An appropriate comment:
(For Dr. Erica Brown's regular job(s) contact me at ddaveklepper1@gmail.com)
In the airport, I spotted a large man going through security wearing a T-shirt that read “I’ve done terrible things for money…like waking up early for work.” Let’s hope he was heading out on vacation.
I was raised with a different narrative about work. You should wake up early, and when you find a job that reflects your identity, talents, and personality, you’ll be happy to. Once you identify that elusive career path, you’re fast-tracking your way to achieving life satisfaction, to actualizing your potential, and to realizing your dreams. The ideal job will provide financial stability, friendship, and the time and bandwidth to grow a family and pursue other interests. Most importantly, it will contribute to the good of the world.
But not everyone was raised with this work narrative. My grandfather would not have said, for example, that being a tailor and a dry cleaner was a lifestyle choice. He was skilled. He was kind to his customers, he paid his bills, and earned his bread, all in order to raise a family. As a child, I felt sorry for him. As an adult, I recognize the nobility in his work that I failed to see earlier. He was actually happy at work. He also expected far less from it.
Many of us regard work as a vocation, a calling, or an expression of service; such perceptions are a privilege denied to most. Trapped in field or factory, so many people around the world still work under challenging conditions that come with a daily tangle of discrimination and irritations: a mean, overly demanding boss, purposeless repetitive tasks, low pay, poor conditions, and few chances of advancement.
Observations about the tyranny of work surfaced at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution. In 1844, Friedrich Engels published The Condition of the Working-Class in England to articulate the diseases, inequalities, and malignancies of the working class that Dickens not long after fictionalized in David Copperfield. In the same century, Dostoyevsky described the stark consequences of this kind of toil: “The thought once occurred to me,” he wrote in Notes from a Dead House, “that if one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment…all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.”
Unsurprisingly, those who experienced this workers’ ennui were taken by the boldness of Marx’s Das Kapital, first published in 1867. Decades later, Upton Sinclair’s muckraking commentary on Chicago’s stockyards in The Jungle (1905) showcased how grueling and unsafe factory work had become. The physicality of labor then has been replaced by a different soul-crushing view of work now. Employees are tired of long commutes to sit in front of a screen mechanically answering emails in sterile open-space offices. Dolly Parton’s 9-to-5 day has become 8-to-7, if you’re lucky. Then there are a few more emails that need attention after dinner because, well, they have to get done.
When work is a slog that’s more reactive than creative, it’s not hard to disengage. There is evidence everywhere today of quiet quitting. Post-pandemic, offices large and small have emptied of employees. There are fewer water-cooler conversations. Bosses struggle to bring people back to in-person meetings. , employees who have returned to offices are half as likely as they once were to put in the maximum amount of effort to keep their jobs.
Research on workplace culture tells us that employees today volunteer less frequently for additional responsibilities, speak up less at meetings, take on fewer tasks, and refuse overtime. They’re not willing to go the extra mile. About 50% of Americans who once cared about their work product, are much less invested. The same poll rates those engaged at work to those actively disengaged is now at the most dispiriting it’s been in almost a decade. The pandemic left us its residual impact on the workday.
Much of this dissatisfaction can be traced back to the narrative of work I grew up believing. What happens when we are expected to love our jobs, but we don’t? The title of Sarah Jaffe’s 2021 book says it all: Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone. She calls out the delusion of “the labor-of-love myth,” where “the work you put in produces more value than the wages you are paid are worth.” We tell people they should love work as a means of emotionally exploiting employees, especially when they feel overworked, underpaid, or undervalued.
The workplace, however, does not confer membership in a loving family and community, no matter what you think or what your supervisor tells you. Just look at corporate layoffs. Guess they didn’t love you enough? The very idea of “loving work” makes the reality of not loving work our problem rather than a systemic, structural flaw in the way we view employment culturally. On a bad day, a colleague uses the mantra: “I get my love at home.”
What helped me most outgrow the love-work myth and understand its psychological limitations was not a fire-engine red leadership book or a volume of self-help. It’s that existential, ancient biblical tome Ecclesiastes. As a twelve-chapter collection of wise and sometimes cynical sayings, Kohelet repeatedly questions the value of work. Its author describes the sinking feeling of wasting our waking hours in enervating rather than energizing tasks.
