mm m‘
1"»?
,.

 

 

 

 

 

vr

"7 . ”:5”
...‘4 flux—2w;-

' ‘ f' I.

my
,I'. "‘:f“" . w

. .’:;'L‘v:'.-'.". :' '.5_,f .

“'4
l . ruu' m. .
4,3,. .,., .-
. ... ,

'l. .‘:.:I
.'. . r:

' .....‘.,
‘_' ',",I V ‘ ' . ., . \
.I....‘.-., I... . . ,
”Nun“...
| r- I:

'1‘.)-
.‘ 91.}. '.. ",TM-nr
. . 3.1“.” w.
.. . n .
. I. n I h . v . , w
“n.2, .. , 1 n4 ;. .
.,..‘.’.¢..-I.. .m
m .m.
.

N13”.
.u. ;.*n
'1 .— ,.- In :";‘,_~v:-.~
, , .. ~ .
.. .. r‘
,, “n J' m r
. ‘ , .\ ; I .4. .
n: "I I ".,.‘w . I ‘ M
Mr M" ..r.r .3... . .
.1, .. I I» . ‘
v ....

«Wu-41:7.
. ..., "1‘" ... . .m-m-
:;:r;:» '34:, n'.’,. u. .

.
.r 'r‘.‘.....:‘:‘..
r. ,. v .,.-..+....
.. . I

.. u I_ - .. N .
. ... m .
. , g. .

7 ‘ ”v...“ _, ,.

Ir v I l~p h‘
- .

I"

“9...: ‘T;"

 

.1. ,
.1. may." Sin"... .7 1
‘- I‘L.‘ r: l v w-vhhnvnlu‘v — A I
1'?"“"‘:.' y... .w- mu,» . w” . . f...
.. v-lav'f'cufu F." I ‘J.,..r » . . '3,.
_, V u... m-
I , "’9"an " J ‘ ‘ ‘ '
, , , ,." < I .~ ¢
. mm:- 2!“

n n
v; u
eranu ...'...

ufl!‘ *1 I"

' rule

TYARLIBR

I IIIIIIIIII

 

 

 

 

 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

31293098

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

THE JOY AND THUNDER DAYS: Michigan Railroading
During the Twentieth Century in the Time of the
Steam Locomotive

presented by

David Dylan Jones

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M.A. American Studies

degree in

file/<11 ( O

0-7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

 

I)ate

 

PLACE IN REI'URN Box to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINE return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

4A

a 1‘.

in

 

 

 

_qu

I
J

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1/98 cJCIRC/DaleDue,pGS-p.14

 

 

 

THE JOY AND THUNDER DAYS:
MICHIGAN RAILROADS DURING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
IN THE DAYS OF THE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE

BY

David Dylan Jones

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Program of American Studies

1991

 

 

 

ABSTRACT
THE JOY AND THUNDER DAYS:

MICHIGAN RAILROADS DURING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
IN THE DAYS OF THE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE

BY

David Dylan Jones

From 1900 to 1960, in the era of steam locomotive use, Michigan
railroaders formed a unique subculture that grossly and subtly affected
themselves and Michigan citizens, positively and negatively. Twenty
railroaders interviewed recall at length consequences of their time--some
of which were unforeseen. Steam railroading was a vulnerable industry
with imperfect technological development. Many accidents occurred, caused
in part by advancing technology. The period was unparalleled for the
state, and will not return; as one interviewee commented, "The joy and

thunder days are over now."

Copyright by
DAVID DYLAN JONES
1991

 

For TAMI

iv

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to Dr. David E. Wright, Dr. Maurice Crane, and Dr.
James McClintock.
Much appreciation goes to the members and friends of the Michigan

State Trust for Railway Preservation, Inc.

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter One: Results of Michigan Railroading, 1890-1960

Part One: Peacetime Joy and Prosperity . . . . . . . . . . . .

1. Economics . . . . . . . . . .

Industries and Coal Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Hoboes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Bulk Commodities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l4
2. Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3. Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Telegraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Wintertime Necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4. Recreation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
"Resort Specials" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Local Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Sports, and other, Specials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5. Linguistics and Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6. Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Recruiting Trains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Exhibit Specials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
7. Politics and Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
"Whistle-stopping" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
State Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Part Two: In the Thunder of War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

1. Defense Shipping . . . . . . . . . . .

2. Teenage Labor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3. "Oil Trains" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4. Communications and "Defense Railroads" . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5. Munitions Shipments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

o
o
o
o
o
U
\0

Part Three: Blood and Thunder . . . . . . . . . . .

1. Affecting the Public . . . .

Grade Crossing Accidents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Train Wrecks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Trespassers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Asphyxiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Environmental Degradation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Financial Mismanagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

vi

 

2. Resetting the Railroaders . . . . . . .
Steam Locomotive Dangers . . . . . .
General Dangers . . . . . . . . . .
Consequences of Changing Technology
On-the-Road Incidents . . .
Grade Crossing Accidents . .
Maintenance-of—Way Accidents
Perils of the Railroad Shop
Yard Accidents . . . . . . .
Wrecking Crew Accidents . .
Runaway Trains . . . . . . .

Chapter
1. The

2. The

Two

vii

The Subculture of the Rails . . . . . . . . . .

Uniqueness of Michigan Railroading . . . . . . . . . .

Uniqueness of the Michigan Railroader
Dress .
Language . . . . . . . . .
Fanaticism about Time . .
Seniority . . . . . . . .
Union Practices . . . . . . .
Racial and Gender Discrimination
Occupational Safety and Health .
Legendary Status . . . . . . . .
Pride

Conclusion .

Glossary

Appendix
Pere

Appendix
1945

Appendix
Appendix
Appendix

Endnotes

A:

O O O O O O O O O O O O O
O

O 0 O O O O 0 O

O O O O O O O O

O O O O O O O O O

O O O O O O O O O O
O O O O O O O O O O
O O O O O O O O O O
0 0 O O O O O O O O
O O O O 0 O O O O O
O O O O O O O O O O
O O O O O O O O O O
O O O O 0 O O O O 0

Major Shippers/Receivers Outside Detroit on the

Marquette Ry. during World War Two . . . . . . . . .

Some ”Captive" Communities on the Pere Marquette,

O O C O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

Toxic Substances of a Railroad Shop . . . . . . .
Trace Element Components of Waste Oil . . . . . .

Interviewee Information . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

O O O O O O O O O O O

93

98
99
100
101
103

117

2.

3.

4.

LIST OF TABLES

Pere Marquette Depot Cubic Footage

1945 Demographics on the Pere Marquette Railway

U.S. Intercity Passenger Traffic,

1941-1945

0.8. Intercity Freight Traffic, 1941-1945 .

Railroad Employment, 1929-1975 .

viii

O

33
34
34

75

 

rHE!

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

6.

8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

13.
14.
15.

16.

LIST OF FIGURES

Grant, Michigan, February, 1950 (Leisgang/C&OHS) . . . .
Williamston, Michigan, 1910 (Merrifield and Howarth) . .
Random Sampling of Michigan Hoboes (Author) . . . . . . .
"Fruit Tramps," Berrien County, Michigan, 1940 (Allsop) .
Principal Lower Peninsula Railroads (Rand McNally) . . .

Railway Post Office Communities, Grand Trunk
Western R.R. (Rand McNally) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Near Flushing, Michigan, February 22, 1912
(Author's collection) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Better Dairy Sires Train, September, 1929 (MSU Archives)
Pere Marquette Shippers, 1945 (Pere Marquette) . . . . .
"Oil Trains" (Farrington) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Van Sweringen Pyramid (1934) (Haberman) . . . . . . .

Pere Marquette Shops, Wyoming, Michigan, 1942
(c&o RR/C&OHS ) O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 O O O O O 0

"Boilermaker's Deafness" (Hunter) . . . . . . . . . . . .
Afro-American Railroaders (Beebe; Santino) . . . . . . .
View of a caboose interior, 1943 (Delano/Valle) . . . . .

View of a backshop, 1943 (Delano/Valle) . . . . . . . . .

ix

ll
12
16

18

20
27
32
36

51

60
62
78
81
84

-_
I'V—

 

INTRODUCTION

The evolving, expanding technology that railroads were for decades
in Michigan had many consequences, some good, some bad, some unexpected.
In Parts One and Two of Chapter One, I will outline and examine some of
these consequences. I have laid out my analysis and findings like a
balance sheet: positive effects appear first, then negative--”joy" and
"thunder."

The particular decades considered here are from 1900 to 1960--the
more modern of the 123 years that the steam locomotive operated in
Michigan. The looming, dramatic steam locomotive that Michigan's many
railroads used has been the subject of countless popular and technical
articles. Not so appreciated--indeed, going to their graves by the
scores without notice--have been the thousands of workers who tended,
ran, managed, maintained, and kept in check these machines. Isolated
interviews by journalists and railroad enthusiasts have caught only a
fraction of the information which these people know. It is a blatant
fact that one cannot understand even one steam locomotive as a unit of
technology unless one grasps the service these workers provided, and the
closely-knit community they were. Thus, Chapter Two will quote from
oral history at length-—some of these workers remembering, in certain
cases back to the turn of the century, aspects of their community, which
in fact comprised a subculture. They revive its way of life, its own
tragedies and triumphs.

Theirs was a broad domain. Michigan railroads were once a sprawl-
ing, influential network. With over 6,600 miles of track in the Lower
Peninsula alone--the area of my study--they reached and changed every

county. The steam locomotive whistled through township after township

2

from 1837 until well into our century. It burned omnipresent wood, at
first, and boiled common water, thus satisfying the first needs of a
burgeoning technology that it be sustained by ordinary means. Develop-
ing greater and greater pressure, with stronger and stronger metals,
steam locomotives evolved into huge machines, of many different wheel
arrangements for yard or road duty-~including some passenger pullers
with wheels 77 inches in diameter--and were masters of almost any
weather. As I will show, Michigan railroads touched Michigan like no
technology before or since. Even before the tumultuous 20th Century,
the railroads brought jobs, settlers, and trade to the state, carried
off much of Michigan's natural resources, and held no little sway in the
legislature. From 1900 to 1960, they further affected Michigan's
economy, finances, and society, influenced recreation, education, and
communications, and changed linguistics, politics and laws.

Part One of Chapter One will give some examples. During World War
Two--when Michigan railroads had to move immense quantities of goods on
very demanding schedules, despite manpower shortages--state railroaders
and the steam locomotive reliably distributed war materiel, transported
troops and prisoners, and tied together the "home front" with effective
communications. Part Two of Chapter One, though only a sketch, gives
due emphasis to this distinct time. And Part Three of Chapter One--the
negative side of the balance sheet-—will outline the continuous prob-
lems, hazards, and dangers that railroaders and the public faced because
of the steam locomotive and its technological web. Many strange and sad
consequences came about that no one could have foreseen in 1837--
outcomes that even in the 20th Century could be unpleasantly surprising.

Chapter Two, by examples and photographs, will show how and why
Michigan railroaders were unique. Oral histories will tell the way a
railroad man dressed, spoke, worked, and guarded his status. In
particular, this section portrays the flavor of railroad life, and how,

above all else, the railroader had to be tough. Certain quotes may seem

3

quaint and odd. But if the reader will draw on Chapter One, and rely on
my Glossary, Chapter Two will seem less distant. And the two chapters
together may begin to offer ways to understand this most unusual period

of Michigan's history: "the joy and thunder days."

CHAPTER ONE

RESULTS OF MICHIGAN RAILROADING, 1900-1960

 

CHAPTER 1: RESULTS OF MICHIGAN RAILROADING, 1900-1960

_art One: Peacetime Joy and Prosperity
1. Economics

A. Industries and Coal Users

Steam locomotives working in Michigan for sixty years reached
almost everywhere; the relationships between railroads and citizens were
elaborate. The engines could be awesome performers. Run on good
tracks, they could exceed 100 miles an hourx‘ Rapid schedules were
therefore possible to set--and to keep. Railroads toted freight and
passengers; transportation enriched the railroads. An example of this
symbiosis appears in Figure 1.

Grant, Michigan, seen in February 1950, is bisected by a steam
locomotive passing through with a freight train. The railroad is the
long-time Pere Marquette, named after the Jesuit explorer Jacques
Marquette, which has become the Chesapeake and Ohio, on its "North End"
from Grand Rapids to Traverse City. At left, the Grant Lumber and Fuel
Company sheds, their loading docks on the railroad's siding, wait for
flatcars of lumber and gondolas of coal when the "local" train will stop
in Grant, as engine #1067 here will not. Area builders, and area
residents who burn coal in stoves and furnaces, value that "local,"
which will also haul out from the siding at the right that refrigerated
boxcar--possibly packed with area fruit. Unseen in this--over the
photographer's left shoulder--is the Grant Elevator Company, another
stop for the "local"--and a vastly important one for area farmers.
Engine #1067 will leave all this behind rapidly and move onward through
several other such communities--each similarly linked to the railroad.

Notable by its absence is effective line protection, physical
barriers between these tons of rushing train and anyone line-side.

There are no fences, no crossing flashers or bells, no gates to drop in

 

HI

 

 

 

muswflm

Ammoegmcmwmfid owe inning 5323.: 3235 r

6

place, and only the minimum "crossbuck" sign of "Rail/Crossing/Road."
Even given the year of 1950, this indicates an American philosophy: on
almost every line in Michigan, and virtually all across the nation, the
track is open to trespassers, livestock, vehicles, and vandals. This
habit of poor line protection runs counter to the original, British plan
of strictly protected rights-of-way and uniformly guarded grade cross-
ings at roads. Decades of injuries and deaths have resulted. Moreover,
in Michigan, farmers whose cows were struck by trains fought a civil
insurrection in the 19th Century, trying to win compensation from the
Michigan Central.2 In World War Two, fearing sabotage, Michigan lines
put a guard on every significant railroad bridge in the state, and had
strict security measures at all shops.“

Equally significant, though underplayed in this photograph, is the
railroad's competition: trucks and automobiles. The muddy road across
the foreground already carries customers to the Grant Lumber and Fuel
Company, and in time will be roiled by lumber trucks. Vehicles rest
here and there in the picture, including one at the depot (just past
#1067). Indeed, Michigan highway M-37 runs north and south just beyond
the row of businesses on the right. In time, "the road" will kill this
train, and many others.

Forty years earlier, but on the same Pere Marquette, another scene
is revealing. Figure 2 lacks only an arriving train to be stereo-
typical. Economic inter-relationships and interconnections are plain
here in Williamston, among all the photogenic features: the depot with
three carts ready for incoming baggage and trunks; the stationmaster at
ease in shirt-sleeves, away for a time from his telegraph; the grain
elevator encroaching on the siding; the fat water tower sweating by the
freight house; and three small boys posing akimbo by the end of a
boxcar. Past the elevator, invisible to the photographer, a yard on yet

another siding has tons of soft coal beside it. Grain——coal--

. . .Oumu 5 ounce.— uw m4
wfimfism 550m :0 .8355 5.95 can 553m cwouddmwsmsvhaz 0.8%

n

LII .

 

 

232531 2:. 3333on 22 6&2on 5825333 ”N 25m:

8

passengers--freight--and probably express business--definitely, William-
ston and Pere Marquette were working together this fine day in 1910.

Two implications of this photograph are worth noting. The photog-
rapher was attracted not only by the quaint scenery but by the steam
locomotive--not visible here, but suggested by the engineman under the
dropped spout on the water tower and betrayed by the steam at the rear
of the picture. The steam locomotive guzzled water, often had to "stop
to feed itself at tanks," in Emily Dickinson's phraseu‘ Williamston was
therefore a regular water stop for Pere Marquette engines--a "jerk-water
town" in railroad slang. It may also have been a refueling stop once,
where two-foot billets of local lumber, stacked in a woodlot, were
pitched into the tiny bunkers of wood-burning engines.‘ Engines took on
wood in as little as one-half-cord lots.7 The implications are these:
1) that such inefficient small locomotives stopped at dozens of such
"Williamstons," helping to denude the landscape, and 2) that because of
locomotive lifetimes lasting 40 or more years, well into the 20th
Century the railroads were hampered by scores of such "hayburners."
These little engines demanded more crewmen, more supplies, and more
maintenance as part of the railroads' "over-expanded and obsolescent
plant."‘

Interdependencies, however, went far beyond the rural level, where
seasonal business predominated. The case of coal is an excellent
example of volume business that steadily affected masses of Michigan's
population. Lower Michigan, the state's population center, burnt much
coal annually for building heat, steam generation, and electric power.
Native Michigan coal was sparse and poor; the railroads thus hauled in
many tons from Appalachian mines. Huge concerns, including municipali-
ties, industries, and utilities had ”black snakes," trains of nothing
but coal cars, supply them. At Marysville, the Detroit Edison power

plant relied on Pere-Marquette-borne coal.9 At East Lansing, the Pere

Marquette periodically dropped off at Michigan State University gondolas

9

full of coal--a practice dating from 1889.lo At Lansing, the city Board
of Water and Light took in New York Central coal from 1940 onwards at
its Ottawa Street Plant. Also in Lansing, the Grand Trunk Western fed
coal to the Oldsmobile Plant of General Motors Corporation (G.M.C.). In
Flint, a group of G.M.C. units received coal by rail: the Turnstead,
Fisher Body, A.C. Spark Plug, Truck and Bus Assembly, and Buick Plants.’l
And at Midland, coal by the trainload disappeared into the boilers and
furnaces of Dow Chemical Company; "2,226 cars of coal and coke" in
1944.12

Another, subtler interdependency went on. The railroads burnt much
coal themselves in locomotives, Great Lakes car ferries, and buildings.
Locomotive and car ferry coal use was obvious, but building consumption
is little recognized. Considerable space in uninsulated, or poorly
insulated, physical plants had to be heated yearly. Some statistics

suggest the situation:

Table l: Pere Marquette Depot Cubic Footage13

Place Construction Total Cubic Feet
St. Louis Tile and Stucco 40,550
Belding Brick 61,600
Bangor Brick 106,697
Holland Brick 116,700
Grand Haven Brick 121,659
Traverse City Brick 186,454

And at the Union Product Depot in Detroit, partly owned by the Pere
Marquette, cubic footage ran to 3,706,192.“ Thus the railroads were
consumers as well as carriers of coal. Because they could be stymied by
shortfalls of it, they created many local landmarks--high coal piles,

such as at Baldwin--to ride out delays or coal miners' strikes.”

B. Agriculture
Cleaner commodities than coal prevailed in rural Michigan. In
season, crates of baby chicks--at one time, 300,000 animals a day--left

Zeeland.16 Carloads of cherries and other fruit left Michigan canneries,

 

10

like the one at Suttons Bay. Dozens of other products departed, via the
"local"--a purely freight train--or on a "mixed”--on a freight-and-
passenger train. Churns of milk often rode with the expressman in a
baggage car, lending his route the nickname of "milk run." Farm goods
reached market reliably, some even to the Union Depot in Detroit. What
was less reliable--lacked any tariff, in fact--but nonetheless blessed
growers year after year, was the arrival of hoboes atop, in, and under

freight trains to harvest Michigan crops, notably fruit.

C. Hoboes

Figure 3 suggests hobo habits. All the railroads shown lead west
or north to the great Michigan fruit-growing counties at the western
edge of the Lower Peninsula. Here, on sandy soils, amid Lake Michigan
temperateness, fruits abound.” The growing season begins at the Indiana
border in early spring, ending around Grand Traverse Bay in fall.
Millions of sweet cherries, tart cherries, apples, peaches, plums, and
pears weigh down their trees. Fruit without pickers rots by the ton.
Farmers in this fruit belt sought hoboes as pickers. They worked for

little--and were many. Michigan saw at least 1,704 of them.18 Jessie

Fox remembered some of these "knights of the road" at Port Huron, ca.
1910:

Every spring-~or in the fall, let's say--they
would come in to the depot, to the office, and a
lot of them were well-educated men. They were
not bums to begin with. And the (railroad) men
wouldn't give them money, because they knew if
they did, they'd drink . . . they'd let these
hoboes sleep on the Tappan (Junction tower)
floor . . . then they would leave in the spring,
andwstay up north, where the weather was good. .

Figure 4 shows "fruit tramps,” hoboes out of work after picking fruit,
in Berrien County while "the weather was good." Fox continued:

But then in the fall they'd be back. They were
headed for Florida . . . this was a twice-a-year
occurrence, years and years. Did you ever see
them cooking out as you went riding on a train?
. . . you'd see maybe three of them. They'd
have a pot . . . cooking out. . . .”

 

’/

6'

 

Figure 3: Random Sampling of Michigan Hoboes (Author)

 

’ - limitquw I III”
0 principal Michigan fruit-growing counties
(Source: Atlas 3; Michigan)

 

C) - hoboes or hobo jungles mentioned by sources

. (4“):in ('17

 

 

iii-T ___.. ' Tobi.)

 

 

12

AQOmHH<v oqm_ .cmmmnowz .zucsoo cofluuom :.waEmuH odsum:

 

"e wusmmm

13

Leah Cannehl recalled hoboes in a typical way:

I lived in Chelsea . . . we children would be
out in the back yard. We'd see these men coming
across the train, it'd be slowing down, and
they'd get off the train. Many times they would
come to the house for food . . .my mother never
turned them away. If it wasn't any more than
maybe a cup of tea and some bread, or something,
but she never turned one away. And there was
always a lot of them . . . when that train'd
start moving, they'd start scurrying back across
this little open field to get back on . . . we
found that they would make a mark on the side-
walk in the front of the house (that was visi-
ble) when they would come along. . . .2

Henry Truer, Jr., had a different memory:

We used to see them . . . in the (Grand Rapids)
yards . . . I was told this, and I don't know
who much truth it is--but, security, the rail-
road dicks came on at four o'clock in the after-
noon, (when) they (did) a yard check. Say they
beat the tar out of a hobo, a couple weeks be-
fore . . . they would find three stones stacked
up on one end of the yard, and on the other end
of the yard. And they knew somebody was going
to be waylaid . . . because they were after him
. . . that was the symbol . . . if they killed
one of the hoboes, they could figure one of the
rgilroad dicks was going to get in problems. . .

Russell Harrison of the Pere Marquette was one such railroad
policeman to deal with hoboes. They did not scare him:

We used to have hundreds of riders (in the
1930's)--bums on freight trains. Especially in
the early fall (sic) . . . unemployed Detroit
and Toledo all going to Traverse City to pick
cherries . . . with so many riding, it was im-
possible to handle it. There'd be jungles all
along the track. We had a jungle (by) Ensel
Yard (in Lansing) . . . there'd be all the way
from twenty to sixty bums there at a time.
They'd have their cookouts.

I got orders one time to break this jungle
up . . . (it was) right at one side of the yard
. . . between Logan Street and Turner (Street),
on the south side, where Spikes Alley comes in .
. . I went down there one evening and asked all
these fellows--there must've been thirty-five
there at the time-—if they were almost through
eating their Mulligan stew and so forth . . .

One says, "Yes. Why?"

"Because I'm going to break the jungle up."

"Well?" he says.

