Railroaders' Nostalgia > The Grey Book

Decades ago, before I started on the railway, I picked up a little grey book at a model railroad flea market.

It was from a major railway, and the cover was grey, saying that it had been revised in 1961.

It was a series of corporate letter templates, showing the correct headers and salutations and so forth.

It was much more, it laid out how to write to a Government official, a senior railway manager, a shipper, and finally to an employee.

It told which type of paper to use, according to the rank of the addressee.

One thing was clear, although the cover said 1961, the contents were much older. My guess would be the book was written shortly after 1900.

I enjoyed the old letters and the attitudes they portrayed. I filed the book away.

One thing that stuck with me were the opening paragraphs. In short, they said, "When writing these letters, remember you are the representative of a large and professionally operated enterprise, don't allow grammatical and spelling errors in any letters written for the company"

I'm sure other businesses had similar guides. This one had letters which could be copied almost verbatim.

Along came the 1980's, and a pompous assistant superintendent who started life on a prairie farm, and then came up through the ranks of operating employees. He couldn't spell or put a complete sentence together, and the office clerks were forever re-writing his messages.

I mentioned the "Grey Book" to the clerks and they photocopied many of the letters. They also copied the opening paragraphs, and altered the cover so it appeared to have been issued by the railway we worked for.

The superintendent's clerk was in on the deal, and she made it appear that the superintendent had forwarded it to his assistant for "his guidance and advice".

The assistant superintendent's letters and bulletins immediately improved in spelling and content. He never found out that the "Grey Book" was forwarded to him from an "underling".



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/18 14:17 by eminence_grise.

Back in Penn Central days our Trainmaster typed up a message and posted it in the Yard Office. Many errors were in the message and one Yardmaster took a red pen and circled them and marked a grade of C- on it then put it back on the board. Wasn't long after that the Trainmaster walked in and saw it ripping from the board and tearing into shreads.

They went like this as a claim for wages:

Southern Pacific Railroad
Mr. Jo Blow Superintendent Western Division
1707 South Wood St
Oakland, CA

Dear Sir:

This will refer to your letter denying Engineer Smith a 100 mile Lap Back on June 10, 1972.

The Facts As We Know them:

Engineer Smith was called on duty at.....................................................



This claim is covered by BLE Article 6, Section 3 (a) of the agreement covering Engineers and should be allowed.


Yours truly,



D J Radio
Local Chairman



That is just a letter wanting a guy to be paid. There are many, many more. One for investigations, discipline, demerits, etc. The list goes on. That is just one situation on Division. Every office had their own "Letter Head" and contents.


Nudge



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/18 12:49 by spnudge.

Interesting that this sentence itself is grammatically incorrect:

"When writing these letters, remember you are the representative of a large and professionally operated enterprise, don't allow grammatical and spelling errors in any letters written for the company."

It should be either this:

"When writing these letters, remember you are the representative of a large and professionally operated enterprise; don't allow grammatical and spelling errors in any letters written for the company."

Or it could be this:

"When writing these letters, remember you are the representative of a large and professionally operated enterprise. Don't allow grammatical and spelling errors in any letters written for the company."

symph1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Interesting that this sentence itself is
> grammatically incorrect:
>
> "When writing these letters, remember you are the
> representative of a large and professionally
> operated enterprise, don't allow grammatical and
> spelling errors in any letters written for the
> company."
>
> It should be either this:
>
> "When writing these letters, remember you are the
> representative of a large and professionally
> operated enterprise; don't allow grammatical and
> spelling errors in any letters written for the
> company."
>
> Or it could be this:
>
> "When writing these letters, remember you are the
> representative of a large and professionally
> operated enterprise. Don't allow grammatical and
> spelling errors in any letters written for the
> company."

I was paraphrasing my recollection of the opening paragraphs. Although a CN document, I'm sure that certain parts were from the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada.

My non-railroad employer of 37 years locked out union employees for a three month period in the 1990s. When the issue was settled and union employees returned to work, the company had the audacity to hire two of the scabs as supervisors. One was a relatively competent fellow who soon contracted ALS and died. The second guy was a complete moron who, flush with his newfound responsibilities, decided to throw his weight around. Unfortunately for him, and fortunate for the rest of us, he had never operated in an environment so dependent on e-mail, text messages, and, to a lesser extent, old-fashioned interoffice memos.

It quickly became apparent that this guy couldn't write a complete sentence.

We had no "gray book" to leave the poor fellow and even if I had a copy, I would have burned it rather than give it to him.

We did have a couple of rail fans on the staff at the time who had some railroad magazines floating around the building, and the incompetent supervisor somehow got ahold of one with an article by me.

I got called into his office. He was preparing a long, written dissertation about something, the exact subject escapes me...but he cozied up to me and said I was a "pretty good writer" and asked if I could "look this over" before he sent it to the bosses.

It was a rambling mess of sentence fragments, bad grammar, spelling errors and generally incoherent. I looked it over and was about to say "...give me a few minutes and I'll re-write it..."

Instead, I looked at this guy, smiled and simply said "...perfect! Couldn't have said it any better!"

He was gone in a few months.