“So I hated life,” Ecclesiastes states, “because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (2:17-23). Reflecting on this state of affairs, Ecclesiastes names the psychic cost: “So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun” (2:17-23). He ponders the worth of labor, and becomes despondent: “What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless” (2:17-23). Even when not on the job, our minds are stuck there.
In Tanakh, the grief of work can be traced all the way back to the first human being, Adam. He was cursed with hard, physical labor as a punishment for his disobedience in the Garden of Eden: “By the sweat of your brow, you will eat bread.” Kohelet has still not recovered from Adam’s life sentence. The book often uses the word “amel,” defined as strenuous, manual labor that is generally tedious, unstimulating, and usually without purpose. One contemporary scholar translates it as overdoing rather than merely doing work. Daily drudgery may bring home wages, but then others may spend those earnings unwisely, leading to more humiliation and hardship.
The irony is that this biblical book is read liturgically on the upcoming holiday of Sukkot, a harvest celebration called “the season of our happiness.” We eat meals in temporary booths with family and friends, reenacting a time when our ancestors lived in makeshift homes in the biblical wilderness. Kohelet sounds like the grumpy uncle at the table. His presence seems to sap the joy, but only if you ignore the cluster of seven verses in the book about the importance of the joy that comes with festive meals, like the discovery Kohelet makes about what is genuinely worthwhile: “Only this, I have found, is a real good: that one should eat and drink and get pleasure…” (5:17) or the mandate he makes later: “Go, eat your bread in gladness, and drink your wine in joy; for your action was long ago approved by God (9:7). This feasting, he writes, is a sanctioned gift from God.
The duality here is the point. The drudgery of sowing, planting, and harvesting coupled with uncertain conditions and bad weather results in the glorification of labor when farmers enjoyed the results. The delayed gratification of the harvest is itself a lesson in human patience and stamina. For Ecclesiastes, it was more. Even when work was backbreaking if it could purchase the temporal pleasures of a meal with friends, it had worth: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment from his toil” (2:24).
Kohelet accepted work for what it often is. Rather than searching for and praising its intrinsic emotional benefits, he lowers his expectations and focuses instead on the extrinsic outcomes of work. Don’t forget, he tells us, that the purpose of work is to facilitate happy gatherings with people we love. When the love-work narrative dominates, we ironically spend less meaningful time with those we love. This misplaced love becomes the residual curse of Adam’s labors.
Kohelet set me straight. I do love my work, but I don’t expect it to love me back. I get my love at home.
Dr. Erica Brown, a consulting editor
jeffhergertA few years ago, one of the senior managment over dispatching said that a train dispatcher's position is just an entry level to managment. Jeff
Jeff
And in many cases 'management' positions are just indentured survitude.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
A few years ago, one of the senior managment over dispatching said that a train dispatcher's position is just an entry level to managment.
PennsyBoomerThere are a number of benefits to ATDA membership such as overtime or perhaps a better control of workload on some territories vs. management (in)disgression. I do think UP dispatchers had a better relationship with upper management due to their status and it seemed a more motivated environment whereby there wasn't an inherent adversarial relationship. That said, I think this has deteriorated significantly over the past years although the status is indeed beneficial to management and, as ever, it is a matter of what kind of management that makes the difference. When UP went non-agreement in the 60s a lot of upper mgt. were ex-dispatchers, so there was a knowledge base and general good relationship.
That said, I think this has deteriorated significantly over the past years although the status is indeed beneficial to management and, as ever, it is a matter of what kind of management that makes the difference. When UP went non-agreement in the 60s a lot of upper mgt. were ex-dispatchers, so there was a knowledge base and general good relationship.
The number of former UP Dispatchers that came to CSX in the early 2000's tells me that UP had some serious disention in the Dispatcher/Sr. Management relationship.
Related to the issue is the functions of true yardmasters going bk 30 or so yrs ago. After the positions on the ATSF were voted in to become exzempt supervisor positions w/the new title of Asst Trainmaster (ATM) in 1988, changes came followng not long after. At many secondary yards, ATM positions were abolished & combined w/other locations,meaning one guy ran two yards. Here in Wichita the last time a person was on site performing the glorified "YM" job was 1990. That yr, the ATM was moved out of Wichita, combined w/the position from Hutchinson w/the work being done midway @ the Newton yd office. This was the format until 1995 when that job was abolished as the footboard yardmaster (FBYM) now did the work by marking the switch lists & doing the "clicking" of car inventory in the TSS computer system. I think the foreman position code 13 got like an extra $17.00 pay for being a FBYM. Way too low of an amount.