"That's right. Finish-—eating--and clear
out, or downtown (the Lansing jail) you go.‘

14

So they abide by what I said . . . I went
back when they were through eating. I stacked
all their utensils--frying pans, cups, plates,
anything they used--I stacked them in four piles
. . . about three feet high (each) . . . I took
my .38 out and shot down two bullets through
each pile . . . so they wouldn't have any uten-
sils . . . so they wouldn't come back. . . .3
Hoboes in Michigan ebbed and flowed to and from orchards "in an
overall system that no one publicly acknowledge(d)," spending their
wages freely, needing no payroll deductions or pensions, so that
"orchard owners, the (hoboes) and the local economies (were) all
(satisfied)."24 The hobo life seemed glamorous to many--the happy
"rover”--except that:
. . . the emotional tone of the jungle was laced
with glib cynicism, persecution feelings, self-
adulation for having seceded from society.
Think of it as a blend of the age-old gypsy's
Ishmaelitism with the capping-out of the hippie
of the 1960's--on1y messily warped by lack of
women.”
D. Bulk Commodities
But hoboes by picking fruit gave back to the railroads some of the
business they extracted by "pilferage, damage to rolling stock and

attacks on employees."“ Tremendous "fruit rushes"--express shipments of
fruit by the trainload, via what were dubbed "banana trains"--took
precedence over all other trains in their season. Other farm products
left the state by the carload. Onions from Potterville filled refriger-
ated boxcars.27 Beans by the ton left the Thumb. Fertilizer to keep the
process going entered Michigan by rail as well, including cow dung and
pig manure in gondola-lots from the Chicago stockyards.” And piggeries,
such as the one at White Cloud, got gondolas full of city garbage for
cheap swill.29

Michigan's railroad-hauled bulk commodities had influence far
beyond the state. The Ludington and Northern, a short-line railroad,
existed primarily to move dune sand on its first step to the Ford Motor

Company glassworks in Toledo, Ohio. Ford made all its automobile glass

"HI

15

from Michigan sand. Also, huge amounts of chemicals left Midland
annually from the Dow Chemical Company. Dow's own fleet of tank cars
traveled on the Pere Marquette to as far away as Texas.”3| Indeed, the
Dow-Pere Marquette relationship was symbiotic, dating from 1900 when
Herbert Dow had "a small shack" beside the railroad.”~33 The Dow plant

in Midland in 1945 had 16 miles of railroad as its spine.“

2. Finances

Both Peninsulas of Michigan had surprising mileage: 6,640 miles of
track in 1960, many years after the peak of Michigan railroads, and no
less than 7,946 miles in 1900.” Figure 5 shows the principal Lower
Peninsula railroads. The lines sprawl, with concentrations on the down-
state urban areas. With this broad network came broad financial
benefits. Those Lower Peninsula companies paid $7,886,894.22 in ad
valorem taxes in 1924 on their 6,393.70 miles of track, chiefly to
support what was still called "the little red school house on the
hill."3‘"37 In some counties, the railroad or railroads was or were the
second-highest taxpayer, after the citizenry.38 An historian remarked in
1924 that Michigan railroads were "(the) actual though indirect reposi-
tory of the accumulated savings of a large proportion of our people
(through pension funds)."” Meanwhile, railroad payrolls boosted local
economies. At one place alone, the Pere Marquette Mechanical Department
employed 887 people at the Wyoming Shops in 1945."0 The Pere Marquette
had, at various times, large or small shops in Ionia, Traverse City,
Saginaw, Plymouth, and Port Huron. In each place, as well as all the
spots train crews would stop for lunch, local "beaneries" and businesses

gained local trade.

16

Figure 5: Principal Lower Peninsula Railroads (Rand McNalley)

 

Branches have been omitted. “II I_ I ' 4-"_ I-“

C) denotes residence of nerson interviewed/
residence of source.

Does not show merger;names

[NSC-1960' -. Mackinaw (my

-

is:
I+I~ : PQYCIMarznc'I'i’c 27, I - r" .
-~~ : Grui Kale”; +I.'J.'iu’ '
Id’" Fun: Iva.“ R.R.

+3. Midi'su. Zu‘lw-a I,

IaIv Nw York (euh'd

“*—

A an :4. I" ”had.

oov :

6w.) Tv‘hk
\e‘u-Ivv- I‘ 4"

  
   
  
 
 
 
  

Lemmy :I-‘n

 

 

 

 

17

3. Society

A. Communications

Payrolls, letters, packages, bills, junk mail, and much else moved
around Michigan in stout Railway Post Office (R.P.O.) cars. Figure 6
indicates the connections of these cars on one railroad. Each Grand
Trunk Western R.P.O. was 85 feet long, 10 feet broad, 8 feet high, and
could safely hold 80,000 pounds of mail at 85 miles an hour--a speed
which was not rare on the Grand Trunk Western.“ Mail was snatched
aboard an R.P.O. at places too small to merit a stop. A canvas bag hung
some 7 feet 3 inches off the ground on a trackside crane held the mail.‘2
A clerk aboard the R.P.O. swung a mounted hook out to grab the bag.
Dumped onto tables in the center of the R.P.O., the mail was quickly
sorted into pigeonholes, canceled with an "R.P.O." mark, rebagged, then
tossed out to small towns passed at speed, or toted off at journey's
end.“3 A letter could and did go from Michigan to California in two and
one-half days--when handed on to a Santa Fe R.P.O. at Chicago.

Security on these mail cars was tight. End doors were oak, barred
and chained shut when the R.P.O. moved. Windows were shatterproof
glass, and wooden bars covered them on the inside. Each car had sides
of bulletproof oak and steel, and the clerks carried .4S-caliber
revolvers. Payrolls were usually in cash--a tempting target.“ R.P.O.
cars were strong in memory of Jesse James and such robbers. They
carried the mail well, lasting from Lincoln's presidency until Nixon‘s,
and hauled much mail from city center to city center. "More than 90
percent of first class mail," a 1953 estimate ran, "is transported by

rail in intercity traffic."”

B. Telegraphy
Movements of trains containing R.P.O. cars--or anything else
coupled behind a steam locomotive--obeyed orders issued over a rail-

road's own telegraph system. Copper wires dipped along from green

 

Figure 6: Railway Post Office Communities, Grand Trunk
Western R.R. (Rand McNally)

Neil could be received or disbursed at each place.
0., -

Several Detroit-area communities have been omitted. for lack of 89869-

C) denotes e community.

fluzkfr", .33"

L3 n ' c

0 (J

4:
n,-
\J‘; .

I)
I)

o_

 

#3
O 0 0d”(

 

 

 

19

insulator to green insulator for miles along the ditches. Telegraph
poles were so regular that you could time a train's speed by counting
them and eyeing your watch. The Grand Trunk Western, despite encroach-
ments by the telephone, still had 212 Michigan telegraphers in 1941.“
Most famous, of course, from the Grand Trunk (albeit before our period)

was Thomas Edison, who went on to bigger things." But dozens of other
boys became enthralled by "lightning-slinging," the art of the telegraph
key.“ This means of communication was "especially welcome in cases of
emergency . . . (and) there was always a telegrapher" at a depot, where
"the sound of the dot and the dash was attractive.“9 In Flushing, one

local lad served the Cincinnati, Saginaw and Mackinaw. In 1918 it:

. . . was the very highest peak of the CS&M . .
. It was still wartime and the trains literally
clogged the tracks for twenty-four hours a day.
Even after the Armistice was signed that Novem-
ber there seemed to be no appreciable slacking
off. That summer and fall and winter Percy
Benjamin was still working at the depot . . .
(he) was in his middle thirties . . . he had a
sure hand and often sent messages so fast that
the chief dispatcher, who was no slouch himself,
had to ask him to slow down. . . .”

At Flushing, Williamston, and so on, before telephones were common,
the telegraph brought in the outside world:
The wires were the source of almost all the
news. Over them came the first tidings of the
San Francisco earthquake, the sinking of the
Titanic, Willard's victory over Jack Johnson,

and the daily baseball scores . . . the clicking
of the telegraph key never ceased. . . .“

C. Wintertime Necessity

And, clattering away, the telegraph would summon snowplows and
shovelers to level Michigan drifts. Winters in the Lower Peninsula
could be severe enough to stop even steam locomotives. Figure 7 shows
how snow has stalled two Grand Trunk engines near Flushing on February
22, 1912. The engineer in the first locomotive, leaning out of his cab
into a drift, the diggers looking bashful, the small boys gawking at the

photographer, and the dog leaving the picture at the lower right won't

 

20

 

E03838 m . Honda: 2 2

 

.NN xumsunwm .cmmfisu«z .wcfinmnam umoz

 

 

”h wuswfim

21

be still a moment more than necessary. Almost out of sight, still
smothered, is the second engine. This view is a postcard one, and its
message, dated March 8, 1912, reads in part: "Dear Coz. Here is one of
our views after the storm. Do you wonder that we are just getting mail
that we should have had a week before? . . .” Until the railroad opened
the way to the outside world again, Flushing and scores of communities
were snowbound. As Clarence Vicent (born in 1925) recalled, in Baldwin:

. . . sometimes the snow would be as tall as
this (gestures seven feet high) back when I was
a kid . . . more than that, if the wind blew it
hard . . . they used to take old boxcars, set
them up for a snow fence . . . one time, we had
a week before we could get any trains through,
steam engines, powerful things, they couldn't
get through from Grand Rapids up to Traverse
City for about a week . . . this was about '29,
through the '30's--'37 was a real bad year . . .
we couldn't even get automobiles into Peacock
for about a week, too. . . .”

Pere Marquette engineer Clarence Gangluff remembered tactics his
railroad tried with a snowplow in the Thumb:

About 1913, the west end (Saginaw to Ludington)
was plugged up pretty bad, but the Port Huron
Division, that was closed right out. It was
four or five days they couldn't get into Harbor
Beach . . . that little snowplow, we took it
back down to Ponds and got some concrete blocks
and they filled that up with them. The gangway,
and everything else they could, to (get) that
snow plowed. She just go into that, and roop!
Well, she stopped almost standing up straight.

Pretty near a week for snow to get (out of)
there. . . .“

On another occasion, which Gangluff was reticent to describe, he himself
buried a snowplow in a drift at Kinde, and had to get the town to dig it
out.” Snows could indeed be high. But sooner or later the railroads
beat them.

Two implications emerge from all these "snow stories" and from
remarks by other railroaders: 1) that winters in the Lower Peninsula
reputedly used to be more severe than they are now, and 2) that certain
parts of the Lower Peninsula are "snow belts." Areas downwind of the

Gary, Indiana, steel plants, and sections of the Thumb are often

 

22

mentioned. This in turn suggests consequences of technology not perhaps
foreseen: not only weather changes, but pollution belts downwind of
such complexes as Gary. From smokestack after smokestack of locomo-
tives, as well, soot, sulphur dioxide, and carbon monoxide churned
forth. Smoke ordinances in cities tried to regulate (or fine) such
railroad smog, but were not universally successful. In at least one
case, ”the smoke inspectors were paid off.“6 And, as will be seen

later, steam locomotive exhaust could kill.

4. Recreation

A. ”Resort Specials"

Every season saw special trains bearing travelers north in Michigan
for "re-creation." The Pere Marquette's "Resort Special" ran to the
northern end of the railroad, "the Baptist show place, Bay View, near
Petoskey.""’7 Starting in Chicago, beginning shortly after World War One,
it added riders at Grand Rapids from Toledo and Detroit, then barreled
on 247.9 miles to Bay View’ww Willis Dunbar as a child saw it "whiz
through” Hartford, Michigan, "late in the evening," to arrive at Bay
View via Traverse City and Charlevoix "early the next morning.”“
Grindstone City and Pointe Aux Barques were two other Pere Marquette
tourist destinations.62 By 1903, the Grand Rapids and Indiana had
organized a "Northland Limited" which attracted riders from Louisville,
Kentucky, St. Louis, Missouri, Cincinnati, and points closer. Cincin-
nati passengers could board there at 7 p.m. and reach Mackinaw City the
following morning with others from Louisville, St. Louis, Ft. Wayne,
Indiana, and other cities.“3 Such resort specials persisted on the Pere
Marquette, the Grand Rapids and Indiana, and the Michigan Central "into
the 1950's."“

To entice riders, Michigan lines created fancy brochures--with

slightly presumptuous titles:

 

23

A few facts about a pleasant place . . . pp
provide . . . an ideal summer home . . . in the

heart of the wildwoods of Michigan (Ann Arbor
R.R., in 1901);“

Grand Rapids and Indiana Railway, the Fish-
ing Line (1902, complete with a picture of a

leaping trout;“

Quiet summer retreats along the Lake Shore

and Michigan Southern Railway (1903);
A little corngr of God's country (Manistee

and Northeastern Ry., 1908);68

Mackinac Island (and) Michigan resorts
(Michigan Central R.R., 1901?);69

Hunting and Fishing, inexpensive outings,
and vacations on the popular and picturesgpe
Detroit and Mackinac Railway (1909);

Michigan summer resorts, a ggide to the
summering places in the lake and river regions
of the state of Michigan, together with a list
of hotels and boarding houses (and) their rates,
fishing and hunting lodges, and the laws

respecting fishing and hunting, etc. . . . (Pere
Marquette Ry., 1917).'

Manus manum lavat. Mackinac Island's Grand Hotel, a destination
for the well-to-do, was a joint venture built in part with Michigan
Central and Grand Rapids and Indiana money.72 At Charlevoix, the Pere
Marquette "apparently owned 'The Inn' there," billing it as "the finest

Summer Hotel in the resort country."73

B. Local Trade

Tourists arriving by train were most welcome in communities whose
economies had little other steady income. According to one theory, the
"turn—over effect," a dollar spent by a tourist would circulate seven
times among local merchants before coming to rest in a bank." That
tourist and his family might well spend money not only for lodging and
food but also purchase expendables like guide services, film, souvenirs,
entertainment, laundry use, and to a limited extent patronize fixed
services like hardwares, bookstores, hospitals, and undertakers.
Tourist volume could be a surge. The Michigan Central dining hall at
Mackinaw City served breakfasts to 800 travelers some busy mornings.”
Tourism was all the more welcome in northern Lower Michigan (and the

Upper Peninsula) because when cold weather came, and schools re-opened,

 

24

the tourists went home, the meager agriculture and scarce industry of

the region had to suffice, and they did not suffice any too well.76

C. Sports, and Other, Specials

Other forms of recreation and sport gave rise, on a spot basis, to
special trains. Russell Harrison recalled Pere Marquette baseball,
basketball, and football trips from Michigan State University to the
University of Michigan in the 1940's. Certain football trips had ”as
high as 18 coaches . . . (with) up to 80 people a coach.”" Grand Rapids
sports fans came to Lansing, Lansing ones to Detroit. A passenger a
little in his cups estimated the 90-minute trip from Lansing to De-

troit--at 60 m.p.h.--took ”four beers."”

Meanwhile, circus trains invaded Michigan periodically with
performers, animals, and crew. Keith Bartow visited one such train in
Lansing, and remembered that roustabouts sleeping in the train's bunks
"always had to take the upper" one-~"they smelled so bad; the stink
rose.”” Those bunks may not have been so good anyway. A claim agent in
1906 snapped:

We all have no end of trouble with circuses and
theatrical troupes traveling in their own cars,
many of which ought to be in the scrap heap.
These cars should never be accepted, no matter
who is in them or what notice you may have re-
ceived about the runs to be made with them,
unless (everything) connected with them (is) in
good repair . . . when you do take them, handle

them as carefully as if they contained dynamite,
agd get them off the line without accident. . .

This warning was not hollow. The Wallace Brothers Circus train

came to pieces in an air-brake failure at Durand in 1903.81

5. Linguistics and Literature

Circuses abounded in colorful dress and speech. But railroads had
their own allure, including words now part of common speech and unrecog-

nized for their roots. "Highball," originally a metal globe hoisted

 

25

high on a rope to tell an engineer to proceed--"to highball" was the
verb derived from this signal-~now is a kind of cocktail, where ice
floatshigh, like the globe could. To "side-track" someone, depriori-
tize something (like a train), is in common parlance. And "washout,"
railroading's term and gesture for "Stopl," now means any failure-~and
is an official's gesture in football.”

Michigan railroads have also inspired literature. Ernest Heming-
way, who traveled the Grand Rapids and Indiana, set his short story "The
Battler" on it, between Walton Junction and Mancelona. Quite realisti-
cally for the locale, the story deals with hoboes.83 Not far away, Bruce
Catton's memoirs, Waitin for the Mornin Train, describe the Ann Arbor
at Beulah; "the train . . . came along the lake shore . . . and (swung)
up to the platform, smoking and hissing and clanking, with the locomo-
tive putting on its characteristic act of looking and sounding . . .
alive."“ Catton scores the "slightly seedy Pere Marquette," too.” And
Edmund G. Love's autobiographical The Situation in Flushing revolves

around his love at Flushing for the Cincinnati, Saginaw, and Mackinaw.“

6. Higher Education

A. Recruiting Trains

Not only literature but also higher education gained from railroad
associations. "Recruitment Specials" on the Pere Marquette and the
Grand Trunk Western brought prospective students--and their parents--to
Michigan Agricultural College, through the undeveloped fields of south
campus to, and across, the angled bridge across the Red Cedar River,
where the Old College Spur they were riding dead-ended beside the
powerhouse, a short stroll away from central campus. The long dresses,
fine bonnets, and boaters of the crowds show up vividly against the old
Pere Marquette clerestory coaches in period photographs. And the

visitors were most welcome, for M.A.C. was not yet the giant it would

 

26

become as Michigan State University, and the college was eager for more

students.”

B. Exhibit Specials

Michigan State College, the successor to M.A.C., was more outgoing.
In September, 1929, its Purebred Dairy Sires Train traversed the Lower
Peninsula on the New York Central. Figure 8 shows the Sires Train and
its odd mix of coaches and freight cars. Behind engine #8455 rode a
cattle car, containing a first-class dairy cow. After the next two
cars--coaches full of exhibits--a flatcar was coupled on. At each stop,
as farmers congregated, the cow was urged onto the flatcar and there
milked, to display her productivity. Six coaches after the flatcar held
more exhibits. The whole enterprise was the brainchild of the M.S.C.
Cooperative Extensive Service.

Quite explicit. What is implied by the Sires Train is that in
1929, Michigan's population was still sufficiently agricultural to be
reached in large numbers by such a train. The corollary is that the
settlement pattern of southern Lower Michigan followed the tracks to the
extent that a century after statehood enough farmers still worked the
land close enough to the rails to take an interest in M.S.C.'s Sires
Train. (The effects of the Great Depression had not yet arrived here.)

A "Soil Train" likewise operated by the Extension Service earlier,
on the Michigan Central, carried exhibits and a rolling laboratory,
preaching soil conservation. Two other railroad connections touched the
institution at East Lansing. In 1942, M.S.C. Reserve Officer Training
Corps cadets left for war on Pere Marquette coaches waiting on the Old
College Spur.as And, in 1926, M.S.C. students used the Spur irregular-
ly--students like to be unconventional--hiding beside it as a place to

"spoon" in private, until interrupted by a steam locomotive.89

 

1919 (MSU Archives)

Better Dairy Sires Train, September,

Figure 8

 

28

7. Politics and Law

A. ”Whistle-stopping"

Steam locomotives were natural interrupters, show-offs, attention-
getters, disrupters and stand-outs with their great bronze bells
tolling, exhaust jets of steam hissing, safety valves letting go with
ear-splitting roars, and whirlwind pistons and rods revolving enormous
wheels. (The horn of a Diesel engine, in imitation, was required by
Michigan law to be audible at least 5,300 feet away, in any weather.”)

A train's rumble could be heard miles off. Railroads were ppg great
sound-and-light show daily in places barely big enough to show on a
map--communities in every county. This combination of advertisement and
geography aroused politicians. What better, they reasoned, than to rent
a train with its panache, drum up crowds, and excite voters from the
rear platform at all those little burgs--towns collectively large enough
to affect a vote? Thus the art of "whistle-stopping" Michigan began,
especially during presidential elections. Franklin Roosevelt's rival
Wendell Willkie so toured the Lower Peninsula in 1940. Harry Truman
gave 'em hell in 1948 at Grand Rapids, Lansing, Detroit, and Flint.‘“"’2"’3
Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy followed Truman's example. Security
was tight in every case. Still, Truman was booed in Lansing; little

boys threw rocks at his private car.“

B. State Law

Twentieth-century Michigan laws regarding railroads in large part
favored state lines, and in numerous cases were the products of railroad
lobbyists. Most of these laws meant safer shipping and traveling for

the general public. But they first worked for the safety and security

 

of the railroads.
It was a misdemeanor, for instance, after 1907 to ”throw any stone,
brick, or other missile at any passenger train, sleeping car, passenger

coach, express car, mail car, baggage car, locomotive, caboose (or)

 

29

freight train."” Another misdemeanor, after 1921, was to tamper with
any switch or derailing light.” And, after 1917, "any person who
maliciously removes, takes or changes, adds to or takes from or in any
manner interferes with any journal bearings or brasses . . . of any
locomotive, tender or car . . . used by any railway" risked punishment
of "imprisonment in the state prison for not less than one nor more than
two years. Possession of any such bearing is deemed prima facie
evidence of guilt."97

These modern laws followed a long series of 19th-century ones which
in many cases not only favored but fostered Michigan railroads:
incorporation charters of all sorts, this or that concession, laws
regarding taxation set remarkably low, and particular laws running
almost counter to the public interest.98 One law especially boggles the
mind. By its provisions, if a railroad could prove that a farmer had a
hole anywhere in the fencing around his four lot lines, then that
railroad was not liable for damages if it struck the farmer's cow on the
tracks.99 Edmund G. Love remarked of the period's chief legislator:

Ira Sayre was a lawyer . . . for nineteen
(years) he was the majority leader of the legis-
lature, and later its speaker. During most of
his life he probably wielded as much power as
anyone in the state of Michigan. There was
always a rumored taint of corruption about Ira
Sayre . . . He was known as the railroads' man.
All railroads in Michigan had to secure grants
of rights-of—way and other privileges from the
state legislature, (with) routes, rates and
other matters . . . Ira Sayre had the final say
in all these things. That he took good care of
the railroads is attested to by the gold life-
time pass, good for transportation on any rail-
road in the United States, that he received upon
his retirement. . . 3”

Until the coming of the automobile and concurrent highways, no
industry in Michigan was so favored by state law as the railroads. Or,
perhaps, needed to be. The negative consequences of railroads for the

state were not negligible, as will be shown.

 

30

Nonetheless, in a powerful variety of ways, Michigan railroads,
powered by the steam locomotive, had positive consequences in economics,
finances, society, recreation, linguistics, and literature, higher
education, politics and those laws supporting the commerce, communica-
tions, and transportation of the state. It must be emphasized that
these were pgace-time effects, moreover, when the railroad industry was
generally stable in operations. The great difference to come during
wartime was a matter of strain, concentration of manpower although the
work force was not increased, tighter schedules, and the fear of failure

that could disappoint or endanger the country.

 

Part Two: In the Thunder of War

1. Defense Shipping
Though not at the battlefronts, Michigan railroads did go to war

in World War Two--as much as any other force in the state. Defense
suppliers and manufacturers depended on the rails-~and on the steam
locomotives, a large one of which would work for most of 250,000
miles.‘01

Figure 9 indicates where the Pere Marquette kept busy. (See also
Appendix A.) Each city or stop marked had at least one shipper or
customer thought important enough to figure in 1945 Pere Marquette
publicity.”€

Several branches now vanished had their last hurrah. The Traverse
City-Petoskey stretch, the Midland-to-Reed City trackage, the northern
way into Muskegon, all indicated on Figure 9, and an assortment of
shorter offshoots were pressed into service. From a game-theory point
of view, most of them gave alternative routes for traffic when the huge
main lines were clogged. Every "streak of rust,“ every mile of rotting
ties was prized.”3 The war effort demanded them.

An amplification of Figure 9 reveals the data in Table 2.
Arguably, then, during World War Two some 926,401 people in
Michigan could be affected by just ppg railroad's service, the sales it

made possible, or payrolls it made possible that would disseminate
through communities, exclusive of railroad employment itself. Certain
towns had no choice but to ship or receive on one line. Such "captives"
of the Pere Marquette numbered at least the 28 listed in Appendix B.
Wartime travel on the Pere Marquette also had "captive" a number of
modest places--the same list of Appendix B. And, because of rationed
gasoline, and spare parts like tires hard to get, travel in Michigan gig

noticeably happen by rail. Where freight was concerned, the railroads

31

32

Figure 9: Pere Marquette Shippers, I945 (Pere Marquette)

:3

 

/.

