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Why work for a railroad?
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First...The statements by BaltACD, and Penn Central Black ring true in the most vivid sense. Railroading is now a game of Simon Says that must be played flawlessly for eight hours straight in a tour of duty. <br /> <br />As far back as I can remember it was the culture of railroading that intrigued me as much as the trains themselves. I used to ride the IC Electric suburban trains into Chicago's loop quite a bit. The enginemen always let me stand in the cab with them. Trainmen and Conductors, in their grandfatherly way, were the first adults to tell me dirty jokes. Their uniforms, watches, ways of doing things as if handed down to them by Moses were too much to resist. As early as my age 9, in 1959, IC trainmen would let me collect tickets with them. I developed "train legs" at an early age. I also noticed another thing. Girls rode the trains and they payed a lot of attention to younger trainmen. <br /> <br />I came to realize in the '60s that no railroad would hire you if you wore glasses. You could have them after 60 days but you couldn't start out with them. So I felt I would have to live life as a commercial illustrator. During the Viet Nam era, railroads became quite short of man-power and the glasses restriction was removed. It was stupid in the first place and was eventually forced out by law. After a year in art school I found out that the CNW was hiring trainmen at a ferociuos rate. I went to the CNW depot in Chicago and hired out. There I was in my Kromer Cap, and big watch chain falling off of boxcars and being laughed at. I thought I knew stuff about trains until I hired out. It was a whole new different world. There was a 3 0'clock in the morning, and people were up and eating and working. This was the hardest thing I had to get used to. But...I was a real railroader. My family didn't care for it too much but there was community respect. Once, a family friend asked me what school (read:university) I was attending. I replied, "Oh, I'm going to 2 universities. Chicago, and North Western." My father spit his drink out. <br />When I hired out in '69, I was working with men who had hired out in 1932. There were firemen on our jobs that had 16 years rights and still weren't regular engineers. They had worked on steam. At age 26 one of my real boyhood dreams came true when, as a promoted conductor, I was able to hold train 7, the Empire Builder, when I was on The Milwaukee. Things were "real railroad" up until the Milwaukee bouoght a lot of us out in the early eighties. Commuter operations, much like Amtrak, were being turned over to government agencies, and freight crews were being down-sized. In '69, an older CNW conductor, Howie Lippet, told me, "Some day, there won't be cabooses, and they'll figure out a way to run trains with 2 men. I won't live to see it, but you will." He was right. In the '80s, there was a TV show that starred Wilford Brimmley. He played a railroad man consigned to an office, who was formerly an engineer. He said in one episode, "Railroading just isn't fun anymore." How proffetic. <br />I was the art and avertising director of The South Shore Line for a while, but corporate life was not for me. I ended up back in train and then engine service there. Things changed more than I could imgine. Folks that shouldn't have been permitted as passengers became trainmen. Worse yet, they got promoted. And then fired. I left in '99, war weary and tired of my world that had disappeared. I'm happier now as a full-time artist (although the pay is some-what different.) <br /> <br />I wouldn't go railroading now on a bet. Of course I'm in my '50s and married with children. It's not the realm I dreamed of, and that's my problem, not that of railroading. There are economics, and the forces of real life that changed it all. <br /> <br />Mitch
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