There are a number of benefits to ATDA membership such as overtime or perhaps a better control of workload on some territories vs. management (in)disgression. I do think UP dispatchers had a better relationship with upper management due to their status and it seemed a more motivated environment whereby there wasn't an inherent adversarial relationship.
SFbrkmnMost of what you describe is "the way it was" just like I described how one certain yd formatted its work decades ago. No longer so in the modern world. Most yard locations now, outside of major classification terminals, do not have YM positions (code 29). The footboard or Utility man position handles some of the duties formally managed by the traditional YM (that is fading into history). From a historical look back (the way it was), ATSF abolished their YM positions in 1988 and jobs changed to an exzempt Asst Trainmaster (ATM) of which the shift went from 8 to 12 hrs. About 2017, many such positions were removed and replaced by the "U man" position at certain yards. This 8 hr shift, w/30 min OT added on, basically is a "YM" position independent of the actual switch eng crew but w/outside duties of assisting trains in the yard such as watching shoves, attaching him/herself to a train crew to assisit w/work after 'attaching to the train crew". Restricted to the yard only. If for some reason the UM has to assist a train on a main track, that is a RO claim that pays an extra 100 miles. Ching, Ching $$$. The former BN still has UTU YM positions but sadly are decreasing. On the Frisco seniority district, Enid abolished their jobs two yrs ago and replaced w/the FBYM (switch eng foreman). The only yards on the former SLSF w/YMs are Tulsa, Springfield, Memphis, Amory & Birimingham as per the YM seniority roster.
The former BN still has UTU YM positions but sadly are decreasing. On the Frisco seniority district, Enid abolished their jobs two yrs ago and replaced w/the FBYM (switch eng foreman). The only yards on the former SLSF w/YMs are Tulsa, Springfield, Memphis, Amory & Birimingham as per the YM seniority roster.
In 1978 when BTSC was formed, there were Yardmasters at Bayview, Penn Mary, Mt. Clare A Yard, Locust Point, Curtis Bay and Stone House Cove at the other end of Curtis Bay.
Baltimore Terminal had in excess of 1300 individual customers throughout the area of the terminal. The business aims of CSX after its formation in 1980 was to end single car type customers - which they were successful in doing.
When I retired in 2016 there were two yardmaster positions left, Bayview and Curtis Bay and there were only 200 or fewer customers.
I don't believe the B&O Yardmasters were covered by UTU representation, I think they belonged to a Yardmaster's only organization.
Different companies, different railroad crafts and things go in different directions. CSX, BNSF & NS Train Dispatchers are covered by ATDA. UP Train Dispatchers are non-contract salaried 'officials'. When I was working there were a number of UP Train Dispatchers that transferre to CSX for Union protections.
Most of what you describe is "the way it was" just like I described how one certain yd formatted its work decades ago. No longer so in the modern world. Most yard locations now, outside of major classification terminals, do not have YM positions (code 29). The footboard or Utility man position handles some of the duties formally managed by the traditional YM (that is fading into history). From a historical look back (the way it was), ATSF abolished their YM positions in 1988 and jobs changed to an exzempt Asst Trainmaster (ATM) of which the shift went from 8 to 12 hrs. About 2017, many such positions were removed and replaced by the "U man" position at certain yards. This 8 hr shift, w/30 min OT added on, basically is a "YM" position independent of the actual switch eng crew but w/outside duties of assisting trains in the yard such as watching shoves, attaching him/herself to a train crew to assisit w/work after 'attaching to the train crew". Restricted to the yard only. If for some reason the UM has to assist a train on a main track, that is a RO claim that pays an extra 100 miles. Ching, Ching $$$.
SFbrkmnAt some yard locations, the agent performed yardmaster duties where no YM position was maintained. An example was the SF freight agent position @ Dodge City.The agent there would mark the lists, instruct yard crews on work to be performed and when completed, enter the info in the inventory. This is what I was told by the late Lloyd Stagner, who worked that job @ Dodge in the 1970s (some of you may know "LES" from his work on the SF Historically Society and authoring about 30 rr books upon his retirement in 1979).