/
I Branches have been omitted. '
9

 

Notei Does not show all grain elevators. lumber companies.
coal yards, cenneries,'hetcheries, power‘plante, etc.
Total Pere Marquette‘treckese (owned):

1,505.88 miles.

 
  

 

    
 

P~+sI<7
/
7Fumotc47
”I .
husk ‘
(I‘d
LMJI'NS‘I-on “(3‘) . \b
. {1. 1§I
.q" 's
a t
'3" 3‘1 "III
#3:}?! 9433*“!
f‘ih? 7+. "on. a
'6’“; 3L“ fie-"u'IIc :7
GA;
mu...) ’4
' D'vaf’
0'
. “‘0‘.“
‘eu'bfl-“wtw
$533R0L

 

/ “WINK
\
\
\ ..

33

Table 2: 1945 Demographics on the Pere Marggette Railwayw‘

Location Number of Firms Population (or Employment)
Dearborn 1 (88,000 employed, in 1939)
East Lansing 1* 5,839

Lansing 13 90,000 (1944 estimate)
Grand Ledge 4* 3,899

Lowell 6* 3,260

Belding 5* 4,089

Greenville 4 5,321

Alma 7 7,202

St. Louis 5* 3,039

Grand Rapids 26 210,000 (1944 estimate)
Grand Haven 7 8,799

Muskegon 20 70,000 (1943 estimate)
Holland 12* 14,616

Benton Harbor 10 16,668

St. Joseph 3* 8,963

Traverse City 14 14,455

Petoskey 6 6,019

Monroe 6 18,478

Grand Blanc 1* 1,012

Flint 20 151,543

Saginaw 25 90,141 (1944 estimate)
Midland 1 11,500 (1943 estimate)
Reed City 3 1,845

Olivers 3* not available

Manistee 17* 8,694

Ludington 1* 10,000 (1943 estimate)
Marysville 1* not available

Port Huron 8 34,968 (1944 estimate)
Bay City 8 47,956

*Indicates "captive" shippers, who could ship only on the Pere Marquette

NOTE: Table 2 does not indicate "captive" firms inside towns.

34

dominated, as they did nationally. National statistics make the trend

clear:

Table 3: 0.8. Intercity Passenger Traffic, 1941-1945m’

(in millions of passenger-miles)

1941 1942 1943 1944 1245
Railways 30,317 55,073 89,865 97,704 93,817
Highways 278,874 222,888 177,810 180,230 206,650
Table 4: 0.8. Intercity Freight Traffic, 1941-1945106
(in millions of ton-miles)

1941 19 2 1943 1944 1945
Railways 481,756 645,422 734,829 746,912 690,809
=64.72% =71.08% =72.79% =70.19% =68.90%

Highways 63,258 48,626 46,394 47,395 53,442
=8.50% =5.36% =4.60% =4.45% =5.33%

All Other 199,363 213,912 228,229 269,898 258,422
Modes =26.78% =23.56% =22.61% =25.36% =25.77%

2. Teenage Labor
Hauling all those people and tons of freight left Michigan rail-

roads, at war's end, "exhausted."m As the draft siphoned off person-
nel, state lines were forced to do more and more with fewer and fewer
staff.‘08 A writer in 1943 observed that "the railroads have had their
own share of trouble in gaining the necessary competent machinists for
their shops."“” Part of the solution for the Pere Marquette was to hire
teenagers as apprentices. Henry Truer, Jr., recalled how he hired on in
1944 at the Wyoming, Michigan, shops "at age 16," with his parents'
consent, earning "43 cents an hour, and, two weeks later, 63 cents an
hour," working one shift only, "eight (a.m.) to four-thirty (p.m.) in
the backshop."“° .Another Michigan teen, Frank Warden, found a Pere
Marquette job working on track--an alternative to summer training for

his high school football team:

35

In 1945, the Pere Marquette came to our (Grand
Rapids South) high school . . . and said they
wanted to run an experiment of a group (to
straighten) a section of track over by Holland .
. . our football coach thought this was a great
idea . . . he got together the fifty kids . . .
most of us were 16, 17 years old. We worked for
that summer . . . we basically had a good time .
. . we didn't lay any new track. We raised the
old track with hand jacks, took out any ties
that were defective (about 50% of them) . . .
put new ties in, put rather large gravel and
then tamped it underneath--the ballast. . . .“‘

Those kids did a maximum of "a thousand feet a day . . . at South
Saugatuck--I never did find out where South Saugatuck was. . . ." Fifty
other boys from other Grand Rapids high schools worked there as well.
The experiment did not satisfy the railroad, partly because of "horse-
play," partly because the kids refused to stay on. Warden added:

”We were there on V-J Day . . . the camp deserted, and everybody went
back to town. They weren't going to stay out there . . . that was
pretty much the end of it.”“2

Good track was nevertheless vital. On the New York Central's,

engineer Paul Cannehl recalled:

. . . we had trains coming in and out sometimes
as high as 24 a day . . . (to and from) Chicago,
Grand Rapids, Toledo (to Jackson) . . . (I)
handled a lot of troop trains . . . they went in
to Fort Custer (at) Battle Creek . . . that's
where the (German) prisoners were. . . ."3

3. "Oil Trains"

Figure 10 shows a key commodity of World War Two: oil. ("Oil
train" was the nickname for trains hauling petroleum.) Moving fuel for
the bombers heading for Europe, the tanks in North Africa, and the ships

in several oceans was a constant job, sometimes a headache. As Cannehl

remarked,

. . . oil was our main--we had solid oil trains
(all going east) . . . coming out of Elkhart,
Indiana (to Niles) . . . out of Niles you always
had a pusher (extra steam engine, pushing a
train), either way . . . Niles was in a hollow .
. . they had an eight-hour day, those pusher
engines. . . .“‘

(Farrington)

: "Oil Trains"

l0

Figure

I ”Mi: you! with a loaded oil train heading north

 

36

1' View 01 the New Veil: (entml's Mt. (en-nel, lllii i

en route east while a twin of empties waits to I

pull out In Noni: (in behind en II-TE 2-8-2 { . '
,,¢ type. the engine in the toregmund is on 0-3-0 L I

In» (less U-IE. (ourtesy New York (entml
R.R. .

/‘, 9‘ ','

37

Cannehl voiced common complaints of engineers:
A lot of oil trains--cars that were stored--they
came out of mothballs, and we had a lot of trou—
ble with them . . . rusty pipes, rust getting
into (the brakes) . . . they didn't have time to
repair engines the way they should have, and
cars . . . there were engines that the flues

weren't clean, they didn't have time . . . (so)
they’didn't give you the steam that you need. .

4. Communications and "Defense Railroads"

Despite all vexations, the trains kept rolling. Michigan railroad-
ers persevered. Jessie Fox remembered her husband Irving, a Grand Trunk
Western telegrapher, not overwhelmed by war business at Port Huron--
though traveling soldiers crowded the depot where he worked alone,
demanding he send their messages:

He had the telephone to his ear, he was writing
orders, he was taking that message on the wire,
and people were coming--it was wartime--I don't
know how he ever could stand it . . . they al—
ways promised him help, but he never got it.
Never. . . ."‘

The Grand Trunk Western had a particular reason for congestion.
Donald Hughes recalled that the G.T.W. was "a Defense Railroad," chosen
by the 0.8. government for its especially wide and high clearances,
stronger bridges, etc., ready to take oversize and overweight defense
loads. Hughes added that one such regular kind of war materiel was
"armor plate for ships, from the steel yards at Gary," too heavy to move
any other way. This plate was almost ppp heavy for the Grand Trunk
Western. Each section of the plate, one to a flatcar, was so massive
that by the time the carrying train reached Valparaiso, Indiana, every
flatcar had to be jacked up so that its bearings, "oozing out like
butter," could be replaced. Replacements of these bronze bearings were
repeated at Battle Creek, Lansing, Durand, Detroit, "and every forty

miles all the way East," the tonnage and friction generating constant

heat.“7

 

38

5. Munitions Shipments

Even more intensive care was lavished on the hundreds of shipments
of explosives that began in, or passed through, Michigan. The Pere
Marquette, said Russell Harrison, trans-shipped "train after train" of
unfused SOC-pound bombs--which moved unadvertised to the general public.
All the railroads feared sabotage. Once, in 1942, some unfused bombs
seemed to threaten Lansing. Harrison recalled an eastbound Pere
Marquette freight train:
The train crew had to stop at Grand Ledge, and
the conductor walking along beside the train
heard a ticking noise in one of the cars . . .
it was a car of bombs. So they pulled the car
into Ensel Yard and set it off on a siding . . .
the (Lansing) Chief of Police came out-~John
O'Brien--he and I went up and opened the car . .
. the bombs were all on racks. We could hear
the ticking noise . . . so they had to (fly)
bomb experts in from St. Louis, Missouri, to
check that car. We were about ready to evacuate
the neighborhood . . . that ticking was some
kind of an instrument checking the impact of
cars . . . against other cars. Nobody had told
us about it!"8

And from Lansing, only one of the war suppliers on Figure 9, came

"carload after carload of shells out of Motor Wheel (and) Oldsmobile."“’

Imagine this pressure of traffic, Michigan's share of those
majorities of ton-miles all throughout the war, channeled through
junction cities (Detroit, Saginaw, Lansing, Grand Rapids), this flood of
priority trains handled for the most part without mishap, run every day
of the year for the whole war, and you will understand why World War Two
was a great triumph for the railroads, and in Michigan the acme of the
joy and thunder days. I

But, all this while, railroading in Michigan had its dark side, and
the steam locomotive produced grim consequences. For the sake of
fairness, these must not be ignored-~and for the sake of understanding
why railroads today are largely supplanted by other modes of transporta-

tion, superseded by other technologies, these must be censidered.

 

gart 3: Blood and Thunder

Employees in the railway service, apart from
liability to accidents, lead a life of responsi-
bility and hardships. This, together with ir-
regular habits as regards work, sleep, and
meals, and exposure to dust, drafts, etc., in-
creases their liability to sickness in spite of
the fact that generally only able-bodied men are
employed . . ."

Industrial Health, eds.
Kober and Hayhurst (1924)m

Railway (i.e., railroad) service demanded that employees be
responsible, for in many ways the work could be taxing and dangerous.
The "Book of Rules," given to yard and train crewmen on their first day,
warned over and over that trains could maim or kill. A saying told to
young employees was that "every safety rule on the railroad was written
in blood," and this was true.m Statistics showed annually that the
technological web railroading was had consequences nobody foresaw or
welcomed.

Steam locomotives caused the least wanted, yet almost unavoidable
consequences. These machines were the sine qua non of railroading, yet
none were fully reliable. Some were "good steamers," others "jinxes,"
and all needed constant care. "Steamers" could and did leak, crack, and
develop weak spots in their fireboxes, boilers, superheaters, flues,
appliances, feedwater systems, injectors, throttles, valves, or cylin-
ders. Steam corroded all it touched; an engine could even explode if
tended poorly.m’123 Some did, causing terrible burns or deaths. Even in
the best of condition, a steam locomotive was a mass of many tons in
motion forward or backward, a danger railroaders had to shun. One of
the oldest regulations in the "Book of Rules" said: "Beware of move-
ment--any track, any direction, any time."”' Many men were squashed who
forgot this, or were distracted, or did not hear an engine approaching
because the rails were muffled by snow.”“” A steam locomotive could

even be treacherous standing still. In Detroit, one Pere Marquette

39

 

4O

fireman was killed when a rail an engine rested on turned over, spilling
243 tons onto him as he walked beside.m And in the worst of condi-
tions, a steam locomotive could be "a rolling bomb.“"” It is no wonder
that until well into this century a brakeman or conductor could not buy
life insurance, and that burial funds were major offerings of railroad
unions . ”9"”

Citizens in general did not notice these hazards, which happened in
a world few of them frequented. But often the public in Michigan
discovered the dark side of trains when they could not avoid them--at
grade crossings on roads, in violent collisions, with bloodletting. On
a subtler level, the public might have realized how "the tracks" and the
railroads spoiled the environment, disrupted the growth and flow of
communities, and swindled investors on a grand scale. Of course, no one
railroad consistently behaved so--none could have survived. Nor was any
railroad consistently cruel to its employees with unsafe working
conditions, irregular though the jobs were--no line could have kept its
staff. But in cases my interviewees related, citing railroads across
the state, and in many references in the literature, these hazards recur
and these practices are spoken of, to the sorrow of railroaders and

public alike. Without doubt, these were days of ”blood and thunder."

1. Affecting the Public

A. Grade Crossing Accidents

One of the trickiest things to grasp about trains--and one that
numerous drivers discovered too late--was the optical illusion that
trains in motion present. When one sees a train moving toward one from
one's horizon, the engine seems to be relatively slow--and the whole
train, foreshortened by distance and apparently bounded by two rails
which converge at that horizon, seems to be tiny. The reality that the
engine, when a steam locomotive, can weigh 400 tons, and that its train

can be a freight train a mile long, was obscured. One probably would

 

41

not have known, as one drove, that a high-speed train with all that mass
cannot stop quickly. The engineer, indeed, had limited control over
this steam locomotive when it was underway-~and was helpless when
someone strayed into his path.”‘ Even experienced railroaders sometimes
found it hard to tell when trains were coming, and had "close calls"
when trains almost hit them.

People died each year in accidents that were consequences of the
new automobile technology meeting the old railroad one. Drivers pitted
two- or three-ton vehicles against the thousands of tons of a train at
public highway crossings. The warning "stop, look, and listen" on the
posted crossbucks, wig-wag signals, or flashing lights there was ignored
by motorists who never stopped, looked, or listened, or who gig look,
spotted a train coming, then "revved up" and raced to get across the
tracks. "Some of them made it," said a veteran Pere Marquette engineer,
"and some of them didn't."132 The impact of a train could reduce an
automobile to scrap metal and hurl it for yards. And even moving
slowly, a train was a terrible obstacle which a driver tried to drive
through at his peril.‘33

A particular terror at highway grade crossings--another consequence
of new automobile technology clashing with old railroading--and felt in
complete helplessness by engineers--was the chance that a gasoline
tanker truck might put itself in the way of a train.”‘ An engine's crew
had no escape in such a collision, a form of flaming hell. "There was a
fireball," recalled one engineer who saw such an accident happen to a
friend of his. "It lit up the whole yard."“” The Brotherhood of
Locomotive Engineers campaigned for better laws and stricter regulations

regarding gasoline shipped by truck.”‘

8. Train Wrecks
Another kind of spectacle, train wrecks, affected more than just

railroaders. Wrecks included head-on collisions, rear-end collisions,

42

derailments, cases of sabotage, and other disruptions of rolling stock.
When a passenger train was wrecked, riders as well as crew could be
killed or injured. In freight train wrecks, besides crew casualties,
shippers' goods could be damaged or ruined. In any wreck, engines or
cars leaving the tracks could tear up ties and rails, too. This could
inconvenience whole communities, whose primary link to the world might
be broken. Furthermore, almost as soon as the noise of a wreck died
away, sight-seeing ”ghouls" would congregate. These persons, of both
genders and all ages, would, until railroad police arrived, climb on the
wreckage, steal anything loose, and impede efforts to clear the line.
Many snapshots of wrecks appear in old family albums--a dominant public
image of railroads in disarray.‘37 Someone in them is always pointing,
or grinning. An overturned locomotive, all its wheels in the air, is a
prize view. The worst in human nature is revealed at a wreck--or in
writers of wreck books.

Wrecks happened because steam railroading was a vulnerable industry
with imperfect technological development. Rails of wrought iron or poor
carbon steel cracked.138 Switches were left open by accident--or sabo-
taged.‘3" "Highball" signals could vanish from an engineer's sight when
a sunset back-lit them. This was the situation at East Lansing's
Trowbridge Junction, on the Grand Trunk Western, until 1930.”’ Rail-
roads were also prone to constantly changing conditions. The number,
schedule, and priority of freight and passenger trains varied, as did
the weather, the hour of operation (dew on the rails could lose a
locomotive its traction, squeezing the schedule), and the ever-present
chance of human error. A motto promulgated in 1912, "Safety First," was

fervent.Ml Only by continual care could railroaders avoid wrecks, and

save lives--their own and the public's.

 

 

 

43

C. Trespassers

The same raw form of physics that could skewer vehicles--the tons
of a train rushing down a track--were far more crippling or fatal to
certain people not driving. "Cowoatchers," for instance, would not
noticeably deflect anyone caught in front of a locomotive, and were in
any case merely ornamental by 1946."2

What certain people fell prey to was the peculiar attraction of
railroads as a romantic occupation, an exciting form of transportation,
and a cheap, common medium of travel for the poor. Therefore, railroads
were what lawyers term an "attractive nuisance," although under Michigan
and federal law a railroad's premises were private property, trains were
private conveyances, and unauthorized persons on either were deemed
trespassers. To discourage trespassing, railroads relied on posted
notices, fences, security forces, and the cooperation of local law
enforcement agencies. Notices, however, tattered in the weather; fences
were smashed down or rusted away; the few railroad police concentrated
on city yards; and local police rarely saw anything wrong with rights-
of-way used as short-cuts. Thus, with many of Michigan's rail yards and
almost all Michigan main lines wide open, or ill-fenced, hoboes,
children, and the unwary freely strayed in. Many were hurt, or died,
annually while hopping trains, getting off trains, joy-riding on freight
cars, hoboing in boxcars when a load shifted unexpectedly, or sleeping,
hiking, or playing on tracks when a train seemed to come out of nowhere.

Even if you were that presumably professional trespasser, the hobo,
it was no joke to be stuck on a train when "she" would not stop where
you wanted to. You could be killed jumping off from a speeding train.
Cy Taylor, a hobo in the 1930's, told me how he once rode a Grand Trunk
Western freight from Muskegon to Durand, his destination. But, ”She
wouldn't stop. So I got down at the foot of the ladder, and when she
seemed to go as slow as she was going to, I let loose. I rolled for two

blocks before I stopped."“3

44

Trains which struck trespassers while going full tilt could crush
someone without pity, or throw a body a hundred yards.“““ Not for
nothing would mothers fearfully warn their children not to play near the

tracks.”6 This threat from trains was never ameliorated.

D. Asphyxiation
Nothing in railroading smacks of menace like a tunnel. It burrows
into the earth to vanish from daylight, reeks of stale air, and can wear

slime on its walls like "The Cask of Amontillado.”“" From its opening
in 1891 until 1907, the Port Huron tunnel to Sarnia, Ontario, was no
exception."'8 This mile-and—a-hundredth passage, underwater as it was,
had no easy ventilation.”9 Steam locomotives passing through seriously
congested it. Clouds of carbon menoxide, sulphur, dioxide, and soot
rained back from smokestacks over and down the sides of trains.
Passenger conductors quickly learned to shut all their windows and
vestibule doors. Freight train crews hunched their shoulders and tried
to breathe through their neckerchiefs. The journey was still dirty, and
scary for children.

Twice, trains broke down, did not quite make it to Canada or back
from there. These breakdowns caused two tragedies of asphyxiation. The

first, in 1897, was thought a fluke."° But the second, in 1906, was too

much for the St. Clair Tunnel Company--and forced electrification of

locomotives operating in the tunnel.““ Jessie Fox, born in 1894,

remembered:

There was an accident--that's when the steam
engines ran through the tunnel. Now, I was only
a youngster-~I'm just telling you what I've
heard . . . there was fumes . . . there was an
accident in this tunnel, and my uncle--well, he
was more like a father, he raised me . . . he
went in with two or three others to rescue . . .
they went in and they were overcome . . . they
died . . . my mother said one of the Enrights'
girls' husbands died . . . after that they
started talking about electrifying. . . .52

 

45

In diverse ways, therefore, Michigan railroads injured or killed
many people, both their own workers and the general public. It was
proved over and over vividly that railroading technology had subtle and
gross imperfections which clashed with the public in general, and with
the emerging automobile technology in particular. Trespassers on
railroad property showed how dangerous trains could be when hoboes,
children, and the careless sought to take advantage of them. And even
bona fide passengers discovered death on the railroad--as did railroad-
ers. These deaths and injuries were only the most visible in a series
of ways that railroading affected the public. Broader influences were
at work, greater effects--like railroading's degradation of Michigan's

environment.

E. Environmental Degradation
Railroad promoters and lumber kings . . . ripped

through forests . . . in a rape of Gargantuan
proportions.

The Search for Order 1977-1920,

An irreversible degradation, which Wiebe notes--the reducing to
stumps of most of Michigan's miles of white pine--continued into the
20th Century. An alliance between Michigan's lumber barons and a
transitory network of standard— and narrow-gauge railroads hauled
millions of board feet irretrievably out of the state."‘ Poor planning
on the part of some of these lines left behind a hodgepodge of trackage
in cut-over lands which, after 1900, proved unprofitable, saddling
successor railroads with debts--and the need to abandon many miles.
Abandonment proceedings would continue to this day.”5

Another legacy of the slapdash construction methods that railroads,
to some degree, have always employed is another degradation: the tumult

of a train.

46

"Rattler--freight train."

Rail oad Avenue, Freeman L. Hubbard
(1945)'

Simple physics explains the noise of trains. Their rumble pours
forth from their primitive railroad track. All track is built by
driving spikes through tie plates into wooden ties to hold rails down,
and by fixing bolts through joint bars to link ends of rails together.
Before 1917, rails could be as short as 26 feet in length each.”7 ‘This
created some 203 joints per rail per mile. However, a railroad track
has two rails, thus it would have 406 or so joints per mile. But,
usually track gangs left a gap between the end of one 26-foot rail and
another, allowing for heat expansion in summer. This meant about 812
places per mile where train wheels could strike, "clickety-clack."
Moreover, freight cars--the heaviest in regular service--weighed around
1900 some 50 tons apiece, when loaded, and had eight wheels apiece. A
100-car freight train (about the limit for an engine then), weighing
5,000 tons in total, put six and one-quarter tons of force per wheel
through each of 800 wheels onto the track, striking 812 rail ends per
mile.

Nor was this the only source of noise. Besides wheel impacts, a
freight train attacked the air with overlapping sounds:

"glad hands" or air brake hoses leaking compressed air
”slack" running in and out of couplers
freight car bodies shifting up, down, and sideways
freight car doors vibrating
chains clanking
brakes engaging or releasing
loaded freight rattling
And steam locomotives added their din:
chains clanking
brakes engaging or releasing
fire doors slapping together
stoker engines grinding
booster engines "revving"
whistles blasting
safety valves ”popping off"
air compressors pumping

injectors "kicking in"
blowdown valves relieving

47

cylinder cocks spraying
smokestack exhaust blower venting

Little wonder many railroaders lost some hearing—-or that residences
near railroads were not desirable.

Railroad yards and their environs could be markedly undesirable.
Trains are grubby, and the steam locomotive is especially so.”“”
Moving trains created vacuums and coated all their undercarriages by
sucking up roadbed grit.mo Car and locomotive lubricants (greases,
oils, hotbox coolants), borne on gloves, smeared up hand rails, grab
irons, and ladders. Omnipresent rust compounded the smudge you always
got on your fingers touching railroad things. Dirt was inevitable. One
Jackson woman who lived near the roundhouse earned her living washing
solely railroaders' clothingu“” Spilling out of a yard, locomotive
smoke could foul a neighborhood. While engines idled, or had their
fires renewed, no wash hanging downwind on a line was safe."52 The
boiler room of a yard contributed its chimney's smoke and soot as well,
as did the forge room of a backshop.”’

