Railroaders' Nostalgia > Wh

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/14 09:13 by jatlmv.

For me, it must have been the first time I saw a train as a child. I've spent my entire life thus far working to achieve this goal, and I made it happen early in life. I love my job!

Now, I do want to work at Amtrak...

Good story I'm sure it is a memory you will keep forever.

Thanks for posting.

Posted from Android

trkspd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For me, it must have been the first time I saw a
> train as a child. I've spent my entire life thus
> far working to achieve this goal, and I made it
> happen early in life. I love my job!
>
> Now, I do want to work at Amtrak...
>
> Good story I'm sure it is a memory you will keep
> forever.
>
> Thanks for posting.
>
> Posted from Android

Amtrak's a good gig no matter what dept you work for ... weeellll lemme say reservations can be quite challenging ... i did 38 years on the books 34 in the field 4 laid up after a work related job ending injury

I've loved trains since before I was two years old.

I love the Technology - its development and use. History. Growth - What railroading has done to, literally, change the world and the well being of its people. And, how it made goods and services available to the common person. Steam. Power. In North America, transforming a Continent.

August, 1965. Another love entered my life.

I saw that I could not live the life of a railroader, and to live the other life. One, or, the other.

We married. Railroading became an avocation.

-John

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I should have known when my mother handed me up to the fireman on a Santa Fe eastbound steam engine at Pasadena. I was 4, almost 5. The next clue should have been hanging around the Tiburon yards, riding the goat around. But then again it could have been when I built my first engine with the help of Gordon Adams in Fairfax. It was 7 1/2" gauge and I was about 12 or 13. Well, I lost interest for awhile when I discovered the opposite sex.

Well, Uncle Sam brought me back to reality with a "Greetings" letter. That's where I knew I was hooked. I was operating 2-8-0s, (coal burning, hand fired) around post along with the diesels. I finally said goodbye in 69' and hello to the SP with a fireman's date in in 1969 on the Coast/Western Division. I have operated trains from LA to Vancouver, WA (via the Coast) and most of the branch lines before SP spun them off, including the Wendel pool. Sure we bitched and moaned like other rails but we wouldn't want to do anything else. I have the memories, at least I think I do, and hear from a lot of rails that I worked with over 40 some odd years. I miss the old magazines from the SP and then UP. At least it showed who retired and who passed on.

Would I do it again??? You Bet! There were a lot of old heads out there that would show the ropes but it took a long time to learn your way of going from Point A to B. As Robert Proctor Swanson said in SLO, "Just don't bruise the olives in the martini's back there."


Nudge

Four years old ;-)
JB

---

On my very first day of student trips at Los Nietos yard in the LA Basin.


V

SLOCONDR

Statute of limitations has run out long ago, no need to blur the face now.

It must have been about July 19th, 1950. Just three days old, Mom & Dad brought me home from the hospital and plunked me down in my little crib. Just then, a fast, noisy Santa Fe freight train came rattling by just half a block away, blowing for the crossing. I can still remember it. I jumped up, looked out the window and watched it go by. I turned around and said "That's what I want to do when I grow up". I stumbled through school mostly daydreaming about finally being old enough to go to work on the Railroad. I graduated, & a few months I hired out at Topeka, at the tender age of 18. Nine years later, I transferred to Engine service on the Middle Div. at Emporia. 42 years later I finally got my fill, and retired. It was all I ever wanted to do, and it's all I ever did, and I had a ball. Everyone should be so lucky.

"42 years later I finally got my fill, and retired. It was all I ever wanted to do, and it's all I ever did, and I had a ball."

Mr. Garrett, I hope to be able to write those very words 40 years from now. This is all I've ever wanted to do, and I feel so blessed to have my dream career so young in life.

Posted from Android