If you look at things from a business heirarchy - The Agent could be considered the 'top position' at a location as they deal with the customers and what the customers want. When the business and customers become too voluminous for one person to hadle, hands on, then the structure of yards and yardmasters grows up to handle the increased business level. Yardmasters are still responsible for following the Agents instructions for handling the customers at the location, and also responsible for handling outlying Agent's instructions in building the local freights that do the work at the outlying Agent's locations.
In the day Agents were the customer contact with the carrier at all locations - big and small. In the end, it is the Agent that presents the bills and the Customers that pay the bills that keep the railroads in business.
When the Chessie Terminal Services Centers were created, one of the functions that had to be developed was the 'Industrial Work Order' - Specific instructions to Yardmaster/Crews for what specific work Customers desired done at their facilities. Be mindfull there are specific Rules that apply to moves that customers can request for car under their control - the prime rule being that a customer gets ONE placement of a car for 'free', subsequent placements of a car directed by the customer are a chargable 'Intraplant Switch'.
At some yard locations, the agent performed yardmaster duties where no YM position was maintained. An example was the SF freight agent position @ Dodge City.The agent there would mark the lists, instruct yard crews on work to be performed and when completed, enter the info in the inventory. This is what I was told by the late Lloyd Stagner, who worked that job @ Dodge in the 1970s (some of you may know "LES" from his work on the SF Historically Society and authoring about 30 rr books upon his retirement in 1979).
MidlandMikeI know Minturn was a helper base. Would the helper crews be called for each push, or would they work a shift and handle any trains that showed up during their shift?
Minturn was an away from home terminal so that helper crews would come from the Pueblo-Minturn pool, as I recall. Not 100% certain at this removed date, however, I believe they worked for a tour of duty, if necessary, rather than a single shove. On UP in Cheyenne, helpers were occasionally necessary if all trains were operating via Sherman acct. trackwork or some other reason. They were called specifically for helper service, thereby allowing the crew to make multiple shoves. I'm fairly certain this was the case at Minturn, although the details sometimes get foggy in the mists of time.
Sand Patch grade was a part of my territory when I was working. Sand Patch is a grade that required manned helpers in both directions over its summit. There were two 'regular' helper assignments at Cumberland (East of the grade) and Connellsville (West of the grade) that were on duty twelve hours apart from each other. When traffic density requiring a helper was forseen, extra helper crews would be called on an 'as necessary' basis. Helper crews, by local agreement, were entitled to extra pay when it became necessary for them to operate beyond their designated territories.
When Train Dispatching was done from Baltimore the BB Desk handled the territory between Connellsville and Brunswick and also handled the manipulation of helpers on Sand Patch grade. At one point in time, helpers were required from some trains over the Williamsport grade on the former WM route to Hagerstown and from Martinsburg to Brunswick. By the time I retired, train sizes and motive power applied to them eliminated the requirement for these helpers.
While everyone acknowledges the need for extra motive power to move trains up grades, it is even more necessary in many instances to helpers assist trains DOWN the grades. Dynamic braking is a critical element in safely moving trains down grades. It is more common than one would like to admit that dynamic braking is out of service on one or more locomotives in a train's consist - especially trains heading to Cumberland (one of CSX's main locomotive shop locations).
A book (or maybe it was a magazine article) I once read included a bit about helper crews "hanging out" at the base of a grade in the Blue Ridge mountains east of Roanoke. N&W, I think. Those crews would be pushing whatever comes their way during their shift.
I'd have to believe that if there were only one or two "pushes" (or pulls) a day that the crews would be called for that specific job, unless there was other work they could be doing between helping.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
PennsyBoomerThe job at Minturn was more involved as it was a through route with about a dozen trains/day. During the hours the agency was open, one also called crews and handled disbursing paychecks. Minturn was an away from home terminal and, so, crews rested at the beanery nearby. You opened up by contacting the dispatcher and copying any train orders issued during the night, received a lineup and posted it for crews. ...
I know Minturn was a helper base. Would the helper crews be called for each push, or would they work a shift and handle any trains that showed up during their shift?
PennsyBoomer I am sure you had lunch once or twice at Bronco Burger.