Air pollution was not a yard's only degradation. The water table
in the area might suffer. Ashes from locomotives were regularly cleaned
out and down into pits, where rainwater created acid run-off. Round-
houses and backshops polluted periodically, during inspections, as
boiler-washing acids, lime, calcium, rust, water treatment chemicals,
kerosene, fuel oil, greases, and other maintenance wastes fell or were
hosed into drains, proceeding into city mains or the nearest convenient
waterway . "‘

Railroad constructions--cuts, fills, and bridges--in the 20th
Century had localized environmental effects (changing, e.g., some
watershed flows). A 19th Century secondary effect, still bitterly
remembered, was a series of forest fires in the northern Lower Peninsula
during the final decades of the 19th Century. At least one of these

blazes crossed the state, ripping through acres of cut-over lands after

48

the loggers retreated and their logging railroads were pulled up.
However, the most enduring, blatant effect of the railroads plagued the
cities, as the tracks split communities, altering the flux of urban life
in a proverbial manner:

Railroad tracks are the classic example of bor-

ders, so much so that they came to stand, long

ago, for social borders too--"the wrong side of

the tracks" . . . borders . . . form dead

ends(,) barriers (that) halt cross-use from both

sides . . . (and) form vacuums of use adjoining

them.

The Death and Life of Great American
Cities, by Jane Jacobs (1961)

Sometimes in long, sweeping curves, the tracks could be graceful,
and occasionally in cities formed easily definable areas. But railroad
lines tend to be arbitrary, and in Michigan cleavage lines of tracks are
usually straggling and kinked. Railroads could also take precedence
over city planning.““5 Railroad lawyers raised the number of dead-end
streets by forbidding new neighborhoods or suburbs to build grade
crossings over tracks, citing the eminent domain of railroads, and
wherever possible eliminating grade crossings, especially private ones
of farmers, but also ones inside towns.”’ From a railroad's point of
view, the fewer places the public could cross, the fewer places acci-
dents could occur-—and the fewer places the railroad would be required
to pay for in part and help maintain. In the context of a city,
however, whole neighborhoods thus stood with their backs to the tracks--
a zone of "decay . . . noise . . . the soot of steam locomotive days"--
detached, except by trespassing, from their peers across the rails, with
physical, psychological, and probably "red-lined" handicaps."“ What
many cities endure, therefore, and many citizens must adjust to, is ”the
general undesirability of railroad tracks as an environment.""” And
this whole state of affairs, with cities having yet another division

that surely they do not need, is a consequence of railroading technology

49

no one foresaw--or, perhaps, in the railroad's mind, no one cared about,

since railroaders saw it happen over and over without special note.

F. Financial Management
Railroad. b. U.S. "To accomplish with great

speed; to 'rush' (a person or thing) t9 or into
a place, through a process, etc."

The Compact Edition of the Oxford
English Dictionary, P-z, Vol. 2
(1971)

"To railroad" became a common verb for good reason. Irregularities
(such as manipulation of the Michigan legislature, through such repre-
sentatives as Ira Sayre) seemed to accompany enterprises (such as
railroads) touted to the public during the 19th and early 20th Centu-
ries, the time "when the railroad was king.”"m Possibly part of the
reason was the money. In 1919, the state of Michigan as a whole paid
its railroads "upwards of $140,000,000.1173 When things went wrong with a
Michigan railroad by, say, "a betrayal and breach of trust by corporate
officials, usually for personal gain," they could go in such a climate
spectacularly awry.”‘

This was the case with the Lower Peninsula's longest railroad, the
Pere Marquette, from the very first day it consolidated, January 1,
1900, as a merger of three shaky short lines--and things stayed wrong
until 1912.

Shown in part in Figure 5, the Pere Marquette began its corporate
life miserably, its public stock inflated (or "watered") by $1,461.250,
and its "book value" likewise inflated by $4,290,230."” Scholar Paul
Ivey wrote that this was ipso facto "the doom of the Pere Marquette"--
thanks to the wrecking crew of self-styled "Management" in charge.”5 As
Ivey observed:

Directors . . . were given very substantial
commissions in . . . Pere Marquette bonds
(which) they sold . . . (and) they7were materi-

ally rewarded for their services.

Their services could have been an undertaker's:

50

The road and equipment were undermain-
tained, unearned dividends were paid on common
stock . . . $2,500,000 net was added to current
liabilities. They also added more than
$146500'000 to the outstanding long time debt. .

Millions of dollars of . . . worthless
sfipck was forced onto the Pere Marquette. . .

Bonds were issued (fraudulently). . . J”

The Pere Marquette (reached) the lowest
depths of physical inefficiency that (a road
can) reach and still operate. . .
And this had profound implications for Michigan, Ivey concluded:
Interested parties (reduced) the Pere Marquette
and (caused) a loss to innocent holders of bonds
and stock . . . (communities) served by the Pere
Marquette suffered by reason of poor service . .
. the growth and develqpment of the State of
Michigan was retarded.l
In 1923, partially restored to health by receivership, Interstate
Commerce Commission scrutiny, and new management, the Pere Marquette
became the latest property of two Cleveland real estate dealers--who
would railroad in Michigan (and beyond) on a grand scale, and with mixed
impacts. The brothers Oris P. and Mantis J. Van Sweringen, who "had
learned the art of using other people's money," as "masters of lever-
age," made the Pere Marquette part of America's fifth-largest railroad
system.“° What they eventually put together is shown in Figure 113“

Under Van Sweringen control, the Pere Marquette strengthened its
connections to Michigan industries. Dow Chemical Company continued to
grow along the railroad at Midlawdfl” Core plants of General Motors
Corporation continued to ship and receive via the Pere Marquette at
Flint, Saginaw, Lansing, and Detroit, assisted by "belt" railways at
Detroit, Flint, and Lansing.m‘ The line even built an experimental
quarter-mile of track totally of concrete "on a 0.1 percent grade
between Detroit and Plymouth," testing the endurance of concrete beneath
the daily passage of "seven scheduled passenger trains, seven scheduled

freight trains, four regular switching movements, and about two extra

freight trains."m

 

5]

Figure ll: The Van Sweringen Pyramid (1934)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Haberman)
' The Van Sweringen Pyramid (1934) '
I . o. P. and M. J. Van Sweringen 7
80 (Fm: Micate percent" oi compo—- I
I film ‘ Van Sweringen Co
Varmfifo‘n'" "’3 The Vaness Company '_'
I . l The Shaker Co. I
100 100
Cleveland Terminal: ‘ 1
Building Company 100 The Long Lake Co.
I Metropolitan
10° 10° 35-7 15.6 7 Utilities. Inc.
Cleveland The Higbee
Hotel Co. Company
Allegheny Corp. 100 Cleveland Traction
' T ‘ l .
MISSOURI PACIFma __ "mm 5 6°
Cult Coast UM: 59.4
Int. Great Northern ‘00 Cleveland

 
   

 

 

Texa: & Pacilic

  

CHESAPEAKE
‘ CORPORATION

4 --—-"' 100

i... Traction Store:
I Pere Marquette 1:15 43-5 Co.

CHESAPEAKE
— 49.5 , ‘ "' 79.3 The Cleveland
I NICKEL PLATE 7.4 100 12.6 Ry.Co.
ugln ‘ ‘

lnterurban R.R. Co.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[953° .
wheeling a “0‘me 100 Cleveland a
Lake Erie “’9- Youngstown
‘ Percentage 0! control shown is based 42] Railroad Co.
on ownership of Prior Lien Stock. 100 9-9 32 45.5 Chicago It
Terminal Share: inc. L ERIE I 55%;: '
46.2 35.5 3.1
100 Union Terminal * 3
. PlTTSTON . L 912
Railway Co. °° u. s. DISTRIBUTING
100 St Joseph Belt 100 ’ 99. CORPORATION
Railway Co. pm... Coal Metropolitan U S T K
North Kansas an” Coal Co. ' '00:? “It
' fl City Development 100 l ‘ ______
Co. and . Hillside Coal ‘ Panlson a I
affiliated companies a Iron Co. Bovvns. Inc. 4
SOURCE: Fortune ‘

 

52

But is is arguable how much of the Pere Marquette's prosperity in
Van Sweringen times was due to generally good business health, and how
much was thanks to career railroaders like Frank H. Alfred, Pere
Marquette President--and not the result of the Van Sweringens.”‘ "They
were just bankers," said engineer Sam Chidester, who hired on with the
Pere Marquette in 1922. "They knew nothing about railroads."'” Chides-

ter told a story that summed up the Van Sweringens' skill at running
trains:

One of the Van Sweringens had his private
car attached to the end of a train at Grand
Rapids. I was the fireman. Van Sweringen
strolled up to the cab and got to talking to the
engineer.

"What do you think of this run?" Van
Sweringen said.

"Not much," said the engineer.

"Why?"

"The schedule's padded," said the engineer.
"Look, if you'd give me the chance I could run
her lots faster.”

Van Sweringen thought a second, then took
out his business card and wrote on the back of
it. He gave it to the brakeman and said, "Take
this to the dispatcher."

The brakeman came back and said, "The road
is yours to Chicago.”

We got in forty-five minutes ahead of
schedule. ‘9”

Schedules were not the only thing "padded" in the Van Sweringen
Pere Marquette. On October 28, 1929, its stock stood at 260. Next day
came Black Tuesday, the stock market crash, and the Pere Marquette began
to fall. By September, 1930, its stock stood at 130.191

"Water" also was squeezed out in gallons from stock of the Alle-
ghany Corporation, the Pere Marquette's "boss.” As Ron Chernow wrote:

-(The) Van Sweringen holding companies took con-
trol of other holding companies in an endless
hall of mirrors . . . (Alleghany) stock . . .
was meant to be . . . the super holding company
atop their pyramid of debt . . . (but) Alleghany
shares feverishly bid up (in) early 1929 now led
the market down in the autumn of 1930. They
fell from 36 to 10 in just two months . .
ultimately Alleghany stock would fall to 37- -1/2
cents per share.l

 

53

Of course, the Pere Marquette would survive--and survive the Great
Depression--but it would thereafter be coupled to the fortunes of the
Chesapeake and Ohio, its primary connection and, in 1947, the railroad
that would absorb it.

This brief discussion of money, power, and foolhardiness shows only
the most public problems of just one Michigan railroad. But it suggests
several implications:

i. That the railroad industry deals in huge sums. This is
certainly true; an Equipment Trust Agreement between the Pere Marquette
and the National Bank of Detroit amounted to $2,775,000)fl“

ii. That the railroad industry has fixed ties to financiers, which
it does; ". . . manacles . . . found railroads to exclusive relations
with traditional bankers . . ."fl” and

iii. That as investors in and users of the railroad industry, the
people of Michigan are subject to forces far removed from Michigan--who
may "know nothing about railroading."

The reader must decide. What he or she may conclude, however, is
that in ways gross and subtle, present and historical, Michigan's
railroads have negatively affected Michigan citizens. Be it through
losses of monies invested in a risky railroad, or be it through a city
altered and disrupted by tracks, or be it by assaults on the environ-
ment, or be it by enduring deaths and injuries, Michiganians have
suffered from the presence of railroads.

Unfortunately, state railroaders have known greater grief, "many
sorrows."“” Men died or were maimed each year in the joy and thunder
days. Their toll begins with deaths and injuries due to their primary

tool: the steam locomotive.

 

54

2. Besetting the Railroaders

A. Steam Locomotive Dangers

Each steam locomotive represented a calculated risk by a railroad,
and its insurer, that up to 250 pounds per square inch of steam could be
safely contained and successfully applied during the lifetime of the
boiler, possibly fifty years. Inasmuch as raising and lowering steam
pressure put strain on boiler steel, a railroad tried to keep a steam
locomotive fired up as much as possible. Running the locomotive (at
best, 75 percent of a year) gave a railroad the best opportunity to
exploit its investment and maximize its return. Thus, the technology
set a ggmpg that railroaders had to follow: run, run, run. If you
worked for a railroad, you probably took pride in obeying this demanding
schedule. (Timetable schedules themselves may have evolved partly to
keep steam locomotives most active.) If you were a stupid or careless
railroader, the constant risks in a steamer could hurt or kill you.

Hitting a wash-out plug on the cab backhead, for instance, on a hot
locomotive was lame-brained; the plug could strip its threads, pop out,
and shower you with a jet of steam. This happened at least once in

Michigan.”7 CH3 insufficient water in the boiler could lead its "crown"
sheet, over the firebox, to buckle, admit water onto a 3,000wu fire--
then explode. This too happened at least once in Michigan:

They were plowing snow, and they let the water
get too low, and the firebox had become extreme-
ly hot. Some people thought it might have be-
come red hot. Somebody hit the (injector), to
put water into the locomotive, and the firebox
did indeed buckle . . . that was (on) the De-
troit, Caro and Sandusky . . . the result was
that the grates in the fire came out between the
engineer and the fireman, who fortunately were
sitting on (their) boxes on each side, so they
had their legs out of the way . . . they would
certainly have lost a leg if that iron had come
through that fast, like it was shot out of a
steam cannon. The smoke chest door (at the
front of the locomotive) ended up fifty, sixty
yards down the track (with) the force of the
explosion through the flues . . . the railway
never repaired the engine. It was scrapped."“‘

 

55
B. General Dangers
Deaths and injuries came from more than just scalding steam.

Railroaders met falls, collisions, wrecks, and many other accidents.
Excluding numerous accidents at grade crossings, 52 Michigan residents
were killed and 666 were injured in 1919.‘99 The Michigan Public Utili-
ties Commission identified 15 classes of accidents that killed the 52
and injured the 666:

At stations or loading platforms;

Coupling or uncoupling;

Collisions;

Derailments;

Defect or failure of equipment or roadway;

Falling from locomotive or car;

Handling freight or baggage;

Hitting overhead or side obstruction;

Jumping on or off locomotive or car;

Parting of trains;

Repairing track or roadbed;

Switching;

Struck by locomotive or car;
Miscellaneous or other.200

C. Consequences of Changing Technology

. . . Machines follow the rule of continuous
development.

The Evolution of Technology,
George Basalla (1988)”'

Above and beyond these almost routine hazards of railroading a year
after World War One, a greater and ubiquitous peril developed during the
rest of the Age of Steam. Locomotives achieved tremendous size and
power. Technology thus again demonstrated consequences that no one
foresaw or welcomed, although at the time the grander technology was,
indeed, welcomed by management, admired by the public, and operated with
pride by railroaders.‘n

Prodded by the three great locomotive manufacturers (the American
Locomotive Company, Baldwin Locomotive Works, and Lima Locomotive
Works), railroads agreed to try out larger engines and try new refine-
ments. Boiler steel and boiler design in particular changed for the

better. Superheaters became widely adopted as engines grew larger.m

 

56

Welding techniques and patterning improved. Altogether, with these
technological advances, possible steam pressure rose, as did manage-
ments' hopes, and new, truly mammoth machines bestrode the Lower
Peninsula. Between 1937 and 1951, Pere Marquette 1200-class locomotives
pulled freight trains between Saginaw, Detroit, Toledo, Lansing, Grand
Rapids, and Chicago. Each "Twelve-Hundred" had 69-inch diameter driving
wheels, a starting horsepower of 2,979, and a length of 101 feet.”‘

But other consequences followed these behemoths and their sisters
on other lines. Technology bred further technology. Such stronger
locomotives could pull heavier trains. Cars and wheels had to be
stronger to bear greater loads. A car especially had to be stout
because on any given run it could be coupled right to the engine--forced
to pull the whole train behind it.” Heavier and faster trains took to
the rails. Roadbeds had to be stronger--shop crews had to handle more
and more complex engines--schedu1es tightened as these faster engines
insured quicker deliveries, hence greater competition could be offered
by management-~and a succession of accidents ensued as technology bore
down on railroaders, and "human error" came into play.

Bigger engines could and did lead to bigger boiler explosions.
Heavier cars in wrecks meant bigger pile-ups, and more spoiled freight.
Faster trains meant less margin for error when a train and automobiles
approached a grade crossing. Schedule pressures meant more pressures on
yard crews to switch heavier cars around faster. Competition meant
night as well as day operation--traditional on railroads, but adding
still further pressure on yard crews handling the faster trains, and
continuing an old danger for on-the-road trainmen. No wonder, then,
that my interviewees, almost to a person, each had some memory of grief.
Their recollections fall into seven categories:

i. On-the-Road Incidents
ii. Grade Crossing Accidents

iii. Maintenance-of—Way Accidents

57

iv. Perils of the Railroad Shop
v. Yard Accidents
vi. Wrecking Crew Accidents

vii. Runaway Trains

Written records of such accidents are rare, unless they came to the
notice of the Interstate Commerce Commission, or were mentioned in local
newspapers, both because accidents were common and because railroaders
in the main are not writers, and tend to hate paperworka’” But the
individual incidents remembered by my interviewees struck them vividly,
and dramatize each category effectively.

i. On-the-Road Incidents

Pere Marquette engineer Clarence Gangluff was blunt:
Yes, I got hurt. I had a tip-over. When they
built the new track . . . down out of Monroe . .
. all there was, there was ground pushed in
there. We come along with a 600, we had a 600(-
class) engine . . . the weight of that engine
(about 108 tons)207 pushed the track, went on
down in. She tipped right over . . . both of us
(Gangluff and his fireman) jumped out of the
window. I said I'd never jump out of a window,
because sometimes you'd get crushed right there
with an engine lying right on top ofmyou, see?
You don't get far away enough. . . .

Mechanic-electrician Orville Swick recalled one horrible foggy
night on the Pere Marquette's high bridge at Avoca. For some reason, a
freight train stopped on a single-track span--in the days before radios,
before there was any direct communication between engine and caboose.
The rear brakeman thought they had arrived at a station, barged out of
the caboose, swung out on the step, and let go. He fell over 75 feet to
his death.2W

And in the days when freight cars had running boards on their
roofs, on occasions when a brakeman was incautious, there were times
when he (or a hobo) might be squashed between the car roof and the
bottom of a bridge or in an underpass.”°

The full history of railroad accidents will probably never be

written, but surely on-the-road incidents took their toll.

 

58

ii. Grade Crossing Accidents
Grade crossings have already been referred to here, but from the
point of view of train crews they had especial hazards. An engineer can
never totally be sure when he approaches one, when a pedestrian stands
supposedly waiting for the train to pass, whether that person on the
ground may not jump before the train, or in some feeble-mindedness begin
across, then pause. Moreover, the result of hitting something at a
grade crossing could never quite be predicted. Swick recalled one
example of mayhem in mid-Michigan, again on the Pere Marquette he worked
for:
Back before World War II a 700-class passenger
engine (weighing approximately 120 tons)” hit
an auto over near Grand Ledge while doing over
70 miles an hour. The engine dug into the dirt
and went end over end several times, shearing
off telephone poles and wires, killing both
enginemen. I was at the (Wyoming, Michigan)
roundhouse when they brought it in, with the
boiler on one flatcar and the trucks and frame
on another.”2
And Gale Leach, of the Pere Marquette, suggested another ghastly
moment: "You're at a railroad crossing and the gate's down and the
train jumps the track and goes through that gate and comes out at the
automobile. There's no way of stopping it."213
As has been pointed out many times, the only truly effective way to
eliminate grade crossing accidents is to eliminate grade crossings--to
have grade separations. But until a commitment of millions of dollars
is made, with lengthy disruption of hundreds of grade crossings in the
process--or, until there are no more railroads--tragedies will continue
to happen where rail crosses road.
iii. Maintenance-of—Way Accidents
Given the nature of trains, continual maintenance of the permanent
way, the right-of—way, will always be necessary. Given all the vari-
ables of railroad working, human error by maintenance crews will occur,

and accidents ensue. Not necessarily deadly, though painful, such

accidents have their own stamp. Foreman Ralph Antcliff of the Pere

59

Marquette remembered a stack of pilings that got loose, nearly crushing
a young temporary employee in World War Two.”‘ .Antcliff also remembered
a piledriver which a fast freight train hit at Ionia, unexpectedly, in
the night--in the middle of the Grand River Bridge. No one died then in
1929, but it was a ”job" to clean up.“’ Grand Trunk Western foreman
Clyde Hart recalled a man hobbling "all day" when he hit himself in the
knee with a spike maul.216 .All comical, as related. But Pere Marquette
trackman Clarence Vicent evoked the definite peril possible:

Sometimes you'd have to outrun the train--it

would come right at you . . . they wanted to get

it done quick in P.M. days . . . years ago, you

worked until (an approaching) train got within a

few feet of you . . . (once) we put in ties

there in Grand Rapids--you see the train go

down, about the time you just get the tie out

pretty well, here come the train back again.

There must be an engineer on there--he never

looked back, he just back right up, you know.

An old fella, he was hard of hearing . . . he'd

back that engine right up on top of you if you

didn't watch him . . . wind (of a passing train)

can suck you in. . . .”7
iv. Perils of the Railroad Shop

No fewer than 25 substances commonly found around a shop, including

coal dust, sand, kerosene, ethyl acetate, and creosote, were toxic; some
were even lethal. (See Appendices C and D.) Few were respected as such
in the joy and thunder days--though one, soot, is the oldest-known

carcinogen in the world, studied first in 1775.”'

Least considered--although called "ubiquitous" in one study of a
:railroad shop--was asbestos magnesia.219 Used in shop boiler rooms and
on every engine as insulation, nicknamed "lagging," its tardy legacy of
mesothelioma, a lung cancer specific to exposure to asbestos dust, is
even now killing old shopmen, and its effects will be felt in the form
of ”excess deaths" for decades morefin’ Asbestos was, at periodic
inspections, ripped off locomotives, replaced by being soaked in water
and patted onto cab backheads, sawed into blocks and wrapped around

boilers (see Figure 12, of the Pere Marquette's Wyoming shop; the engine

 

60

Ammoeo\mm

csov Nee. .cnwendsz .wsredsz .naorm nuancede: none

"N.

 

61

in the air displays asbestos blocks), and trod underfoot by shopmen,
perhaps then worn home as dust on their clothes (when in some cases they
did not have showers).m At the Ann Arbor shop in Owosso, a father and
son had the same trade: insulators. Both died of mesothelioma.”2
Much noticed, but little guarded against, was the sheer volume of
noise: machine tools grinding or whining or grating, pneumatic tools
hissing and coughing, rivet guns burping, Alemite grease guns barking,
and that omnipresent tool, the hammer, "persuading" some part. Deafness
in some degree was a hallmark of the shopworker, and Figure 13 shows a
particularly abhorrent version of it: ”boilermaker's deafness."m
Guy Ferris, an Ann Arbor machinist at Owosso, gave warning against

weight--another component of steam locomotive technology. He cautioned
not to try to hold onto the driving wheels of an engine when it was
hoisted in the air, because "the counterweights will spin and the flange
will take your fingers off."n‘ Jim Macey, a Grand Trunk Western machin-
ist at Battle Creek, recalled an inferior hook straightening out on a
sling, and a massive basket of parts falling, almost flattening him
beneath.” And Henry Truer, Jr., a Pere Marquette machinist at Wyoming,
remembered what almost was one of the biggest weight accidents of all
when he was shown Figure 13:

You see how this sling is around the front of

the boiler on the 254? The had a 1200 (which

weighs 221-1/4 tons, empt )--up in there on a

Christmas Eve, anywhere from 1940 to 1944 (Fig-

ure 11 was taken in l942—-D.J.)--and it rolled

over, on its side, while it was up in the air .

