Looking up to my father and what I wanted to do for a living growing up.01:47 Feb 19 2016
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Although my father and I do not have a "mushy" relationship and although we have had our ups and downs over the years. I have always looked up to my father. I have always admired him.
My fathers family was certainly NOT close. My grandfather drank heavily and had a nasty temper when drunk. I gather my father didnt have close relationship with his mother either. He was the eldest of three children and apparently my aunt Mary, the baby of the family got all the attention.
Needless to say, my father dropped out of high school and at the age of 17, my father enlisted in the navy just to get out of the house. Well, the navy and my father did not get along and my father was discharged before he could graduate out of Great Lakes boot camp.
My father then spent a number of years working as a mechanic in Paterson's "Gasoline Alley". He did OK but when my Aunt Mary married my Uncle Sam, his father Sam Senior got my father onto the Erie Lackawanna railroad. It was October of '67 starting on the track surfacing gangs. He would work from March to December, being furloughed from December to March, but my father stuck with it. Some time before or after I was born, he bid into the working equipment department as a mechanic.
Most days saw him working in the Getty Ave, Paterson yards working on company trucks and other equipment. I remember my father coming home and taking a nap every afternoon. I had to be very quiet and as a result, I never got the noisy toys my cousins would get. There was a reason for this. My father was subject to call at ANY time to run the lights if there was a wreck or if there was a snowstorm so that other crews could do their jobs.
Finally in late 1974 my father bid into the scale department as a scale inspector where he inspected and tested railroad scales and this would be his job until retirement. He absolutely LOVED his job and was proud of what he did. Being a lifelong rail enthusiast didnt hurt either. It was a good job for being on the railroad. He was home most nights, unlike guys in T&E (Train and Engine Service) who basically live out of the hotel half the time. He left for work at 6am and was home by 3pm. His job allowed him to take his camera with him and of course he rail fanned as much as his job permitted. As a result his slide collection is one of the best I have seen covering so much territory and over the course of so many years. As the years went by, his territory grew as the railroad cut back on the number of employees and scales. By the 90's his territory stretched from Philadelphia north into Canada and as far west as Rochester, NY. He covered all of NJ, NY, and New England. Two of his most favorite customers were the Massachusetts Central RR and the Vermont Railway. He always looked forward to testing their scales.
In 1999, His employer, Conrail was split by Norfolk Southern and CSX. He was supposed to go to CSX, but CSX did not wish to have a scale department, theirs had been outsourced to a wholly owned company called "Rail Scale". Last minute negotiations got him onto Norfolk Southern. His territory still covered New Jersey but now covered Eastern PA and the Delmarva Peninsula. He still liked the job, but it wasnt the same. He missed a lot of the people he worked with in NY and New England. He retired in 2000 after suffering a MS attack and was offered a buyout. NS wanted to contract out most of his territory to the federal government. In order to stay, he would have had to move to Alabama to which my father told his boss that he would take the buy out as his feet did not like southern soil. So after 34 years working for the Erie Lackawanna, then Conrail and then finally Norfolk Southern, he packed it in.
A year or so later, Railroad Retirement changed their rules allowing him to take his Railroad Retirement benefits earlier than he otherwise would. (He was living solely off his NS pension at the time) So now as a retiree he has his pension and Railroad Retirement and although things are tight, he is making it. Not bad for a high school dropout. I am very proud of him and I always looked up to him. Whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to do for a living, "working for the railroad" was my response. I aways wanted to follow in dads footsteps and be a scale inspector too, but it wasnt to be. His job was being phased out.
I did give T&E a go back in 1998 and if it weren't for an overtime hound of a conductor, I would have made it. This guy hoping to get rid of as many of the trainees that were working at the time, dimed me and another brakeman trainee out to management. I failed the "functional capacity" test. My failings, I could not ride the side of a freight car long enough. Something I WAS working on correcting by trying to improve my upper body strength. While I was disappointed in not succeeding as a railroader, I am still grateful that I was able to do the job for a short period and I do get more respect from railroaders then many rail enthusiasts because I actually did the job and have an appreciation for what they go through.
I will never forget the first conductor I worked with. Mr Bill McCarthy. He shocked the hell outta me. He came in dressed well and looked like a kindly grandfather. One that could never say a bad word and that would be a good influence on me. Then he changed into his work clothes and it was like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The yard master, nicknamed "The Prince of Darkness" had wanted us to make some extra moves after we did our normal work. I could not believe when Mr McCarthy CHEWED the yard master out at length. In the most profane manner, he told him that nothing was going to interfere with his two hour quit, what he could go do with himself and where he could go. So on the locomotive we were. McCarthy and the engineer were talking about people on the railroad, mostly management in a negative way, when the name Joe Garafolo came up. He was the district superintendent. Mr McCarthy obviously HATED Garafolo and he wove a tapestry of profanity that I swear is still hanging over the New Jersey Meadows!!! He used every curse word in the book and I think he INVENTED a few. Needless to say, he was the first "shot out" person I met on the railroad and being that my friends are railroaders. I have certainly been told stories of the many shot out people on the railroad and have even met a few, like "Red" Corsun who says he hopes that Garafolo's house burns down with him in it. Then there was an engineer who would show up to work in his wife's pink bunny slippers. Then there was the engineer who had the nickname "The Eliminator". His off work pastime was playing poker. As a result, he was always tired and falling asleep asking his conductor if he wanted to run the train. He got caught using company lodging at his home terminal and almost got fired.
Another was Jeff Seidel. I only got to meet him once as he died from Lou Gehrigs disease. He was a big influence on a friend of mine as he now wears plaid shirts on the job, smokes stogies and has a big interest in railroad signals.
While I only worked for the railroad a short time, I am still proud of it. I still love the railroad and trains. I also have an interest in scale test cars as thats what my father worked on. Here are some photos of them:
Here is a photo of CR 80046 and CR 80051 by Tim Howerter at Alburtis, Pa 5/16/1994. The CR 80051 was assigned to my father since the start of Conrail in 1976.
A photo of EL 03443 at Sharron, Pa 9/7/1975. At the time, it was assigned to my fathers fellow EL scale inspector based out of Meadville, PA.
These were the last kind of scale test cars Conrail bought. They called Maxson Cars by the inspectors. My father was assigned CR 80092 and CR 80093. From the Houser collection: Here is the 80090 at Conway yard near Pittsburgh 2/22/1981.
Enjoy!
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