dressed in suit & tie, with a homburg hat, like an old-school gentleman.   

[RON SALTERS]

More memories of "E.M." in the 1970s. We called him "Rogers". He did not have a camera and did not take rail photos/slides. Instead, he had little notebooks and was a copious note-taker, writing all the time while traveling. I sometimes wonder what happened to all his notebooks and his mileage logs. They would make interesting reading today, if his hand-writing was clear enough.  I seem to recall hearing that as of the end of 1957, he had ridden every line in the USA which had passenger service, or commuter service up to that time.  He had a gigantic leather wallet which was stuffed with all sorts of things. He also had a huge roll of cash consisting of bills from many different currencies. When he was editor at the New Yorker, he would take a stack of manuscripts with him; after he edited one, he would mail it back to the magazine with his edits and notes, and then go on to the next one.  Sometimes he arranged for the magazine to send him a group of manuscripts at some far-off post office (General Delivery) or a hotel. He could thus travel for many weeks without being at his NY office and still keep up with the workload.  

[Firelock76]

Thanks for the post Mr. Pincus!  As I said, it would be interesting to see if the video master is still around, it'd make a good railfan DVD.

That must have been quite a trip.  At the time you gentlemen were enjoying your steam excusion I was a Marine 2d Lieutenant at the Basic School in Quantico Va., which was quite a trip in it's own right.