. . and they worked all Christmas night to get

it straight. After that, they put this big

sling with casted pads under the cylinders, so

it wouldn't turn, and they put a square bar

across the back like it has got here now, so it

would never do that again . . . (before that it

had) just slings. . . .n7
It was no accident that a full-time nurse was one of the crew at
Wyoming.m In addition to hazardous materials, noise, and great

weights, a shop generally had poor light, limited heating, and restrict-

ed space.”’ For their own sake, machinists developed a slow, careful

 

62

Figure 13: "Boilermaker's Deafness" (Hunter)

 

 

FIG. 3lo.—-Boilermakers’. Deafness.
The man has crawled into the Steam
Drum ofa Boiler through the Man-
hole and is seen caulking a Scam with
a Compressed-air Tool. The Noise
produced is indescribable

 

63

pace of work, lest a job in a lathe, for example, pop out at them--as
‘the Ann Arbor's Howard Brown remembered once at Owosso."o
v. Yard Accidents

Foot for foot, a railroad yard could be the most threatening place
on a railroad. Many cars were switched around in irregular movements at
all hours of the day, and frequently at night, in all weathers. A
switchman operating switches, even if not habitually drunk (as Sam
Chidester remembered them on the Pere Marquette, and Jessie Fox recalled
them on the Grand Trunk Western),””” or a brakeman or a conductor
"spotting" cars, had to cope with the same great weights of cars an on-
the-road crew did, but yard cars moved quietly at slow speeds and gave
little warning they were coming. Pere Marquette policeman Russell
Harrison said that ”you always had to be alert," noting that a fellow
policeman stepped out of a building "and a boxcar cut him in half."233
Snow tended to drift between alleys formed by strings of boxcars, and
made switches freeze. Strings of cars restricted sight lines, and the
alleys men walked in had very tight clearances. Then, until the end of
steam locomotives, a crude appliance carried on each engine, or piled in
yard storehouses, called a "push pole," proved extremely treacherous. A
”push pole" let an engine shove a car on another track without having to
be switched over to touch directly. But a ”pole" was likely to drop,
snap, slither loose, or jack-knife into the man using it, doing him
harm.”‘ So wicked was the "pole," Freeman Hubbard noted in 1940, that
yards gained the nickname of "slaughterhouse" for yard crews.m One
Pere Marquette conductor, in a fit of ingenuity, tried to use an even
simpler appliance to do what a ”push pole” did. Instead of holding a
"pole" diagonally between an engine and a car, he held up a 2"X4" stud
instead. It broke in two, caught him in the gut, and killed him.”‘

Grue of another kind came in a Grand Trunk Western yard accident:

The town was Capac . . . back when they still

had double track. Having lined the yard up for
a fast passenger (train), (an agent) had a

 

 

64

freight waiting. (He) picked up some train
orders to carry around to the engineer, and
stepped in front of the engine--right in front
of the path of the passenger he's just lined the
yard for. . . .37

Pere Marquette engineer Sam Chidester managed to live through a
yard blunder:

Now, I pretty near got killed. Passage was the
engineer. We was on a (New) Buffalo job. It
was an 1100(-class engine). We had yarded the
train, come back through on the tracks, and was
backing down the running track, and the check
valve-—boiler check-—stuck up. So he (Passage)
was going way too fast for in the yard-~going
20, 25 miles an hour, at least--and I went out
on the running board with the coal pick to hit
it a whack. And somebody had left the switch
open on one end of the scale (weighing) track.
There were 13 or 14 cars of sand sitting in
there, just in the clear. Boy, she (the engine)
went in there, and we hit! I flew through the
air like the man on the flying trapeze, went
over a couple of tracks, and just before I hit
the ground this rail was right in front of me,
my head . . . I put my hands like that, and
cracked my left wrist. . . .3“

Not to mention the number of men--surely under-reported--hurt when

 

 

they disobeyed the primary rule, "Step over a rail, never on it," and
slipped. . . .
vi. Wrecking Crew Accidents
Wrecks, themselves accidents, could generate further accidents. A

wreck presented a wrecking crew with an incredible (and usually top-
heavy) jumble of steel, with "trucks going here and there . . . pipes
broke, it can be rail-broke, frames broke . . . a car made of wood is
almost a total disaster."2” As Clyde Hart recalled, a wrecking crew
could work ”up to two days and two nights.“"’ Gale Leach, 43 years on
the Pere Marquette (and C&O) wrecking crew at Flint, remembered the
stress:

If you were on the wrecking crew, you were sub-

ject to a 24-hour call . . . a wreck runs almost

like a case of measles in town. One time, you

could go for a month without being called out .

. . then, all of a sudden-~I've been to high as

seven wrecks in overnight . . . move from one

right to the other--just keep right on going
right on around 'til we got them all on. . . .

 

65

In such jobs, care could give way to weariness. A crewman got no rest,
could work.for 30 hours straight, Howard Brown remembered--”but you had

the right to eat every four hours.”w Pressure from the "brass,"

probably standing by, was enormous: get the line open--get the trains
rolling--on, on, on. Bulldozers might attack the wreckage. A doughty
steam crane might yank at trucks.“3 Fflares or floodlights burned all
night long as the mess gradually came apart in chunks. The thunder of
the wreck, which one earwitness said sounded "like the world coming to
an end,” gave way to orders shouted, the crane grumbling, hunks of cars
being dropped clear of the line, the hiss of torches slicing through
stubborn clots of steel, and the other noises of the crew fighting
entropy. Humans had limits. Gale Leach remembered:

Seconds of carelessness can create havoc . . . I

was on a derailment one time. The men were

getting ready to make a move with a hook--a

crane--(moving) a locomotive. Very cautiously .

. . one 3/8" cotter key was not in place. No-

body saw it, nobody thought anything of it.

They put a strain on it. And almost like a

rifle shot, I heard BANG! The cable dropped.

Within two seconds, a man said, "Oh, my God!

Get help! Close it down! Get help!" The pin

had struck a man in the head--killed him. I

stood there. I cried . . . when I think of him,

I cry. That man had three years to go, and he

could've drawn retirement. God retired him. He

retired because somebody neglected to put (a

key) in.“‘
vii. Runaway Trains

A runaway train shocks a railroad, and creates a logistical
problems how do we stop the thing? Runaways may be of attended or
unattended equipment, may be a single engine or car or more than one of
something.” Howsoever, tons of rolling stock--set moving by brake
failure and gravity, sabotage, carelessness, or other causes--dash along
a track in the face of all other traffic and with little warning to the
public. A runaway locomotive is terrifying.
Logistics offer four ways to halt a runaway. Either 1) hope it

will run down and stop, or 2) put a derailer in its path, to dump it in

a ditch--but, there are few derailers on a main line--or, 3) throw a

66

switch to get it side-tracked, thus ramming it into whatever the siding
ends at, or 4) chase it with an engine, execute a risky maneuver to
couple onto it, then hit the brakes on the chasing engine and drag the
runaway to a standstill. Each option depends on the quick-wittedness of
the operating department--and the contents of the runaway, which during
World War Two and after could be flammable, explosive, toxic, or

radioactive.“6

Runaways date from the infancy of railroading. A runaway--an
engine not yet equipped with any braking technology--ran down and killed
one of its own railway's directors at the Rainhill Trials in England in

1839.“” The runaway, one student of railroads remarked, "was not
uncommon.”"‘ Sam Chidester recalled that the Pere Marquette fired an
engineer who was so foolish as to start onefiw’ Jessie Fox evoked the
terror of a Grand Trunk Western runaway:

My husband was at Tappan (Tower, near Port Hu-
ron). And they reported they had no air--no air
brakes. So they turned the switches so that
train could head down into the ice house, be-
cause they didn't want it going into the tunnel
. . . when that train went by Tappan, where my
husband worked, he said those wheels were just
like fire. (From stuck brake shoes?-—D.J.)

They had no control of it. And the fireman
jumped. The engineer stayed on, which was a
blessing. Because they at last did get the
brakes working . . . someone forgot to take care
of ghe brakes on that . . . that was freight. .

Paradoxically, runaways could seem as risible as they were risky.
Popular accounts suggest this:

At Caro, Michigan, they used to go to Bay City .
. . they had an awful hill coming out of Caro.
They had a siding there . . . and they would
leave half the train there. Then they would go
back and get the front half, pull it up the
hill, join the two together, and go off to Ak-
ron, towards Ross's Crossing and Quanicassee.
Well, they came up one day to find that the
first half that they had left--was gone. Some
leak in the air line, or something, had let it
drift. And it was picking up speed, headed for
Bay City all by itself. They chased it down.
They knew they were getting closer as they saw
the farmers still agape, gazing down the track

67

at this train with a waycar (caboose) on the
end, but no engine. . . .3‘

Hills, or even slight grades, give railroads headaches to overcome--but
in the cheap style of 19th-century Michigan railroad building, grades
were not avoided and grading was minimal. The Pere Marquette main line
between Detroit and Chicago, according to a C&O official, had some
grades “as bad as anything in West Virginia," including the 2.2 percent

New Richmond hill.”2 Therefore, runaways had many downhill grades to

get loose on.”3

Because railroads in Michigan tended to connect popula-
tion centers relatively near to each other, a runaway could easily reach
a city. Such was the case in another popular account--which had the
potential for disaster:

Another time (a runaway) happened in a little

town called Kingsley . . . on the Grand Rapids

and Indiana. Of course, their branch went into

Traverse City. They chased that one down. They

had police in Traverse City to flag the cross-

ings . . . because this was one single boxcar

that they had lost. Obviously, the boxcar

wouldn't whistle for the crossings . . . they

caught it before it went (into Grand Traverse

Bay). They came up behind it--fortunately, the

coupling was open--and they butted into it . . .
they ghased it with an engine a number of miles.

Complicating the crisis of a runaway is the railroad's ancient right of
”eminent domain,” which means that the railroad yielded to nothing but
natural barriers (rivers, cliffs, the Great Lakes).z” Thus, a runaway
has nothing in front of it on a main line for it to be halted by until
the railroad puts something there--no bridge abutments close to the
tracks, no building loading docks, no highways that take precedence. A
railroad is its own boss that way. In our time, this makes former
railroad rights-of—way such attractive routes for hiking trails--and
gives railroads some extra income by giving telephone companies space

for fiber-optic cables. But runaways run free, simply run away.

 

 

68

Blood and thunder, then, as much as joy, followed the steam
locomotive in Michigan. Where the public was concerned, the railroads
could deal out deaths or injuries at grade crossings, in a tunnel, or at
any point where someone was casually trespassing. The railroads were
further responsible for continual noise, frequent air pollution, and
intermittent water pollution, as well as several disruptions of cities.
And the public also ran the risk of investing in Michigan railroads,
only to find that railroad management could be guilty of ineptitude, or
even deliberate manipulations.

Railroaders themselves were beset by far more negative consequences
as they directly and daily dealt with steam locomotive technology and
railroad systems. Hazards specific to the profession of railroading
included on-the-road incidents, collisions with public vehicles at grade
crossings--which road crews risked each and every run--maintenance-of—
way accidents, intrinsic perils of the railroad repair shop, accidents
around yards, wrecking crew accidents, and the infrequent--but nerve-
wracking--runaway trains. To bear up under all these dangers, Michigan
railroaders had to be hardy.

As, indeed, they were, using particular ways of dress, language,
thought, and action to bolster themselves. Who they were--and how they

survived--will now appear.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SUBCULTURE OF THE RAILS

CHAPTER TWO: THE SUBCULTURE OF THE RAILS

As the age of the steam locomotive recedes further and further,
nostalgia for its grows. A brisk trade exists in photographs, slides,
movies, tape recordings, videotapes and periodicals, in large part
devoted to ”the iron horse."

But how much more intriguing than such images and echoes was the
actual machine--and its multiple interactions with technologies of
transportation--and the work force that made steam locomotives possible.
That work force formed a unique subculture in Michigan.

A subculture, by standard definition, is an "economic . . . group
exhibiting characteristic patterns of behavior sufficient to distinguish
it from others within an embracing culture or society."”‘ Railroaders,
by dress and language alone, were distinct from other American industri-
al subcultures. Also, the very act of operating trains created and
sustained particular "patterns of behavior," not least shown by rail-
roaders' fanaticism about time--and their peculiar occupational safety
and health concerns. By choices the railroading subculture itself made,
certain sustained patterns of discrimination served to "distinguish"
railroaders from two other sizeable subcultures in America: women and
Afro-Americans.

”Patterns" in a subculture, as Sykes notes, were "peculiar to
itself."2” This held true in railroading, where rhythms of jobs--frozen
by glacial seniority procedures, yet kept fluid by "the extra board"--
were "characteristic." Nor did any other subculture affect all the
vocabulary, habits, and paraphernalia--from cabooses and "torpedoes” to
"washouts" and merchandise time freights--of railroading. And, as Kelly
remarks, in a subculture "knowledge inheres in social roles . . . and
these roles are specific.””” So specific were railroaders' roles that
an electrician would not know how to start helping a pipefitter--and his

union rules would preclude his trying to.”9

69

70

Michigan railroaders formed part of the national railroading
subculture in unique ways. Not the least distinction of railroaders
between Lake; Huron and Michigan was how they tackled--and, in large
part, bested--state geography. Rivers, hills, marshes, moraines--
Michigan presented railroaders with many obstacles, and stubborn
Michigan railroaders bullied their way through. In turn, the geography
self-selected those who would master it. And the story of Michigan
railroading to this day ig those people.

The reader must understand Michigan railroaders, past and present,
if he or she is to know Michigan railroading, and if he or she would be
able to see railroading in the whole state transportation panorama. The
reader must further understand the basic qualities of a Michigan
railroad man, particularities that all contributed to his image of
himself--things he would no more have questioned than a sunrise. A
railroad man in Michigan had a special kind of dress. He spoke a

different language while he wore these clothesfiw’ He was a fanatic

about keeping correct time. He jealously guarded his seniority all his
working life. He had to belong to a union to hold any significant job,
and his union supported him in discriminating against women, Afro-
Americans, and other minorities--limiting them to menial railroad jobs.
He had unusual, continuing fears and concerns for his safety and health
on the job. He basked, however, in a status--in being part of an
American legend, centered around the steam locomotive. And he had a
hard core of pride in his work that sustained him through long hours and

all weathers.

1. The Unigpeness of Michigan Railroading

Railroaders in Michigan were unique. They had to best the geogra-
phy. The Lower Peninsula, with the bulk of state trackage, went nowhere
except north, ending at Lakes Huron and Michigan. This huge dead-end

gave trains no short cut to the Midwest when traveling west. Passengers

71

did not usually cross Michigan on transcontinental trips. Freight
likewise found no quick route from, for instance, Great Lakes graineries
to Eastern mills, or from Appalachian coal mines to Great Plains cities.
National shippers thus did not opt for Michigan itineraries. More
‘traffic began in and left Michigan than entered it.”” Also, Michigan
trains had to buck some nearly roller-coaster sections of the state.

The topography of Michigan is really bad. So

many streams . . . when they graded back in the

old days, they used horses and mules. They

didn't have any cranes . . . steam engines would

have an awful time . . . (on a big hill), the

friction bearings on the boxcars(,) they‘d get

slipping . . . you'd hear them, chir-r-r-r . . .

they would start spinning. . . .55

And the engineers would grab their throttles, pour on more steam,

"goose" their engines, practically wrestle with the slope. Altogether,

"Railroading in Michigan (was) extremely hard and expensive."263

2. The Unigpeness of the Michigan Railroader

Like their fellows nationally, Michigan railroaders stood apart.
By dress, language, fanaticism about time, seniority rules, and union
practices, they went their own way. They had a nickname: if you
weren't a railroader, you were a "civilian."“‘ Moreover, they discrimi-
nated. Their union constitutions barred women and minorities from most
railroad jobs--a practice that lasted throughout the age of steam. They
formed a subculture of labor which my interviewees all accepted or

belonged to. And they were hardy men, as well as proud.

A. Dress

A railroader could be recognized by his blue-collar clothes, with
one or two railroad particularities. Webster Schweitzer, for instance,
said his Grand Trunk Western brakeman's outfit included overalls, work
shoes, a shirt, mittens (gloves), 3 handkerchief around his neck (to
stop cinders working in), a cap with a bill, and a 21-jewel Hamilton

pocket watch.” Gale Leach explained the clothing:

72

You dress for the weather . . . in the summer,
you don't peel off clothes . . . you may get
hurt just wanting to take off a shirt . . . or
you may be out on a wreck, and just take a glove
off, and say, "Well, it's just going to be a
minute." Sometimes that's all it takes for an
accident to set up. . . .”“

That big watch--oldtimers called it a "turnip"--was owned by all
personnel concerned with any train movement. It was checked against
others in a ritual of train crews before any train departed--and
corrected by a jeweler once every month. Correct time was vital. Train
orders, track repair schedules, timetables, etc., all listed hours and
minutes, which a railroader sometimes set his life on. Sam Chidester
told of Pere Marquette trains working on the single-track "North End"--
Grand Rapids to Bay View--in the days prior to line-side telephones.
They operated by train order and timetable. If two trains failed to
"meet" on time at a pre-arranged siding, either both had to wait for
better information, or one or both had to proceed, hoping to see the
smoke of the other from afar. "A lot of men lost their nerve,"
Chidester said, ruining the schedule by pausingaan But the alternative

was the risk of a head-on wreck. Unreliable watches could trigger a

crisis. No one, in that case, could know where anyone was.

B. Language

Not to mince words, railroad men could be "blue." Jessie Fox
remembered what she heard during 1913-1917 in her railroad home and at
the Grand Trunk Western's Port Huron shops: "I don't know how many went
to church."”‘ David Brickey remarked: "A lot of the language was
pretty raw and rough . . . you walked into a switch shanty, or the
locker room--the language for the most part was . . . just like being in
the military."”” Certain railroaders claimed their job was "lubricated"
by profanity. "The overwhelming bulk of adjectives and adverbs in this

argot are either obscene or profane."”°

73

At another level, the argot of railroading was "a workaday device
for handling situations peculiar to the railroad . . . (it) is not only
more picturesque but is more efficient than (ordinary English)."’" To
say "dynamite the air," an onomatopoeic phrase, is crisper than to say
"bleed all the air pressure out of every car reservoir on a train
suddenly." Moreover, technology affected this argot, introducing new

hardware or practices which each called for a new term or use.”2

C. Fanaticism About Time

Units of time--the day, the hour, the minute--dominated a rail-
roader's life.m They found their way into almost every conversation.
Clarence Gangluff remarked that one of the best things the Brotherhood
of Locomotive Engineers did was to get rid of the 16-hour day.“ Henry
Truer, Jr., recalled that the 700-class Pere Marquette steam locomotives
“could go 100-105 miles an hour."n’ Jessie Fox remembered that laborers
"got seventeen cents an hour" in 1913 on the Grand Trunk Western.”‘
Paul Cannehl's starting pay on the Michigan Central in 1928 was "five
dollars and eighty cents a day for road work--eight hours or a hundred
miles--or (the same) for (eight hours of) yard work."”7

Schedules also harped on the subject of time. "Railroad time" was
proverbial for something happening when expected. Communities could
tell time by when the trains passed regularly, or by the noon whistle
blowing at a railroad shop.”'

Had there been no such fanaticism, innumerable accidents would have
occurred--or every railroad would have ground to a halt. The drawback,
however, was regimentation of the railroader in a surrender to the

requirements of technology. "He (was) a slave to the clock."“"9

D. Seniority
Advancement on a railroad depended less on skill than on seniority.

One's standing began from the day, hour, and minute one hired on. A man

74

could bid on a better job only when someone senior died, retired, quit,
or transferred to another division.

To demonstrate reliability and thus achieve promotion, on-the-road
crewmen had to work "the extra board." This meant that whenever an
engineer, fireman, engine brakeman, conductor, rear brakeman or trainman
failed to be available for duty, his replacement had to be "on call” day
or night to do the job. Erratic employment ensued. Generally the most
hated man on the railroad was the crew ”caller," whose telephoning
forced a man out of sleep or away from his family. But very senior men
enjoyed the luxury of keeping steady runs and hours, which they clung to
in spite of possible promotions. On the Cincinnati, Saginaw, and
.Mackinaw, engineer John Reardon, who kept one such run, was said to have
Ibeen late only five times in twenty years. "(His) wife would have

killed him. "an

E. Union Practices

Nineteenth-century railroad working conditions were harsh. Train
crews had to endure coal stoves in cars that fell over in collisions and
set tinderbox seats and frames afire, link-and-pin couplers that chopped
off fingers or killed many a brakeman caught in them, and the tradition-
al, treacherous hand brakes (set by a wheel on the end of every freight
car) that forced brakemen to scoot along thin running boards during many
a blustery night, risking a misstep, or a cruel wind, when they could be
blown to the ground to die."‘"'2“2 These hazards, and others, remained in
spite of technological advances until into the 20th Century. Safer
technologies--baseboard steam heating in coaches, Janney automatic
couplers, and Westinghouse automatic air brakes--were delayed or denied
by railroad managements. Cornelius Vanderbilt, president of the New
York Central, told George Westinghouse, "Do you pretend to tell me that
you could stop trains with windwm

Railroad unions formed in reaction. The earliest began in Mar-

shall, Michigan: the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, originally a

 

75
few men meeting fervently in a caboose in 1863.“ Craft after craft
organized. The so-called "operating" unions were the engineers, the
firemen, the conductors, the switchmen, and the trainmenazfi So-called
”non-operating" unions included the clerks, the maintenance—of—way men,
the machinists, the blacksmiths, the sheet metal workers, the electri-
cians, the carmen, the oilers, the telegraphers, the signalmen, the
dispatchers, and the yardmasters.” As in an army, "non-operating"
unions outnumbered the "operating" ones. National statistics demon-
strate this. In 1944, the total membership of the "operating" unions
was 443,300; not long afterwards, in 1950, total "non-operating" union
membership was 760,000.37 Overall, though, as technology advanced, as
the Diesel locomotive replaced the steam engine, union membership fell.
Railroad employment also fell. Again, national and state data give the

trend:

Table 5: Railroad Employmentl 1929-1975288

 

Number of
Year Railroad Employees, US Michigan co. (last steam ops.)
1929 1,686,769
1939 987,943
1950 1,220,784 Ann Arbor R.R. (1950)
Pere Marquette Ry. (1951)
New York Central (1954)
1955 1,058,216
1960 780,494 Grand Trunk Western (1960)
1965 639,961
1970 566,282
1975 487,789

By 1961, no steam locomotives worked in Michigan.

Despite, or because of, a shrinking work world and antagonistic
employers, railroad unions could be very militant. National railroad
strikes in 1877, 1922, and during 1946-1947 coincided with economic
depressions or periods after world wars (when wages had been frozen);

these and lesser strikes affected Michigan.m Colorful figures in the

union movement supported certain Michigan strikes, like the firebrand

76

agitator Mary Harris ”Mother" Jones. She walked a picket line in
Saginaw in 1922.2'”
All this would suggest considerable union solidarity. Unfortunate-
ly, in the face of strong managements, absentee ownership, and "intra-
organizational friction," Michigan railroad unions had strife.”” A 1942
observer noted problems of the Michigan locals: "'Overlapping inter-
ests, jealousies, and . . . frequent conflicts."'292 Moreover, the less
skilled a trade, the less clout a union had. The Brotherhood of
Maintenance of Way, said Ralph Antcliff, was "very ineffective--section
men (could hire) in--kind of a weak union," adding that this union had
"no closed shop until the l940's."2"3 The International Association of
Machinists, according to Truer--a shop steward for it--on one occasion
could not prevent a man being fired when he took a day off to get
marriednz” And in several cases one union refused to respect another.
The national strike of 1922 collapsed in Michigan, as elsewhere, when
"engineers, firemen, road people broke it for machinists."”” Then,
certain unions were transitory. The Brotherhood of Railroad Telegra-
phers gradually vanished as advancing technology, the teletype, the
telephone, and radio rendered it obsolete.”‘
Nepotism and “coziness” served to "cushion" labor-management
relations. The Pere Marquette variety was much like other railroads:
(The) railroad was a family . . . they done
things together . . . they lived usually in the
same areas. The superintendent maybe came up as
an apprentice boy with six other of the appren-
tices . . . If he caught one of those guys doing
something, he'd reprimand him, give him ten days
off or something . . . very seldom would they
fire him.297

"Accommodations" served further to tame the unions. On the Pere

Marquette, Truer recalled:
There was so many jobs that if a guy didn't work
out in one spot, he'd work out in another . . .
(in) steam engine days, there was coal to be put
up(,) sand to be dried and (fed into the sand

tower,) there was cinders to be shoveled(,) snow
to be shoveled(,) pits to be cleaned in the

77

roundhouse(,) helpers for boilermakers . . .
machinists' helpers-~I don't think they ever got
rid of anybody . . . you had to be really, real-
ly in a big problem if they got rid of youma'

Union membership could excuse tardiness, absenteeism, carelessness,
and drunkenness-~not universal, but common enough to be subjects of many
anecdotes and jokes. The only inexcusable sin (a constant temptation)
was theft. A railroad was always moving someone's property, and to

steal was to violate the trust which underlay the whole system. Most

 

respected this. Gangluff angrily rejected “a brand new pair of shoes"
one of his brakemen had abstracted from a boxcaraz” But one railroad
maintained 35 policemen in 1940 to staunch "breaking and entering, and

pilferage," among other things.300

F. Racial and Gender Discrimination

Railroaders discriminated thoroughly and repeatedly. They firmly
believed that minorities made wonderful menial workers. Afro-Americans
had the chance to get only a few railroad jobs, and those were lowly:
car cleaner, "butcher," Pullman porter, cook, or dishwasher. (See
Figure 14.)