I have minimal experience in the agency field, however, during the few years I worked for the Rio Grande the Colorado Divison agencies were protected by the agent/operator extra list whereby, headquartered in Denver, I worked agencies at Littleton, Craig and Minturn, CO in the seventies. These were vacation vacancies for the regular agent. It was long past the era of selling passenger tickets or handling Rwy. Express, but there was ample activity with which to keep busy.
The Littleton, CO job was on the joint line south of Denver and handled the Rio Grande's freight business in the area as well as some train order work with either the Rio Grande or Santa Fe dispatchers. As with Craig, CO, the job consisted of dealing with shippers, making waybills, maintaining demurrage books, lining up the crews or dispatcher for what needed to be pulled and spotted on spurs in the territory and entering train report and shipping data.
In Craig and Minturn you walked your yard early in the morning to ascertain what had been set out during the night (there only being a turn freight at Craig). The job at Minturn was more involved as it was a through route with about a dozen trains/day. During the hours the agency was open, one also called crews and handled disbursing paychecks. Minturn was an away from home terminal and, so, crews rested at the beanery nearby. You opened up by contacting the dispatcher and copying any train orders issued during the night, received a lineup and posted it for crews. Minturn also handled business with New Jersey Zinc in Belden and several businesses around Eagle. So you would be in contact with them to determine how many empties they might need (if so) or what cars would be ready to pull and necessary information in order to prepare waybills. It was all very quaint and personal, at least in these territories.
These jobs were daylight only and went high in seniority. As one confronted all of the aspects involved with shipping data and demurrage, it seemed a byzantine process but the old agent had it all in his hip pocket.
When a kid I would visit a few agents in the Phila. area on PRR where passenger tickets were still sold and/or prepared with trip booklets for people taking a long distance connection. The agent's desk was full of Railway Guides, timetables, equipment registers and other publications (which he was always glad to share), telephones and the ubiquitous standard clock on the wall. A marvelous atmosphere.
Clay City Agents Office from Google Earth
https://earth.google.com/web/search/clay+city,+il/@38.69079091,-88.35409349,132.05189583a,98.37800422d,35y,0h,0t,0r/data=CigiJgokCd-ZV5k8PUFAEUhreDYu7EBAGZu_ZcsnAlTAIQB9QYaHaVTA
CMStPnP Milwaukee Roads Brookfield, WI station had a station agent at least until 1971 or 1972. Not sure where he lived but it was not at the depot. He would unlock the stations waiting room and sell passenger tickets on the local Cannonball run. He also managed the freight clients in the Town of Brookfield as well as the Waukesha branch. He used the depot as an office. I remember seeing him when I was a kid and then he disappeared replaced by the occasional section crew visit as they later used the depot to store section cars and other railroad equipment. They would part a black car with Milwaukee road emblem on the doors and take off in a section car...............returning later in the afternoon. The depot remained locked for the most part after the 1977-78 bankruptcy and my guess is whomever used it before was let go or consolidated to Milwaukee. They still stored section cars there until the mid-1980s I believe.
Milwaukee Roads Brookfield, WI station had a station agent at least until 1971 or 1972. Not sure where he lived but it was not at the depot. He would unlock the stations waiting room and sell passenger tickets on the local Cannonball run. He also managed the freight clients in the Town of Brookfield as well as the Waukesha branch. He used the depot as an office. I remember seeing him when I was a kid and then he disappeared replaced by the occasional section crew visit as they later used the depot to store section cars and other railroad equipment. They would part a black car with Milwaukee road emblem on the doors and take off in a section car...............returning later in the afternoon. The depot remained locked for the most part after the 1977-78 bankruptcy and my guess is whomever used it before was let go or consolidated to Milwaukee. They still stored section cars there until the mid-1980s I believe.
Just because the agency was closed doesn't mean the depot buildings were no longer used. Often they were still the headquarters for MOW section gangs and/or signal maintainers.
The last time I was at Chanute AFB, IL, late '74, early '74, there was still an agent at the Rantoul station. Never really got to know him, but I think he recognized me. I really didn't have the knowledge or the wherewithal to ask many questions.
ICG at that time was two track, current of traffic. Saw him hoop up orders (or hang them on the crane) quite a few times if a train was going to have to cross over to the "wrong" main.
I knew 3 RI agents and 1 MILW agent. Of them, the MILW agent lived in the town he was agent. When the MILW cutback in 1980, the agency was not on the retained trackage. He then commuted about 100 miles (one way) until he retired.