Supposedly as some form of compensation, the Pullman porter had a
kind of distinction for whites. He featured in many anecdotes and
purple prose:

The Pullman porter has ridden a long way in the

American legend. His name was George or Fred or

Henry at the whim of the passenger . . . he was

an American institution. A man of infinite

resource, limitless guile and the patience of

Job. . . .w‘
That glorification did not offset ”the low wages, long hours, lack of
adequate rest on trips, lack of bargaining power, and job insecurity in

the porters' work . . . their 11,000 miles of travel per month usually

meant 400 hours, excluding preparatory time and time spent (in) termi-

nals. "”2

The most famous Michigan Afro-American to take a railroad job,

"butcher” Malcolm x, poured scorn on the whole state of affairs:

78

figure 14: Afro—American Railroaders (Beebe; Santino)

 

 

 

Note the letter D on the sole of the boot. Porter: often " " h-I wehn
identified" footwear in such a weyto avllot them to shine they were "olTsl;ge" they showed sign: of weariness and
epa'ir at a time. Courtesy of the Library 0/ strain. Courtesy of the Librarr of Congres

Congress"

 

79

Negroes had been in dining car service as much
as thirty and forty years . . . (but it) didn't
take . . . a week to learn that all you had to
do was give white people a show and they'd buy
anything you offered them . . . the dining car
waiters and Pullman porters knew it, too, and
they faked their Uncle Tomming to get bigger
tips.”

Discrimination also extended to Afro-American travelers. Seating
accommodations were segregated--and could be irregular. After 1915,
Northern industries began to run short of white workers. "Labor
recruiters (promised) high wages . . . trains were backed into Southern
cities and hundreds of Negroes were gathered up in a day . . . and
whirled.away to the North."’” Some reached Port Huron, as Helen Jones
recalled:

When I was a young girl . . . my mother was a

member of the School Board in Port Huron . . .

she heard from the principal of the school at

the (area) known as South Park that workers had

been brought in, by boxcar, to work in the

Holmes Foundry . . . their condition was quite

pitiful, because it was cold weather (November)

. . . the people were still in their summer

clothing . . . blacks, they were . . . she was

very, very upset. So was the principal of the

school . . . Because they saw what condition the

children were in . . . whole families were

brought in boxcars . . . (that was) between 1924

and 1928.“”

Constitutions for the railroad brotherhoods abetted discrimination
by limiting membership to white males, and did so from the first.
Echoing "conventional assumptions about the inferiority of the Negro,"
the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers shut out Afro-Americans in 1863,
followed by the Order of Railway Conductors (1868), the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Firemen (1873), the Switchman's Mutual Association (1886),
and the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen (1890).”"3°7 An 1898 "outburst”
of invective in the brotherhood journals called Afro-Americans "immoral,
untrustworthy, inherently vicious and indolent by nature."" The

International Association of Machinists and the International Brother-

hood of Blacksmiths refused to admit Negroes in 1921, and also in 1921,

81

Figure 15: View of a caboose interior, 1943 (Delano/Valle)

 

 

A conductor's caboose is his castlel While his longl.e slow freight rattles towards Cnllnto.
skim: busies hisrnself with hlsw nysblll he rbI' nemk emnn glazes off into
the WI lc distunco.$ Clinthuc men huyld Iar cw'ulilr run they have the ndvuntuge of II

[n nullifiedm cru yyiull equipped with II creel" co,pnt Ia bammetcr. II pur-

oined Sign yinm lently advertising thcdprcs once of Ia dining car, and II Tow choice

specimens Iii who I was delicately reierrc to in those" inIIIIcuIt days ill "leg nrt". Who
could in \k for .I more pleasant home nway {mm hm

 

 

82

strength . . . thus freeing the male helpers to

concentrate on the more arduous and demanding

jobs that abound in the shops.”7

G. Occupational Safety and Health
Probably few railroaders knew they discriminated. They did as

America did. Their concerns were more tangible, like maladies caused by
the job. Road crews knew ”irregular hours, irregular meals"--sometimes
only coffee--"and (a) constant change of routine."””" Vibration was
inescapable. They probably knew what bus drivers did, an "excess of
venous, bowel, respiratory, muscular and back disorders. . . ."m A
generic ailment of cab crews was called "railroad spine."m Sam
Chidester at one point, from lower back pain, was forced to wear a
‘truss.xn Quite probably, poor postures of freight train crews and
poorly designed cab seats led to further pain?” Cab firemen usually
had no seat backs at aJJd’" And caboose crews, who rode a lightweight
conveyance at the end of thousands of tons of freight, always felt a
jerk when their train began rolling. When the “slack" in all the
couplers "ran out," their caboose could shimmy with whiplash. "You had
to know how to sit,” said Webster Schweitzer.” Nonetheless, skull
fractures happened when men did not brace themselves properly. And
cabooses bore the nicknames "bouncer," "galloping goose," "cripple's
home," "ambulance”—-and ”hearse.*”’ Railroaders who endured and sur-
vived all these conditions, retiring in many cases with thirty, forty

and even fifty years on the job, must have been very hardy, indeed.”’

H. Legendary Status

There must have been some extraordinary reason to remain a railroad
man. Perhaps it was the status society gave him as part of a mytholo-
gy.In Say to anyone "the iron horse," ”Casey Jones," "the brave engi-
neer,” ”the Midnight Special,” "the driving of the Golden Spike,” or
sing the song everyone knows, "I've Been Working on the Railroad," and

certain heartstrings twang. "The romance of the rails" graced the

 

83
ailroaderu‘” What could he not do? Almost certainly, and just as well,

the challenge spurred on a railroad man. Engineer Clarence Gangluff
told with satisfaction about one place he always bested:

We generally stopped at Clare for water. Then
they'd go up over the hill . . . if you can get
the engine and four cars over a certain point--
where it can start onto a level there-—you've
got them. You know, one of them engines talked
to you. When you get down to that fine point
she starts grinding everything . . . she says,
"Can't-make-it, can'p-make-it, can't-make-it."
And the old exhaust is talking to you there.
Well, they get the four cars over. Then they
say, "They-got-‘em.” When you got a little more
high speed, you cut 'em up (open the throttle) a
little bit, and she goes 'tokerah-tokerah-
tokerah-tokerah-tokerah-tokerah-tokerah," and
away she goes . 33°

I. Pride

Surely a prime motive for the railroad man was pride: pride to be
a center of attraction in the industry that annually carried millions of
travelers and millions of tons of freight, that enticed children to play
around the roundhouses, girls as well as boys, to gawk at engines
steaming or arrayed in repair.331 Indeed, the sight could be intricate
and staggering. (See Figure 16.) In a kind of symbiosis, proud men
lavished attention on proud locomotives before even routine runs.
Orville Swick recalled:

Your old steam men . . . loved their work, and
they were interested in their work, had pridg in
their work . . . they'd come to work, a lot of
those old engineers, an hour early. They'd get
some (cotton) waste and they'd come out, they'd
go up in the cab, they'd clean their gauge
glasses off, their water column glasses, and
they'd wipe the handles of the automatic and
independent (brakes), the throttle and the re-
verser, they'd wipe the windows, one'd get his
oil can out and he'd go down and look around,
oil this up and that up, maybe get the hose . .
. hose the deck down so it's nice and clean in
the cab--this was on pig time, before he'd go to
work . . . a feeling down inside for (the) work
(is what) they used to have. . . .”2

.Figure

)6:

View

 

84

of a backshop, 1943 (Delano/Valle)

 

 

.. (.‘v
I

.im

. l ' ‘
mm hike-“PD”:

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

Arguably, therefore, railroad men in Michigan formed a subculture
distinguished, and set apart from society, by its argot, clannishness,
discrimination against minorities and women, dress, hardiness, legendary
status, pride, and zeal for chronometry. Through their control of the
steam locomotive--a unique kind of technology--they had a pronounced
influence in Michigan during the first sixty years of this century. So
broad were their effects on state commerce, communications, defense in
wartime, energy consumption, recreation, and taxation—-along with a
range of negative consequences--that no other mode of transportation has
yet matched theirs. Perhaps they were ”indispensable," as a 1924
Michigan observer thought.333 Certainly they brought great devotion to
their work, with great pride. Most of them still recommend it to
newcomers, though railroading in the Diesel age is far different. This
they know, and most of them mourn. One of them said, sadly, ”The joy

and the thunder days are over now."”‘

85

GLOSSARY

 

GLOSSARY

A

abandonment -- I.C.C.-approved tearing-up of trackage

agent -- man in charge of a depot, or a representative for a railroad
air brake -- pneumatic system which continually stops a train

air horn -- signalling device on Diesel locomotives

air lance —- compressed air tool; cleans out flues

air line -- piping for Westinghouse air brakes

air scoop -- intake at bottom of firebox

Alemite gun -- pneumatic grease feeder for locomotives

appliance -- external device on a locomotive which uses steam

apron -- moveable steel plate; gangway floor

"Armstrong lever" -- lever moved by brute force

"ashcat" -— fireman

ashpan -- ash and cinder receptacle under firebox

ash pit -- receptacle for ashpan detritus; snare for the unwary
Awfully Long and Terribly Boring -- Amboy, Lansing, and Traverse Bay

Awfully Long and Terribly Bumpy -- Amboy, Lansing, and Traverse Bay R.R.
B

backhead -- cab end of boiler

backshop -- heavy locomotive repair facility

baggage car -- carries luggage, express freight; sometimes mail as well

ballast -- roadbed stone; can be cinder, limestone, or gravel

"banana train” -- special that hauls fruit

"beanery" -- eating house

”beanery queen" -- waitress

”belt line"/"belt" railway -- industrial trackage inside a city, some-
times owned by two or more railroads

”big-hole" -- to throw brakes into emergency stop

"big hook" -- steam crane

blower -- auxiliary air draft, released up a smokestack

blowdown -- vent to flush sediment out of boiler bottom

boiler -- steam generation chamber of a locomotive

boilermaker -- master welder for boiler, firebox and flue work

"boilermaker's ear" -- occupational hazard in shops

"Book of Rules" -- compendium of rules, regulations and practices

booster -- steam-driven auxiliary engine for trailing truck

brakeman -- couples and uncouples cars; formerly applied brakes by hand

brakestand -- engineer's control for all train brakes

brake shoe -- asbestos clamp; business end of Westinghouse system

”brass" -- an official or officials

brotherhood -- one of the large railroad unions

"bug" -- telegraph key

bum -- a vagrant who wouldn't work, and mooched

bunker -- wood, coal, or oil compartment in a tender

bunk house -- sleeping quarters at a yard; sometimes a Y.M.C.A.

”butcher" -- on-board salesman of food, newspapers, etc., to passengers

86

87
C

cab -- control area of a steam locomotive

cab curtains -- canvas sheets that somewhat keep snow out of cab

caboose -- conductor's office and train inspection post at end of
freight train

Cadillac and Flake City -- Cadillac and Lake City Ry.

"caller” -- summoner of crew replacements; a wretch

"captive" -- town or shipper with only one railroad as an outlet

car cleaner -- a menial employee who cleans up after passengers

car knocker -- car department employee; checks for troubles

"card" -- certificate of a job correctly completed

Catastrophe and Lost Cause -- Cadillac and Lake City Ry.

”cattle car" -- stock car for cattle

check valve -- one-way water valve into boiler

chief dispatcher -- senior dispatcher in a division

cinder — recalcitrant, partly-burnt clot of coal

cinder screen -- cinder catcher in smokebox

”civilian" -— a non—railroader

Class Repair -- scheduled maintenance; in various degrees

coach -- passenger vehicle

coal(ing) dock -- elevated coal bin for locomotives

"company notch" -- most efficient setting for throttle

conductor -- in charge of all of a train except locomotive

consist -- 1) train composition; 2) list of cars in a freight train

”cornfield meet” -- unexpected head-on collision of two engines

counterweight -- steel offset on a driving wheel for rod weight

"cowcatcher" -- pilot

crankpin -- link between driving wheel and side rod

crossbuck(s) -- x-shaped "Rail Crossing Road" sign at a grade crossing

crossing guard/flagman -- tries to prevent movement across grade
crossing when a train passes

crossover -- switch from one track to another

crown sheet -- roof of firebox

cupola -- observation post in roof of caboose

cut -- passage for right-of—way dug through a hill

cylinder -- horsepower creation chamber; houses piston

cylinder cock -- vent for cylinder condensation

D

"deadheading" -- l) riding free; 2) moving a coach empty

”deferred maintenance" -— planned tardiness in upkeep or repair

derai1(er) -- stubby clamp; guides wheel off rail

derailment -- unexpected meeting of rolling stock with Mother Earth

”detainer" -- dispatcher

dining car -- site of many a passenger feast

dispatcher -- issued train orders

division -- subsection of territory and authority

"dope” -- 1) water treatment chemical; 2) hotbox coolant; 3) grease

(to) ”double" (a hill) -- splitting a heavy train in half to get it
over a hill

driving gear -- drive train of locomotive

driving wheel -- powering wheel of locomotive

”Dutch clock" -- coupling-speed recording device

"dynamite (the air)" -- release all train air, loudly

E
engineer -- locomotive driver; in charge of engine

”eminent domain” -- legal fiction created by Herman Melville's father-
in-law, allowing railroads to build and run virtually unobstructed

88
E (cont'd)

excursion -- ”special" train for sports fans, vacationers, etc.
express (business) -- priority, extra-charge freight; often L.C.L.
"extra board" -- process of relieving train crews; a curse

F

fill -- stone, sand, etc., dumped into lowland or swamp as base for
tracks

firebox -- combustion chamber of locomotive

fire door(s) -- cover(s) for cab port into firebox

fireman -- tended locomotive fire; shared responsibility for water
with engineer

flagman -- train crewman sent out from stopped train with flag or
lantern to halt approaching trains

”flapjack” -- crown sheet

flatcar -- wooden, flat, rectangular bed on wheels for freight

flue -- water or heat pipe in boiler

footboard -- thin platform(s) attached to end of locomotive

forge room - blacksmith's smoky lair

"Form 19" -- common type of train order

friction bearing -- bronze cap atop journal; below engine frame

“fruit rush" -- series of "banana trains"

"fussy"/fuzee -- long-burning candlestick-shaped flare

G

gangway -- passageway between cab and bunker

gate —- counterweighted arm at grade crossing

gauge -- 1) pressure indicator in cab; 2) width of track between
rail heads

"glad hand" -- end of air brake hose, shaped like a politician's
extended hand

grab iron -- bar on side of car; a handhold

grade -- 1) slope of a railroad; 2) to flatten said slope

grade crossing -- place where public or private road crosses tracks

"go in the hole" -- be side-tracked to allow another train to pass

gondola -- open, rectangular car

H

hand brake -- manually-operated device for applying train brakes; slow

"haul the mail" -- run a train at high speed

"hayburner" -- steam locomotive

"head end" -- at or near the locomotive

"hearse" -- caboose

helper -- 1) junior assistant to a shopman; 2) assisting locomotive

"highball" -- 1) n. signalling device; 2) v. to accelerate; 3) v. to
go hell for leather

hobo -- a vagrant who worked and roamed

hobo mark -- warning/informing symbol chalked on sidewalk, water tower,
etc., by a hobo; originally from gypsies

"home road" -- engine or car moved only on the railroad that owns it

horsepower -- the energy one horse, if encouraged, will produce

hotbox -- overheated journal

I
"I.C.C.” -- Interstate Commerce Commission

ice house -- storehouse for ice for air-conditioned passenger trains
and refrigerated boxcars

89
I (cont'd)

injector/inspirator -- device that mixes tender water with boiler
steam, then sends mixture on to check valve
"iron horse" -- steam locomotive; not strictly a railroader's term

J

"jerkwater" -- town with a water tower; a stop to take on water in
such a place

"Johnson bar" -- reversing lever in cab

joint bar -- steel piece overlapping two meeting ends of rails

journal -- axle end; protrudes beyond wheel

journal bearing;/"brass" -- crown atop journal, below frame

junction -- place where two tracks cross

jungle -- hobo camp

L

Ladies' Auxiliary -- association of railroaders' wives

"L.C.L." -- less-than-carload amount(s) of freight

lagging -- asbestos magnesia insulation

”lightning slinger" -- telegrapher
”lightning-slinging”/”slinging lightning" -- telegraphy

line -- 1) n. a railroad track; 2) v. to align switch(es)
"local"/"peddler" -- freight train stopping in many small towns

MI

main line —- primary route of a railroad

main rod -- link between driving wheel and crosshead

marker -- flag or lamp mounted beside bell to show type of train

marker lamp/light -- kerosene or electric lamp showing a white or
colored light; mounted on both ends of train

master mechanic/"master maniac" -- chief shop mechanic

maul -- spike-driving hand tool

"meet” -- when (and where) two trains pass each other in opposite
directions

merchandise time freight -- "special" with guaranteed delivery time

"Mexican Central" -- Michigan Central R.R.

"milk run” -- closely scheduled ”local” that collects milk for market

"mixed" -- combination freight and passenger train

”Mulligan stew" -- hobo meal; frequently partly pilfered

N

narrow gauge -- track width less than standard gauge
"niggerhead" -- superheater manifold in roof of smokebox

0

"oil train" -- train of tank cars hauling only petroleum
”op" —- operator
operator —- tower or depot man; can be a telegrapher

P

"passing signals" -- relay of signals by hand motions, lantern
waves, or flare waving from one crewman to another

passing track -- siding long enough for a whole train to ”go in the
hole"

"P Company" -- Pennsylvania R.R.

90
P (cont'd)

"petticoat" -- flared extension in smokebox on base of smokestack
piledriver -- steam-driven piling installer

pilot -- obstacle deflector at front of locomotive

"Pissing and Moaning" -- Pere Marquette Ry.

piston -- steam compressor and exploiter inside cylinder
platform -- area between tracks and depot

pony truck -- small, leading wheel-and-axle set(s) of locomotive
porter - sleeping car or platform attendant

power reverse -- pneumatic locomotive valve-timing device
private car -- non-railroad passenger car; usually lavish
prosser -- boilermaker's flue tool

"push pole" -- crude, dangerous switching device

pusher -- assisting locomotive

R

rail -- load-bearing track member; made of cast iron or steel

"railfan" -- railroad enthusiast; term is not always complimentary

"railroad spine" —- enginemen's illness or injury due to vibration,
etc.

"railroad time" -- on or ahead of schedule

”rattler" -- freight train

"rear" -- at or near the caboose

receiver -- wretch appointed to liquidate a bankrupt railroad

re-railer/"re-railing frog" -- stubby ramp for wheel, when pushed or
dragged, to regain rail

right-of—way -- railroad land that tracks run through

"road" -- a railroad

roadbed -- stone, cinders, sand, mud, etc. underneath tracks

rod/side rod -- steel bar linking driving wheel crankpins

roller -- boilermaker's flue tool

roller bearing -- tapered-pin device around journal, inside engine frame

roundhouse -- locomotive maintenance and storage building

"R.P.O." -- Railway Post Office car

Rule ”G" -- prohibition against intoxication on, or well prior to, duty

Rule "M" -- "Expect movement any track, any direction, any time"

run -- scheduled train movement

runaway -- undisciplined and mobile running stock; a terror

"running board" -- gridway or plankway atop freight cars or locomotives

running track -- through track in a yard; not for storage

8

safe-end -- 1) n. short pipe welded onto flue during refueling; 2) v.
to weld on such a pipe

safety factor -- theoretical pressure a metal can withstand before
breaking

safety valve -- automatic vent for excessive boiler pressure

sand house -- storehouse for sand and pigeons

sand tower -- elevated, shaky supply tank for locomotives

sandbox -- chamber atop boiler; holds sand for traction

scale track -- track with scale for sand, coal, etc.

Schnabel car -- extendable, drop-bottom, high-tonnage flatcar

section hand/man -- track maintainer; worked a limited area

shop(s) —- repair facility

side-track -- 1) n. track beside main line; 2) v. to divert (to
said track)

siding -- secondary track beside, and connected to, a main line

signal man/signalman -- installer and maintainer of signal equipment

"slack" -- play in couplers; back-and-forth slop

91
S (cont'd)

sleeping car -- overnight-accommodation car, with bunks, etc.

sling -- loop of cable

"slow order” -- 1) area of track repair or fault; 2) announcement
of said area

smokestack -- exhaust pipe atop smokebox

snowplow -- ungainly spreader or dislodger of snowdrifts; usually
pushed by one or more locomotives

"special” -- train not on the timetable

spike -- short piece of steel, shaped like a chisel with a wide
head; secures rail to tie

”squirt house” -- air hose used to clean ashpan

standard gauge -- 4'8-1/2" width between rail head insides

stationmaster -- head of a station; sometimes a telegrapher

steam chest -- housing for valve

steam dome -- outlet for boiler steam; sits atop boiler

steam locomotive -- the noblest of all machines

"stemwinder" -- pocket watch

stepbox -- squat step for boarding/detraining passengers

steward -- chief of a dining car

stock car -- car for livestock

stoker -- steam-driven Archimedian screw; moves coal from bunker to
firebox

”string" -- set of coupled cars

superheater -- auxiliary heating pipes; runs in and out of boiler
flues; fed by, and feeds, "niggerhead"

superintendent - chief of a division

sweeper -- car cleaner or shop janitor

switch list -- paper detailing cars to be switched

switch shanty -- switchman's hovel

switcher -- short locomotive for yard duty

switching -- v. arranging or re-arranging cars

switchman -- switch operator; frequently an alcoholic

T

tank -- water compartment in a tender

tank car -- cylindrical car; holds liquids

"telltale" -- warning device above tracks near obstruction; warns
brakemen to get off car roofs

telegraph key -- sending and sounding instrument; usually made of brass

telegrapher -- operator of a telegraph

tender -- spare fuel and water section of a locomotive; located behind
cab

terminal -— large depot; end of many runs

”the wire" -- telegraph line

throttle -- engineer's control for steam leaving boiler

tie -- wooden connection between rails

tie plate -- flat piece of steel under rail, atop tie; secured by

spikes
ton-mile -- one ton carried one mile
torpedo -- detonator warning signal; clamped to track

tower -- building for train and/or grade crossing control

track gang -- section men

trailing truck -- wheel-and-axle set under cab

train -- one or more locomotives, coupled or not coupled to cars,
displaying markers

trainman -- on-board employee; maintains train cars

train order -- directions for a train crew

tramp -- a vagrant who wouldn't work, and roamed

trans-ship -- to pass freight along to another mode of transportation

 

92

T (cont'd)

traveling fireman -- itinerant inspector/instructor of young firemen
troop train -- wartime "special" for troops

try-cock -- small drip valve to check water level in boiler
turbogenerator -- steam-driven dynamo atop firebox

"turnip" -- large pocket watch
turret -- distributing manifold atop forebox; for appliances

V

valve -- admits and exhausts steam to and from cylinder
vestibule -- entry chamber on end of passenger coach

W

washout -- l) n. a stop signal given by hand, lantern, fuzee or flag;
2) n. place where track has washed out; 3) v. to give a ”washout"
signal

washout plug -- small plug for cleaning point (in backhead, boiler
bottom, etc.)

water column -- supply pipe for try-cocks in cab

water tower -- continually leaking, elevated supply tank for tenders

”watered stock" -- railroad securities overvalued by the crafty and
bought by the credulous

waycar -- caboose

Westinghouse system -- pneumatic air brake mechanisms; for whole train

wheel lathe -- driving-wheel tire contour shaper

whistle -- all-too-audible steam-driven signalling and warning device

"wig-wag" -- grade crossing warning signal, with pendulum-paddle sign

to "wipe the clock" -- throw brakes into emergency stop

wiper -- yard menial employee who cleans locomotives with cotton waste
and oil

wreck(ing) crew -- gang who clean up wrecks

Y

yard(s) -- tracks for switching, storage, and train functions

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

MAJOR SHIPPERS/RECEIVERS OUTSIDE DETROIT ON THE
PERE MARQUETTE RAILWAY DURING WORLD WAR TWO

Location

Dearborn
East Lansing
Lansing

Grand Ledge

Lowell

Belding

Greenville

Alma

St. Louis

Grand Rapids

Firm(s)

Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company
Michigan State College (later M.S.U.)
Board of Water and Light

Capitol City Wrecking Company

Edgar Sugar House

Fisher Body Division, General Motors Corporation
Melling Forge Company

Michigan Liquor Commission

Michigan Refrigerating Company

Motor Wheel Corporation

Oldsmobile Division, General Motors Corporation
Nash-Kelvinator Corporation

Reo Motor Company

American Vitrified Products Company
Grand Ledge Chair Company

Grand Ledge Clay Products

Grand Ledge Produce Company

Central Michigan Office Chair Company
Paul Kellog Company

King Milling Company

Lowell Lumber and Supply Company
Lowell Manufacturing Company

C. H. Runciman

Belding Co-op Company

Warner Delmar and Sons

Extruded Metals, Inc.

Gibson Electric Refrigerator Company
Murray Corporation of America

Gibson Electric Refregerator Company
Greenville Lumber Company

Metzger's Dehydrated Foods, Inc.
Ranney Refrigerator Company

Alma Trailer Company

Allied Oil Company

Home Lumber and Fuel Company

Little Rock Lumber and Coal Company
Midwest Refineries, Inc.

Socony Vacuum Oil Company

Petroleum Exchange

Hall Lumber Company

Lake Shore Sugar Company

Leonard Refineries, Inc.

Michigan Chemical Company

Michigan Salt Company

American Box Board Company

American Excelsior Corporation
American Seating Company

Armour and Company

Atlantic Commission Company

J. A. Besteman and Company
Certainteed Products Company

93

Location

Grand Rapids

Grand Haven

Muskegon

Holland

94

Firm(s)

Columbia Storage and Transfer

Consumers Gravel Company

Ellis Brothers Company

Elston-Richards Storage Company

Extruded Metals Defense Plant

Furniture Manufacturers Warehouse Association

Grand Rapids Gravel Company

Grand Rapids Stamping Division, General Motors
Corporation

Grand Rapids Wholesale Grocery Company

Great A&P Tea Company

Haskelite Manufacturing Company

Ideal Seating Company

Kroger Grocery and Baking Company

Marvel Refining Company

McInerney Spring and Wire Company

Nichols and Cox Lumber Company

C. H. Runciman

Standard Builders and Supply Company

Stiles, Inc.

D. Baker Lumber Company

Bastian-Blessing Company

Canfield Manufacturing Company

Challenge Machine Company

Eagle-Ottawa Leather Company

Oldberg Manufacturing Company

Standard Sand Company

American Store and Equipment Construction Company

Anaconda Wire and Cable Company

Brunswick-Balke-Collander Company

Campbell-Wyant-Cannon Foundry

Central Paper Company

Continental Aviation Company

Continental Motors Corporation (aircraft engines)

Fisher Iron and Metals Corporation

Freuhauf Trailer Company

Lakey Foundry and Machine Company

Michigan Foundry and Supply Company

Naph-Sol Refining Company

Norge Corporation

Nugent Sand Company

Shaw-Box Crane and Hoist Division, Manning, Maxwell
and Moore

Shaw-Walker Company

E. H. Sheldon Company

Standard Oil Company

W. Michigan Dock and Market Corporation

W. Michigan Steel Foundry Company

Armour Leather Company

Chris-Craft Corporation

Doughnut Corporation

Hart and Cooley Manufacturing Company

H. J. Heinz Company

Holland Co-op Association

Holland Furniture Company

Holland Furnace company

Lake Shore Sugar Company

National Biscuit Company (Nabisco)

Smith Ag. Chemical Company

Standard Grocery and Milling Company

 

Location

Benton Harbor

St. Joseph

Traverse City

Petoskey

Monroe

Grand Blanc
Flint

95
Firm s

Auto Specialties Manufacturing Company

Benton Harbor Malleable Ind.

Covel Manufacturing Company

Dachel-Carter Shipbuilding Company

Master Planters Company

National Utilities of Michigan

Remington-Rand, Inc.

Rosenberg and Forbes Company

Ross Carrier Company

Superior Steel and Malleable Castings Company

Auto Specialties Manufacturing Company

Industrial Rubber Goods Company

1900 Corporation

Farmers Co—op Association

Grand Traverse Grocery Company

M. Guiffre

J. A. Hall

Hannah and Lay Dock Company

Lee and Cady

The McGough Estate

J. C. Morgan Canning Company

Parsons Manufacturing Company

Red Mill

Traverse City Gas Company

Traverse City Iron Works

U. 8. Navy Aviation

J. F. Burnett

Michigan Potato Growers

Petoskey Gas Company -

Petoskey Portland Cement Company

Swift Company

Wells Fuel Company

Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa)

Consolidated Paper Products

Monroe Paper Products

Monroe Steel Castings Company

Ottawa River Paper Company

River Raisin Paper Company

Fisher Tank Division, General Motors Corporation

A. C. Spark Plug Company, General Motors
Corporation

Buick Motor Defense Plant, General Motors
Corporation

Burroughs Elevator Company

Central Wholesale Company

Chevrolet Motor Division, General Motors Corporation

Consumers Power Company

DuPont

Fisher Body Division, General Motors Corporation

City of Flint

creat A&P Tea Company

Flint Waterworks

General Foundry and Machine Company

Hamady Brothers

alexander Jeffery

Kasle Brothers

u. & M. Warehouse

Palace Travel Coach Company

standard Cotton Products Company

 

Location
Flint

Saginaw

Midland
Reed City

Olivers
Manistee

Ludington
Marysville
Port Huron

96

Firm(s)

Standard Oil Corporation

Woodmere Scrap Iron and Metal Company

American Agricultural Chemical Company

Andrew Ellis Company

Baker Perkins Company

F. W. Carlisle Company

Chevrolet Grey Iron Division, General Motors
Corporation

Chevrolet Aluminum Division, General Motors
Corporation

Chevrolet Service and Parts Division, General
Motors Corporation

Chevrolet Transmission Division, General Motors
Corporation

Saginaw Steering Gear Division, General Motors
Corporation

Columbia Mills

Furstenburg Brothers

Gratiot Fuel and Supply Company

Hart Brothers

E. Lenick and Company

Lufkin Rule Company

Michigan Bean Company

Morris Nover Iron Company

Smith Agricultural Chemical Company

City of Saginaw

Saginaw Furniture Shops

Saginaw Malleable Iron Division, General Motors
Corporation

Saginaw Salt Products Company

Saginaw Stamping and Tool Company

Wickes Boiler Company

Wilcox Rich Division, Eaton Manufacturing Company

Dow Chemical Company

Pure Oil Company

Simrall Corporation

W. Michigan Consumers Company

Leonard Pipeline Company

Adams Paper Converting Company

J. T. Baker Chemical Company

Bulkey-Dunton Pulp Company

Century Boat Company

Falleen Drop Forge Company

Filer Fibre Company

Great Lakes Chemical Company

Hardy Salt Company

Manistee Iron Works

Manistee Salt Works

Miller Brothers

Morton Salt Company

Mulkey Salt Company

Rademaker Chemical Company

Ruggles and Rademaker Salt Company

Sand Products Company

Worcester Salt Company

now Magnesium Corporation

Dow Magnesium Corporation

Morton Salt Company

Mulkey Salt Company

Ruggles and Rademaker Salt Company

 

Location

Port Huron

Bay City

97
Firm 8

Mueller Brass Company

Dow Magnesium Company

Port Huron Times-Herald

Port Huron Sulphite and Paper

Dunn Sulphite and Paper

Aetna Portland Cement Company

Aladdin Company

Bay City Shovels Company

Chevrolet Motor Division, General Motors
Corporation

Dow Chemical Company

Defoe Shipbuilding Company

Industrial Brownhoist Corporation

Michigan Pipe Company

Source: The Pere Marggette in 1945

APPENDIX 8

SOME "CAPTIVE" COMMUNITIES ON THE PERE MARQUETTE,

Baldwin

Croswell
Elmdale
Fowlerville
Grand Ledge
Grant
Harbor Beach
Hart

Kinde
Lakeview
Newaygo
Okemos
Palms

Paw Paw
Plymouth
Poland

Port Austin
Port Hope
Remus
Walhalla
Webberville
White Cloud
Williamston

Source: Michigan Division Timetable No. 2I January 1, 1981

98

1945

 

APPENDIX C

TOXIC SUBSTANCES OF A RAILROAD SHOP

(from NIOSH and The Center for Disease Control,

Substance
Acetone
Acetylene
Ammonia

Arsenic

Asbestos magnesia
Borax

Coal dust
Creosote

Ethyl alcohol
Gasoline
Hydrochloric acid
Kerosene

Lead (paints)

Lye

Phosphoric acid
"Red lead" paint
Roofing tar (pitch)
Sand dust (silica)
Silica

Soda ash

Soot

Sulphur

Sulphur dioxide
Waste oil

Zinc oxide

Source:

Railroad Use

Paint stripper

Shop torches

Cleaner; blueprint copiers
Wood preservatives

Lagging (insulation)

Soaps

Locomotive by-product

Tie, etc., preservative
Shellac (element)

Motor fuel; parts cleaner
Flue cleaner

Cleaner; switch de-icer
Building coating
Locomotive water treatment
Flue & superheater cleaner
Building coating

Roofs

Boiler sandblasting
Graphite grease (element)
Locomotive water treatment
Locomotive by-product
Grease (element)
Locomotive by-product

From various engines

Paints (element)

99

1979)

Reference Page

36

44

78

126

131

1152

370

370; naphthalene, 807
554

600

643

702

712

1006;1155

937

lead tetroxide, 712
370

1147

1147

1152

vanadium, 1294
1186

1187

see Appendix D

1308

Public Health Service, U.S. Department of H.E.W.

 

 

APPENDIX D

TRACE ELEMENT COMPONENTS OF WASTE OIL
in parts per million (ppm)
(from Yates, et al., 1978)

 

Residual Oil Waste Oil (ppm)
Element (ppm) Mggp Maximum
Aluminum ---- 67.1 2000
Barium 8 59.7 550
Boron 0.02 7.3 120
Cadmium 2 2.7 21
Calcium 24 316 6400
Chromium 6 7.9 45
Iron 15 333 5100
Lead 10 125 2000
Manganese 0.5 21 250
Magnesium 5 49.4 1000
Molybdenum 0.05 2.2 19
Nickel 120 6.4 44
Phosphorus 40 307 2500
Silicon ---- 104 2500
Silver 20 0.10 0.60
Sodium 17.5 46.6 400
Sulphur 920 ‘0.44 1.44
Tin 3 12.5 140
Titanium ---- 6.5 110
Vanadium 1800 5.2 19
zinc 0.8 219 5000

Source: Water Quality Division, Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle

100

APPENDIX E

INTERVIEWEE INFORMATION

Ralph Antliff, Grand Ledge: building and bridge gang, Pere
Marquette Railway and Chesapeake & Ohio R.R.

David Brickey, Lansing: Diesel-age railroader; brakeman,
Wabash R.R.

Howard Brown, Owosso: machinist, Ann Arbor R.R.
Leah Cannehl, Jackson: relative of railroader.

Paul Cannehl, Jackson: fireman and engineer, Michigan Central R.R.
and New York Central R.R.

Irene Chidester, Grand Rapids: relative of railroader.

Sam H. Chidester, Grand Rapids: steam shovel repairman, fireman,
and engineer, Pere Marquette Ry. and Chesapeake & Ohio R.R.
Deceased.

Herschel Christensen, Grand Rapids: fireman, engineer, roundhouse
foreman and engine inspector, Pere Marquette Ry. and Chesapeake &
Ohio R.R. Deceased.

Jessie Fox, Port Huron: stenographer, Grand Trunk Western Ry.; relative
of railroader.

Clarence Gangluff, Saginaw: fireman and engineer, Pere Marquette Ry.
and Chesapeake & Ohio R.R. Deceased.

Russell J. Harrison, Lansing: policeman, Pere Marquette Ry. and
Chesapeake & Ohio R.R.

Clyde Hart, Haslett: section man and section gang foreman, Grand Trunk
Western R.R. Deceased.

Alice M. Lawrence, Traverse City and Old Mission: relative of
railroader.

Gale R. Leach, Flint: car department and wrecking gang crewman, Pere
Marquette Ry. and Chespeake & Ohio R.R.

Wallace Luckado, Okemos: telgrapher and agent, Florida East Coast Ry.
and Grand Trunk Western R.R. Deceased.

Webster Schweitzer, Croswell: freight brakeman, Grand Trunk Western Ry.
and Grand Trunk Western R.R.

Orville J. Swick, North Street: machinist-electrician, Pere Marquette
Ry. and Chesapeake & Ohio R.R.

Henry Truer, Jr., Grand Rapids: machinist, Pere Marquette Ry. and
Chespeake & Ohio R.R.

101

 

102

Clarence M. Vicent, Baldwin: section man and wrecking gang crewman,
Pere Marquette Ry. and Chesapeake & Ohio R.R.

Frank Warden, East Lansing: track worker, laborer, and electrician,
Pere Marquette Ry.

END NOTES

“

END NOTES

lOrville J. Swick, interview, 5 January 1991.

2See Charles Hirschfeld, The Great Railroad Conspiracy (East
Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1953).

3Russell J. Harrison, interview, 6 March 1979.

‘Henry Truer, Jr., interview, 19 January 1991.

‘Robert N. Linscott, ed., Selected Poems and Letters of Emily
Dickinson (New York: Doubleday, 1959) 90.

6George B. Abdill, This Was Railroading (New York: Bonanza Books,
1958) 112-113.

7Webster Schweitzer, interview, 21 January 1991.

'Ellis W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971) 228.

9Swick, interview.

loData supplied by Michigan State University Archives and Histori-
cal Collections, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.

“Gale R. Leach, interview, 9 January 1991.

l2Pere Marquette Railway Company, The Pere Marggette in 1945
(Alderson, West Virginia: Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society, Inc.,
1990) 47.

l3Rosswell J. Black, notebook (author's collection).
l“Black, notebook.

l’Clarence M. Vicent, interview, 29 December 1990.
1“Pere Marquette Railway Company, 47.

17Lawrence M. Sommers, ed., Atlas of Michigan (East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 1977) 148.

lsBenjamin L. Reitman, Boxcar Bertha (New York: Amok Press, 1988)
290).

”Jessie M. Fox, interview, 21 January 1991.
20Fox, interview.

21Paul and Leah Cannehl, interview, 12 January 1991.

103

104

22Truer, interview.
z’Harrison, interview.

2‘Douglas A. Harper, Good Company (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1982) 151.

”J. C. Furnas, The Americans: A Social History of the United
States, 1587-1914 (New York: Putnam, 1969) 682-683.

26Furnas, 678.
2"Wallace Luckado, interview, 1979.
28Sam H. Chidester, personal communication.

”8. Chidester, personal communication.

30Rand McNally and Company, Handy Railroad Atlas of the United
States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1978) 64.

31Swick, interview.

”Murray Campbell and Harrison Hatton, Herbert H. Dow: Pioneer in
Creative Chemistry (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951) 61.

33Pere Marquette Railroad Company, 46.

3‘Pere Marquette Railroad Company, 46.

3’LeRoy Barnett, Railroads in Michigan: A Catalog of Company
Publications 1836-1980 (Marquette, Michigan: Northern Michigan

University Press, 1986) 161.

 

3“Michigan Public Utilities Commission, Seventh Annual Report of
the Michigan Public Utilities Commission for the Year Ending December
31 1925 (Lansing, Michigan: Robert Smith Company, State Printers,
1926) 66.

 

37William W. Potter, "Fifty Years of Michigan Progress," Historic
Michi an, ed. George N. Fuller, vol. 2 (Dayton, Ohio: National Histori-
cal Association, 1928) 1005, 667.

38Lawrence Phillip Robinson, interview, 18 January 1991.
39Edmund A. Calkins, in Fuller, 663.
4oPere Marquette Railroad Company, 18.

“The author learned these dimensions while working in Grand Trunk
Western R.P.O. No. 9683, owned by the Michigan State Trust for Railway
Preservation. ~

”C. A. Lichty, ed., Proceedings of the Fortv-ggcond Annugl

Convention of the American Railway Bridge and Building Association, 1935
(Chicago: American Railway Bridge and Building Association, 1936) 216.

“For another view of railway mail as received, see Edmund G. Love,
The Situation in Flushing (New York: Harper and Rowe, 1965) 21.

“Walter Wilson, personal communication.

105

45Paul M. Smith, ed., Locomotive Engineers Journal (Cleveland:
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 87:1, January 1953) 18.

“Order of Railroad Telegraphers, System Division No. 1, Seniority

Standing of Despatchers, Traffic Supervisors, Agents, Operators,
Assistant Agents and Levermen Revised to Januarv 1§t1 1941 (n.p.) 58-64.

”Matthew Josephson, Edison: A Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1959) 39-44.

 

“For one such, see Luckado, interview, passim.

49Blance M. Merrifield and L. G. Howarth, History of Williamstop,
1838-1963 (Williamston, Michigan: Blanche M. Merrifield and L. G.
Howarth, 1963) 47.

”Love, 116.

”Love, 118.

”Author's collection.

”Vicent, interview.

“Clarence Gangluff, interview, 9 February 1983.

”Gangluff, interview.

“S. Chidester, personal communication.

”Bruce Catton, Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood
(Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1972) 79.

“W. F. Borland, Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Safety
Covering Investigation of an Accident which Occurrred on the Baltimore

and Ohio Railroad near Wolf Lake Yard Office, South Chicago, 111., on
June 14, 1920 (Washington, D.C.: Interstate Commerce Commision, 1920)

7.

”Willis F. Dunbar, All Aboard! A History of Railroads in Michigan
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1969) 176.

”Chessie System Railroads, Michigan Division Timetable No. 2,

January 1, 1981 (Southfield, Michigan: Chessie System Railroads, 1981)
var.

“Dunbar, 7.
62Swick, interview.
“Dunbar, 17s.
“Dunbar, 178.
6"’Barnett, 1.
“Barnett, 86-87.
”Barnett, 108.

“Barnett, 115-116.

106

“Barnett, 129.
”Barnett, 30.
7|Barnett, 150.
72Dunbar, 176.
”Dunbar, 176.

"Michael McCloskey, Owosso, Michigan, Chamber of Commerce;
telephone interview, 25 February 1991.

”Frances D. Burgtorf, Chief Wawatam: The Story of a Hand-bomber
(Cheboygan, Michigan: Frances D. Burgtorf, 1976) 132.

"The same point is made more broadly by a modern Upper Michigan
partisan. See Joseph Mack, interview, 16 April 1985.

"Harrison, interview.
”Harrison, interview.
79Keith Bartow, personal communication.

”R. C. Richards, Railroad Accidents, Their Cause and Prevention
(Chicago?: Association of Railway Claim Agents, 1906) 19.

81Michigan Department of Transportation, 150 Years of Michigan's

Railroad History (Lansing, Michigan: Michigan Department of Transporta-

tion, 1989) 18.

82See Ramon F. Adams, The Language of the Railroader (Norman,
Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970).

83Ernest Hemingway, The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingyay (New
York: Scribner's, 1966) 129-138.

“Catton, 63-64.
“Catton, 69.
86Love. passim-

87See "Excursions/M.A.C." photographs in the Michigan State
University Archives and Historical Collections.

88Story told to the author.

898. Chidester, personal communication.

90Donald W. Hughes, personal communication.

91Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (New York: Morrow, 1973) 2.
”Harrison, interview.

93Brian K. Osmer, personal communication.

“Harrison, interview.

107

”Glenn C. Gillespie, Michigan Criminal Law and Procedure with
Forms, 2nd ed. (rev.), vol. 4 (Wilmette, Illinois: Callaghan, 1987)

“Gillespie, 142.
97Gillespie, 143.

”Frank N. Elliott, When the Railroad Was Kin , 2nd ed. (Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan Department of State, 1988) 13, 20-21.

99Hughes, personal communication.
‘mLove, 11.

101Derived from data in "Locomotive 1225" file, Michigan State
University Museum, East Lansing, Michigan.

‘mPere Marquette Railway Company, passim.
‘mS. Chidester, personal communication.

lo“Pere Marquette Railway Company, passim.

10"Joseph R. Rose, American Wartime Transportation (New York:
Crowell, 1953) 284.

lo‘Rose, 283.

lo"Jeffrey Orenstein, United States Railroad Policy: Uncle Sam at
the Throttle (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1990) 64.

10“Edward Hungerford, Transport for War 1942-1943 (New York:
Dutton, 1943) 105.

109Hungerford, 131.

'wTruer, interview.

‘“Frank Warden, interview, 30 April 1979.
'”Warden, interview.

‘”Paul and Leah Cannehl, interview, 12 January 1991.
‘“Cannehl, interview.

'“Cannehl, interview.

‘wFox, interview.

mHughes, personal communication.
‘wHarrison, interview.

‘”Harrison, interview.

mGeorge M. Kober and E. R. Hayhurst, Industrial Health (Phila-
delphia: Blakiston, 1924) 239.

12‘Rodney Crawford, personal communication.

108

122William J. Purdie, personal communication.

mOliver Jensen, The American Heritage Higtorv of Railroads in
America (New York: Bonanza Books, 1975) 184-185.

‘uThis rule has different official designations. Its unofficial
name is "Rule M."

‘”Clyde Hart, interview, 19 March 1979.
12“David Brickey, interview, 4 February 1991.

127David Jones, "You Done Her Right," Live Steam, 24:5 (May, 1990)

mPurdie, personal communication.

129Schweitzer, interview.

130Jensen, 160-161.

mIrene Chidester, interview, 19 January 1991.

132Gangluff, interview.

133The author was riding in a Chesapeake and Ohio passenger train
in November, 1969, at Lansing, Michigan. Two people drove a car into
the side of one coach. Both died.

134I. Chidester, interview.

l35Gangluff, interview.

I36Paul M. Smith, ed., Locomotive Engineers Journal (Cleveland:
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 83:10, October, 1949) 654-656, 712.

13"Schweitzer, interview.
138David BruinsSlot, personal communication.

‘”Switch padlocks were not truly secure until a cylinder version
was introduced in the 1980's.

l”Hughes, personal communication.

1“‘For years, "SAFETY FIRST" was stenciled around railroad shops
and on locomotives. Some of the remaining cabooses on the Grand Trunk
Western display this slogan.

142J. B. Osborne, Pere Margpette Locomotive Diagram . Book No. 48
(Cleveland: Advisory Mechanical Committee, 1946) passim.