Of the RI agents, two commuted, the other rented a house in the town he worked at. They didn't drive every day. But rented a room and went home on the weekends. I think the MILW agent did the same.
By the late 70s when I met these men, agencies were being cut. These men had established homes where they had been able to hold for years, until the job abolishments caught up with them.
One of the RI men, whom I kept in touch with until he passed away, had a brother who went into engine service with the RI in Chicago. He told me he became a clerk so he could be home more, not moving around so much. His father had been a RI engineer. He said it turned out that his brother, even being an engineer, was home more often while he was bounced around a large chunk of Iowa working various clerical jobs. Even after he had what was considered good seniority.
wjstixTSG Multimedia recently posted an interesting video about an SP station in California, and what life was like for the station agent and family: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM7kCcB9vGs It notes one station agent moved 17 times, which was part of the reason so many small town stations included living facilities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM7kCcB9vGs
It notes one station agent moved 17 times, which was part of the reason so many small town stations included living facilities.
Young employee, those with little seniority, will always have to react when senior employees have their jobs eliminated and/or their job responsiblities substantially changed which entitles them to 'exercise their seniority' to any job that is held by someone with less seniority. The reality of the situations are that 'young' employees get bumped, repeatedly. In the times before the 1960's the Extra List for Agent/Operators were not guaranteed - no work, no pay.
While the docent mentioned teletype being installed at that particular agency, during my 'early' years on the B&O teletypes were primarily installed at yard offices and Division offices, rarely to never at Agencies.
In my own career it took four years before I accumulated enough seniority to be able to hold a regualr job I DESIRED to work. If jobs went NO BID for two cycles, then the youngest person on the Extra List would be assigned to the vacancy. During that period on the Extra List on three divisions I worked at 36 different job locations.
There are a number of good first person accounts of working as a station agent.
Burlington Route Depot Life - Hadcock
Depot Days - Stimson
Prairie Stationmaster - Clayburn
Ten Turtles to Tucumcari - Garrett
Woman Operator on the Milwaukee Railroad During World War II - Byington
TSG Multimedia recently posted an interesting video about an SP station in California, and what life was like for the station agent and family:
Ulrich I've read that due to the workload and 24/7 hour availability requirement that a station agent sometimes employed his/her own family members i.e. spouse and kids worked some shifts and performed some tasks when the agent him/herself was unavailable or taking time off. Probably the agent compensated family members directly. Who would the station agent report to... the division superintendant?
I've read that due to the workload and 24/7 hour availability requirement that a station agent sometimes employed his/her own family members i.e. spouse and kids worked some shifts and performed some tasks when the agent him/herself was unavailable or taking time off. Probably the agent compensated family members directly.
Who would the station agent report to... the division superintendant?
Years ago it wasn't unusual for a teenaged boy to do odd jobs and chores, like sweeping up, etc in exchange to learn telegraphy and a little clerical work. Once of age and reasonable competence, they could get a job with the railroad.
I've heard of children of the agent also being taught such things and leading to jobs with the railroad.
The Division Supt. would normally be in charge of all things 'operational'. There would be a different organizational structure for the various BUSINESS aspects of the company. I don't have any org charts going back to 19th Century or early 20th Century. I do have a public timetable for the B&O from 1948 showing in part its Traffic Department with the Vice President of Traffic at its summit.
Often the small towns grew up around the railroad, many were laid out by land companies associated with the railroad. There wouldn't be much in the way for permanent lodging for an agent with a family. The depots with living quarters were out of a necessity of the time.
At a one man station, the agent did it all. Clerical, telegraphy, janitorial, and light maintenance. In the early days, maintenance may have included servicing the lanterns for switch stands and the train order signal, if equipped. Before the 8 hour day became the standard, office hours could be as long as 12 hours a day. Especially on main lines. Even when the office was closed the agent may be needed by the dispatcher for train orders. A call bell would probably be placed in the living quarters to summon the agent.
This drawing, I believe done back in the 1930s, kind of sums up the agent's world. Of course it's a caricature, but beyond the railroad and Western Union duties, the agent in more remote areas may have been involved in the governance of the community he lived in. https://www.flickr.com/photos/wb5kcm/1457506573
B&O Agent's Office - Clay City, IL
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