 

1“cy Taylor, personal communication.

1“William Wilson, personal communication. Wilson, a Conrail
engineer, told of a woman suicide whose head was found at the next town,
atop a coupler.

1“At Michigan State University, a female student named Handlesman
was killed instantly by a Grand Trunk Western freight train passing Fee
Hall. Her body was thrown three hundred feet.

109
1“Andy Gras, personal communication.
mSee also Charles Dickens's tale "The Signalman."
1“Michigan Department of Transportation, 17.
‘”Michigan Public Utilities Commission, Seventh Annual Report of

the Michigan Public Utilities Commission for the Year Ending December
31 1925, 91.

 

‘wMary C. Burnell and A. Marcaccio, Blue Water Reflections (Nor-
folk, Virginia: Donning, 1983) 81.

mBurnell and Marcaccio, 81.
mFox, interview.

1”Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1967) 185.

1“Paul Wesley Ivey, The Pere Marggette Railroad Company (Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan Historical Commission, 1919) 366.

‘”Barnett, 161.

'“Freeman L. Hubbard, Railroad Avenue (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1945) 357.

1“’Hart, interview.
l"'Cannehl, interview.

1"""I. Chidester, interview.
16°Gangluff, interview.
1“'Cannehl, interview.

‘aDuring its October 5, 1975, steam test, Pere Marquette locomo-
tive 1225 sullied a clothesline one mile north.

163The forge room of the Ann Arbor Railroad at Owosso, Michigan, is
still encrusted with soot.

‘“The Owosso, Michigan, backshop of the Ann Arbor Railroad drained
into the Shiawassee River near it. The railroad, a major employer in
Owosso, never had any complaints.

‘“Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New
York: Vintage, 1961) 257.

1““In Lansing, Michigan, the Union Station, built by the Michigan
Central and the Pere Marquette, took over a platted city street's right-
of-way, according to the Lansing Assessor's Office.

l‘5"Wendell A. Sturges recalled how Small Acres Lane, in Okemos,
Michigan, was permanently disrupted in 1930 when the Grand Trunk Western
saw that US-16, a parallel thoroughfare, was sufficient--and removed the
grade crossing on Small Acres Lane.

l“"Jacobs, 258.

 

110

169Jacobs, 258.

I""Oxford English Dictionary, eds., The Compact Edition of the
Oxford En lish Dictionar , vol. II, P-z (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974)
114.

‘"Love, 11.

'nElliott, 27--a masterly implication: ". . . the (railroad's)
truth was sometimes strained."

1”Michigan Public Utilities Commission, First Annual Repgrt of the

Michigan Public Utilities Commission for the Year Ending December 31,
1919 (Lansing, Michigan: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Company, State

Printers, 1921) 11.
‘ulvey, 381.
‘”Ivey, 368.
'“Ivey, 368.
'"Ivey, 369.
‘”Ivey, 369.
I79Ivey, 370.
l""Ivey, 370.

.'"Ivey, 373.

182Ivey, 300.

183Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dypasty
and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990)

309.

18‘Ian S. Haberman, The Van Sweringens of Cleveland (Cleveland:
Western Reserve Historical Society, 1979) 156.

'“Edmund G. Love, personal communication.
I“Love, personal communication.

mF. D. McHugh, "Is Concrete Better Than Cross-Ties?" Scientific
American, July 1928, 54.

'“McHugh, 54.

1""‘S. Chidester, personal communication.
19°S. Chidester, personal communication.
191Haberman, 13S.

‘”Chernow, 309.

193Chernow, 325.

111

‘“National Bank of Detroit, Pere Margpette Railway Eggipment Trust
of 1941 (Detroit, Michigan: National Bank of Detroit, 1 June 1941).

‘”Chernow, 412.

1"‘John L. Lewis, quoted in Michael Jackman, Crown's Book of
Political ngtations (New York: Crown, 1982) 114.

‘”David Jones, "Lore of the Line," Locomotive and Railway Preser-
vation, 1:2 (May-June 1986) 12.

198Robinson, interview.

‘”Michigan Public Utilities Commission, First Annual Report of the
Michigan Public Utilities Commission for the Year Ending December 31,
1919, 25.

2”Michigan Public Utilities Commission, First Annual Report of the
Michigan Public Utilities Commission for the Year Ending December 31,
1919, 25.

:mGeorge Basalla, The Evolution of Technology (Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press, 1988) 57.

2"?The first of the huge 1200-class Pere Marquette locomotives

reached Michigan in 1937. Demonstrator #1211 was displayed in Detroit,
Saginaw, Flint, Lansing, and Grand Rapids.

203See William F. M. Goss, Superheated Steam in Locomotive Service
(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1910). The first grand

argument for the use of superheaters.

”Osborne, 42-8.

”W. Neal Lewis, personal communication.

20‘5. Chidester, personal communication.

”Osborne, 30.

”Gangluff, interview.

”Orville J. Swick, personal communication.

210"Tell-tale" warning strings, meant to signal "no clearance
ahead” to persons on freight car tops, could be hung too near a bridge.
Those on the south side of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern under-
pass below Lansing, Michigan's Michigan Avenue were only twenty feet
away, justifiable only if slow-speed trains were the rule.

2”Osborne, 33-A.

2”Orville J. Swick, "Memories of an Old Railroader," David
BruinsSlot, ed. (Flint, Michigan: n.d.) 1.

2”Leach, interview, 9 January 1991.
2“Ralph Antcliff, interview, 6 February 1991.

2”Antcliff, interview.

112

216Hart, interview.
21’Vicent, interview.

218Edmund Klein and Robert A. Schwartz, "Cancer and the Skin,"
Cancer Medicine, James F. Holland and Emil Frei III, eds. (Philadelphia:
Lea and Febiger, 1982) 2064.

219Christine L. Oliver, et al., "Asbestos-related Disease in

Railroad Workers," American Review of Respiratory Disease, 131:4 (April
1985) 500.

220W. J. Nicholson, et al., "Occupational Exposure to Asbestos:
Population At Risk and Projected Morality--1980-2030," American Journal
of Industrial Medicine, 3: (1982) 259-311.

 

221Howard Brown, interview, 1 April 1984.

222These men were named Pichiotino. Brian K. Osmer, personal
communication.

223Also nicknamed "boilermaker's ear." John R. Glover, M.D.,
personal communication.

22‘David Jones, "Owosso Shops--The Way They Were," Pro'ect 1225, 63
(Spring, 1986) 3.

225Jim Macey, personal communication.

22“Osborne, 42-8.

227Truer, interview.

mTruer, interview.

229Truer, interview; also, observations of the Ann Arbor Railroad
backshop at Owosso, Michigan, and the Pere Marquette Railway backshop at
Wyoming, Michigan, by the author.

230Jones, "Owosso Shops--The Way They Were," 3.

231S. Chidester, personal communication.

232Fox, interview.

233Harrison, interview.

23‘David Jones, "The Perilous Push Pole," Trains, forthcoming.

”’Hubbard, 362.

236Story told to the author.

237Robinson, interview.

238Sam H. Chidester and Herschel Christensen, interview, 14 Decem-
ber 1978.

239Leach, interview.

2”Hart, interview.

 

113
2“Leach, interview.
2“Brown, interview.
2“Brown, interview.
2“Leach, interview.

2“For a modern case, see E. D. Fales, Jr., "Runaway engine on the
main line!" Popular Science 179: (October, 1961) 127-137.

2““Donald W. Hughes, personal communication.

2"’Tim Frew, Locomotives: From the Steam Locomotive to the Bullet
Train (New York: Mallard Press, 1990) 32-33.

2“‘Robinson, interview.

2""S. Chidester, personal communication.

2”Fox, interview.

2“Robinson, interview.

2”David Jones, "On the Line," Pro'ect 1225, 56 (Spring, 1974) 3.
2”Robinson, interview.

2“Robinson, interview.

2”Sometimes not even then. The Great Lakes were seasonally

traversed by railroad car ferries. See George W. Hilton, The Great
Lakes Car Ferries (Berkeley, California: Howell-North, 1962).

2""‘Henry Bosley Woolf, ed., Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary
(Springfield, Massachusetts: 'G. and C. Merriam, 1981) 1150.

257Richard E. Sykes, "American Studies and the Concept of Culture:
A Theory and Method,” American Quarterly, 15 (Summer 1963) 258.

2”R. Gordon Kelly, "Literature and the Historian,” American
Quarterly 26 (May 1974) 147.

2""‘Warden, interview.

2”w. Fred Cottrell, The Railroader (Stanford, California: Stan-
ford University Press, 1940) 100-111.

2“Ivey, 354. Car ferries, supposedly a short cut across the
Midwest, were not reliable Michigan connections. The lakes froze
annually. See Arthur C. Frederickson and Lucy F. Frederickson, Pic-

torial History of the C&O Train and Auto Ferries (Ludington, Michigan:
Lakeside Printing Company, 1965) passim.

262Vicent, interview.

M3Brickey, interview.

2“Eugene L. Huddleston, Ph.D., personal communication. See also
Brickey, interview.

114

”Schweitzer , interview .
”Leach, interview.

“is. Chidester, personal communication.
2"Fox, interview.
2”Brickey , interview .
2""Cottrell , 106 .
2"'Cottrell , 103 .
moottrell , 103 .
2”Cottrell , 60-77 .
2"Gangluff, interview.
”‘Truer, interview.
”‘Fox, interview.
2"Cannehl , interview .

278The Ann Arbor Railroad's backshop at Owosso Michigan, had an ex-
ferryboat whistle, three feet long, on its roof to sound each noontime.

mCottrell , 69 .

z""Love , 16 .

2“Brickey, interview.
2“Jensen , 189 .
2”Jensen , 189 .

”‘Dunbar, 102 .

2"5Jacob J. Kaufman, Collective Bargaining in the Railroad Industry
(New York: Columbia, 1954) 53.

z"“Kau fman , 53 .
2”Kaufman , 53 .

”U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, An Evaluation of
Railroad Safety (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1978)
47.

2|”Jensen, 156-158; Truer, interview; Kaufman, 79.
2"‘"Gangluf f , interview .
291Kau fman , 5 1 .

292Twentieth Century Fund, Inc., How Collective Bargaining Works
(New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1942) 324.

115

2”Antcliff, interview.
”‘Truer, interview.
2"‘Truer, interview.
29‘Cottrell, 21.
297Truer, interview.
2"“Truer, interview.
”Gangluff, interview.
300Harrison, interview.

3mLucius Beebe and Charles Clegg, The Trains We Rode, vol. II
(Berkeley, California: Howell-North, 1966) 838.

302Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-
1981, 2nd ed. (New York: International, 1982) 177, 178-179.

303Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm x (New
York: Grove, 1966) 77, 75.

3°‘Foner, 130, 131.

3”Helen E. Jones, interview, 2 February 1991.

306Alan Brinkley, Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depres-
sion (New York: Vintage, 1983) 33.

3°"Foner , 103 .
30"Foner , 105 .
309Foner , 15 5 .

3”Maurine W. Greenwald, Women, War and Work: The Impact of World
flgr I on Women Workers in the United States (Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood, 1980) n.p.

3"Lois Scharf, To Work and To Wed: Female Employment, Feminism,
and the Great Depression (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1980) 16-
17.

312Fox, interview.

313Edna z. Emley Papers, Michigan State University Archives and
Historical Collections, East Lansing, Michigan.

3MI. Chidester, interview.
315Brickey, interview, quoting Elizabeth J. Andrus.

31‘Linda Niemann, Boomer: Railroad Memoirs (Berkeley, California:
University of California Press, 1990) 42-43.

3”James E. Valle, The Iron Horse at War (Berkeley, California:
Howell-North, 1978) 238.

116

318Paul M. Smith, ed., Locomotive Engineers Journal (Cleveland:
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 83:10, October 1949), outside back
cover.

319Leach, interview.

320Donald E. Wasserman, Human Aspects of Occupational Vibration
(Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1987) 21.

32‘Wallace Schroeder, D.C., personal communication.
321. Chidester, interview.
323Wasserman, 22.

3uPere Marquette locomotive 1225 did not gain a fireman's seat
back until 1982.

32$Schweitzer, interview.
3”Adams, 27.

327Paul M. Smith, ed., Locomotive Engineers Journal (Cleveland:
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 83:10, October 1949) 696-699.

mCottrell, 82.

329Cottrell, 83.

33°Gangluff, interview.

33‘Alice M. Lawrence, personal communication.
332Swick, interview.

333Calkins, "Railroad Development in Michigan Since 1850," in
Fuller, 663.

33“Leach, personal communication, 9 January 1991; attributed to
Frederick J. Steck by David BruinsSlot.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

BI BLIOGRAPHY

Books and Periodicals

Abdill, George B. This Was Railroading. New York: Bonanza Books,
1958.

Adams, Ramon F. The Langpage of the Railroader. Norman, Oklahoma:
The University of Oklahoma Press, 1977.

Allsop, Kenneth. Hard Travellin'. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1967.

Barnett, LeRoy. Railroads in Michigan: A Catalog of Company
Publications, 1836-1980. Marquette, Michigan: Northern Michigan

University Press, 1986.

Basalla, George. The Evolution of Technology. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Beebe, Lucius, and Charles Clegg. The Trains We Rode. Vol. 2.
Berkeley, California: Howell-North, 1966.

Borland, W.P. Repprt of the Chief of the Bureau of Safety covering
Investigation of an Accident which occured on the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad near Wolf Lake Yard Office, South Chicago, 111., on

June 14, 1920. Washington, D.C.: Interstate Commerce Commission,
1920.

Brinkley, Alan. Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression.
New York: Vintage, 1983.

Burgtorf, Frances D. Chief Wawatam: The Story of a Hand-bomber.
Cheboygan, Michigan: Frances D. Burgtorf, 1976.

Burnell, Mary C., and A. Marcaccio. Blue Water Reflections. Norfolk,
Virginia: Donning, 1983.

Campbell, Murray, and Harrison Hatton. Herbert H. Dow: Pioneer in
Creative Chemistry. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951.

 

Catton, Bruce. Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood.
Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1972.

Chernow, Ron. The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and
the Rise of Modern Finance. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990.

Chessie System Railroads. Michigan Division Timetable No. 2,
January 1, 1981. Southfield, Michigan: Chessie System Railroads,

1981.

Cottrell, W. Fred. The Railroader. Stanford, California: Stanford
University Press, 1940.

117

 

118

Dunbar, Willis F. All Aboard! A History of Railroads in Michigan.
Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1969.

Elliott, Frank W. When the Railroad Was King. 2nd ed. Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan Department of State, 1988.

Fales, E. D., Jr. ”Runaway engine on the main line!" Popular Science
179 (October 1961).

Farrington, S. Kip, Jr. Railroads at War. New York: Coward-McCann,
1944.

Foner, Philip 8. Or anized Labor and the Black Worker 1619-1981,
2nd ed. New York: International, 1982.

Frederickson, Arthur C., and Lucy F. Frederickson. Pictorial History
of the C&O Train and Auto Ferries. Ludington, Michigan: Lakeside
Printing Company, 1965.

Frew, Tim. Locomotives: From the Steam Locomotive to the Bullet Train.
New York: Mallard Press, 1990.

Fuller, George N. Historic Michigan. Vol. 2. Dayton, Ohio:
National Historical Assocation, 1928.

Furnas, J. C. The Americans: A Social History of the United States,
1587-1914. New York: Putnam, 1969.

Gillespie, Glenn C. Michi an Criminal Law and Procedure with Forms,
2nd. ed., revised. Vol. 4. Wilmette, Illinois: Callaghan, 1987.

Goss, William F. M. Superheated Steam in Locomotive Service.
Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1910.

Greenwald, Maurine W. Women, War and Work: The Impact of World War I
on Women Workers in the Uniped States. Westport, Connecticut:

Greenwood, 1980.

Haberman, Ian S. The Van Sweringens of Cleveland. Cleveland:
Western Reserve Historical Society, 1979.

Harper, Douglas A. Good Company. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1982.

Hawley, Ellis W. The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly. Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingpay. New York:
Scribner's, 1966.

Hilton, George W. The Great Lakes Car Ferries. Berkeley, California:
Howell-North, 1962.

Hirschfeld, Charles. The Great Railroad Conspiracy. East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1953.

Holland, James F., and Emil Frei III. Cancer Medicine. Philadelphia:
Lea and Febiger, 1982.

Hubbard, Freeman L. Railroad Avenue. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1945.

Hungerford, Edward. Transport for War 1942-1943. New York: Dutton,

119

1943.

Hunter, Donald. The Disease of Occupations. 5th ed. London:
English Universities Press, 1975.

Ivey, Paul Wesley. The Pere Marggette Railroad Company. Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan Historical Commission, 1919.

Jackman, Michael. Crown's Book of Political Quotations. New York:
Crown, 1982.

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York:
Vintage, 1961.

Jensen, Oliver. The American Heritage History of Railroads in America.

New York: Bonanza Books, 1975.

Jones, David. "Lore of the Line." Locomotive and Railway Preservation.
1:2 (May-June 1986).

---. "On the Line." Project 1225. 56 (Spring 1974).

---. "Owosso Shop--The Way They Were." Project 1225. 63 (Spring
1986).

---. "You Done Her Right." Live Steam. 24:5 (May 1990).

Josephson, Matthew. Edison: A Biography. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1959.

Kaufman, Jacob J. Collective Bargaining in the Railroad Industry.
New York: Columbia, 1954.

Kelly, R. Gordon. "Literature and the Historian." American Quarterly.
26, May 1974.

Kober, George M., and E. R. Hayhurst. Industrial Health. Philadelphia:
Blakiston, 1924.

Lewis, Richard J., Sr., and Rodger L. Tatken, eds. Registry of Toxic
Effects of Chemical Substances. Cincinnati: National Institute
for Occupational Safety and Health, and the Center for Disease
Control, Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare, January, 1979.

Lichty, C. A., ed. Proceedings of thg Fortv-Second Annual Convention
of the American Railway Bridge and Building Association, 1935.

Chicago: American Railway Bridge and Building Association, 1936?

Linscott, Robert N., ed. Selected Poems and Letters of Emily
Dickinson. New York: Doubleday, 1959.

Love, Edmund G. The Situation in Flushing. New York: Harper and Row,
1965.

McHugh, F. D. ”Is Concrete Better Than Cross-ties?" Scientific
American July 1928.

Merrifield, Blanche M., and L. G. Howarth. History of Williamston,
1838-1963. Williamston, Michigan: Blanche M. Merrifield and L. G.

Howarth, 1963.

120

Michigan Department of Transportation. 150 Years of Michigan's
Railroad History. Lansing, Michigan: Michigan Department of
Transportation, 1989.

Michigan Public Utilities Commission. First Annual Report of the
Michigan Public Utilities Commission for the Year Ending December
31 1919. Lansing, Michigan: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Company,
State Printers, 1921.

Michigan Public Utilities Commission. Seventh Annual Report of the
Michigan Public Utilities Commission for the Year Ending December
31, 1925. Lansing, Michigan: Robert Smith Company, State
Printers, 1926.

National Bank of Detroit. Pere Margpette Railway Egpippent Trust of
1941. Detroit: National Bank of Detroit, June 1, 1941.

Nicholson, W. J., et a1. "Occupational Exposure to Asbestos:
Population at Risk and Projected Mortality--1980-2030." American
Journal of Industrial Medicine 1982.

Neimann, Linda. Boomer: Railroad Memoirs. Berkeley, California:
University of California Press, 1990.

Oliver, L. Christine, et a1. "Asbestos-related Disease in Railroad

Workers." American Review of Respiratory Disease 131:4 (April
1985).

Order of Railroad Telegraphers. System Division No. 1, Seniority
Standing of Despatchers, Traffic Supervisors, Agents, Opegators,
Assistant Agents and Levermen Revised to January 1st, 1941. n.p.

Orenstein, Jeffrey. United States Railroad Policy: Uncle Sam at the
Throttle. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1990.

Osborne, J. B. Pere Margpette Locomotive Diagram . Book No. 48.
Cleveland: Advisory Mechanical Committee, 1946.

 

Oxford English Dictionary, eds. The Compact Edition of the Oxford
English Dictionary, P-z. vol. II. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.

Pere Marquette Railway Company. The Pere Margpette in 1945. Alderson,
West Virginia: Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society, Inc., 1990.

Rand McNally and Company. Handy Railroad Atlas of the United States.
Chicago: Rand McNally, 1978.

Reitman, Benjamin L. Boxcar Bertha. New York: Amok Press, 1988.

Richards, R. C. Railroad Accidents Their Cause and Prevention.
Chicago?: Association of Railway Claim Agents, 1906.

Rose, Joseph R. American Wartime Transportation. New York: Crowell,
1953.

Santino, Jack. Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle. Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1989.

Scharf, Lois. To Work and To Wed: Female Employment, Feminism, and
the Great Depression. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1980.

 

121

Smith, Paul M., ed. Locomotive Engineers Journal. Cleveland:

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 87:1, January, 1953.

---, ed. Locomotive Engineers Journal. Cleveland: Brotherhood of
Locomotive Engineers, 83:10 (October 1949).

Sommers, Lawrence M., ed. Atlas of Michigan. East Lansing, Michigan:
Michigan State University Press, 1977.

Swick, Orville J. "Memories of an Old Railroader." David BruinsSlot,
ed. Flint, Michigan: n.d.

Sykes, Richard E. "American Studies and the Concept of Culture: A
Theory and Method." American Quarterly 15 (Summer 1963).

Truman, Margaret. Harry S. Truman. New York: Morrow, 1973.

Twentieth Century Fund, Inc. How Collective Bargaining Works.
New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1942.

U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. An Evaluation of
Railroad Safety. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1978.

Valle, James E. The Iron Horse at War. Berkeley, California:
Howell-North, 1978.

Wasserman, Donald E. Human Aspects of Occupational Vibration.
Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1987.

Wiebe, Robert H. The Search for Order. 1877-1920. New York: Hill
and Wang, 1967.

Woolf, Henry Bosley, ed. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary.
Springfield, Massachusetts: G. and C. Merriam, 1981.

x, Malcolm, and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm x. New York:
Grove, 1966.

Yates, J. J., R. K. Chandry, and H. P. Croke. Oil Audit and Reugg
Manual for the Industrial Plant. Chicago: Institute of Natural
Resources, 1978.

Oral History (Interviews on file at Michigan State University Voice
Library)

Antcliff, Ralph, 6 February 1991.
Brickey, David H., 4 February 1991
Brown, Howard, 1 April 1984.

Cannehl, Paul and Leah, 12 January 1991.
Chidester, Irene, 19 January 1991.
Chidester, Sam H., 1976.

Chidester, Sam H., and Herschel Christensen, 14 December 1978.
Fox, Jessie M., 21 January 1991.
Gangluff, Clarence, 9 February 1983.
Harrison, Russell J., 6 March 1969.
Hart, Clyde, 19 March 1979.

Jones, Helen E., 2 February 1991.

Leach, Gale R., 9 January 1991.

Luckado, Wallace, 1979.

Mack, Joseph, 16 April 1985.

122

Robinson, Lawrence Phillip, 18 January 1991.
Schweitzer, Webster, 21 January 1991.
Vicent, Clarence M., 29 December 1990.
Warden, Frank, 30 April 1979.

Personal Communications

Bartow, Keith
BruinsSlot, David
Chidester, Sam H.
Crawford, Rodney
Gras, Andy
Huddleston, Eugene L.
Hughes, Donald W.
Lawrence, Alice M.
Lewis, W. Neal

Love, Edmund G.
Macey, Jim
McCloskey, Michael (telephone interview)
Osmer, Brian K.
Purdie, William J.
Schroeder, Wallace
Taylor, Cy

Wilson, Walter
Wilson, William

MICHIGnN smTE UNIV. LIBRnRIES
llllliillilWillilllllllllllililliilllllililil
31293008853453