Oral History Program Roger Kingsford Interviewed by John Thompson 25 June 1974 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Roger Kingsford Interviewed by John Thompson 25 June 1974 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Kingsford, Roger, an oral history by John Thompson, 25 June 1974, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Roger Kingsford. The interview was conducted on June 25, 1974, by John Thompson, in the location of 1652 Rushton Ogden, Utah 84401. The interviewee discusses his personal career and experiences with railroading. Also present is Roger Kingsford Senior, the father of the interviewee. RK: When I was a youngster, my folks did a considerable amount of traveling, and I’ve ridden a train a good many times in my life. My father was a railroader, and he held down a number of jobs with several railroads. In my childhood, I remember traveling across country, in the narrow-gauge country. Down to Miner, Nevada, where the Little Slim Princess used to operate, and then other trips which we have made were many times on other branch lines. Like the Grass Valley Route, which was a narrow gauge in California. Then later in my life, the opportunity to see several other narrow gauges in operation. One at Humbolt, Nevada, which used to go down to Eureka. It was called the Eureka Northern. Another interesting narrow gauge was one that was in Nevada, went down from Viowewiee, Battle Mountain to Auston, Nevada. Now all these are of my youth, as I recall them. In my later years, as now, I have become a devout lover of narrow-gauge-railroads. I have a model in my basement, and I call it the Promontory, Utah and Great Salt Lake Railroad. Now this is leading up to a point in Ogden history that at one time, many years before I was born, Ogden was practically known as the leading capital city of all narrow-gauge railroads. That might sound strange because we always thought about Ogden as having wide-gauge railroads, but it’s so. At one time, the narrow-gauge railroads operated all the way directly from Denver, Colorado, clear up into Montana, through by the way, to Ogden, Utah. 1 JT: Sir, then, on the narrow-gauge from the standard gauge now – is the narrow-gauge just the way it was before? I mean, what’s the difference? Why did they start the narrow gauge? RK: Well, this is a good question. Abraham Lincoln prescribed during the time of the Civil War that all gauges in the American Association of Railroads (AAR) be put forth at a gauge known as the standard gauge. That is four feet eight and one-half inches. And it was legislated and passed, and at the time this happened, the southern railroad had many, many railroads operations below the Mason-Dixon that ran on five-foot track. Well, this is something to do with the historical interest in the United States during the Civil War and things that had to develop after the Civil War to make closer interstate connections. So finally as the bill that had been passed realized, the United States plus Canada and Mexico all operate on the standard gauge. JT: The narrow gauge now, the definition of that would be anything smaller than the standard gauge? RK: The narrow gauge is much smaller. There are several types of narrow gauge in the United States through history. There was a two-footer than operated in Maine and – JT: You mean operated a freight line? RK: Two feet wide, yes, two-feet-wide gauge. And it was a very famous little railroad. Of course during the mining era times in Colorado and discoveries of fabulous mining interests in Montana, and also in Idaho, the narrow gauges became very popular because they were cheaper to build than the wide gauge and they would haul the freight. 2 JT: Did the weight of the engine...have something to do with the narrow gauge, too? RK: Well, the weight of engine was very small as compared to modern-day type engine construction. In those days, they would handle the needs of bringing in utilities to mining towns and also returning the ore, one thing or another from the mills to the smelters and so on. But another reason why they used the narrow gauges in the early days, through Colorado particularly, was because the wagon master in those days used the wagon, and they were very loosely surveyed roads. It made a ... hardship in handling the ore this way. In many instances they would use the wagons. They’d actually put the ore on the pack animals’ backs and trail it. Well, then finally, the road masters decided to survey railroads in the narrow gauge motif, the three-foot. This was used in the United States, three-foot. And whenever you hear of a three-footer, that means a 36-inch railroad. JT: Is that the length between the two rails? RK: That’s the distance between the inside of both rails. JT: They’re bent in a “U” shape, are they not? Kind of like a “T” shape? RK: Yes, rail is like a “T” shape. JT: Center of the rail or top of the rail on the inside? RK: Well, the measurement actually is from the inside ball of the rail to the opposite inside ball of the rail, which is the rolling area the wheels roll on. JT: Top of the rail? RK: Yes, that would be on the inside now, inside measurement, inside edge. 3 JT: I was interested in reading something now that when they were building the railroads out here, the UP and that, how they would have a piece of wood or something that wide they would lay down on the track like that. How would they make sure they kept that distance? RK: Well, they had a fabricated gauge. It was a tool, and it was made probably, originally in a drop forge, and very accurately hammered out. It didn’t vary other than just the contract amount it may due to extreme heat or cold. Between summer and winter, but that wouldn’t be enough to hurt it, probably some hundredths of an inch or something like that. They didn’t have to have it that precise. But now it’s another story, of course, when they’re gauging wheels. In a wheel mounting set, they have to be gauged very accurately because this is something that goes into the technical parts of the mechanical operation of the wheel passing through a frog. Lots of times wrecks are created from misgauged things. Particularly if the frog might have slipped a little one way or another on the switch or something like this. But modern technology, they are very careful and watch these things very closely. Occasionally there might be some missed slip, like on an extremely hot day out in Nevada on the desert, a rail will break. It seems to shrink up and crack during a hot time. JT: It would shrink in the hot weather? RK: Yes. JT: I thought material had a tendency to expand while it was hot. RK: Well, between night and day, see. JT: Oh, because of the big flexibility. 4 RK: That’s right. In the evening it would be the opposite. JT: All the time, very hot, very cold. RK: And if one comes out of bed on an outfit car early in the morning getting ready to go to work and sits out on the main line for a few minutes when the sun is coming up over the horizon, you could actually hear the track expand and pop. It just makes a big noise like {makes noise}. JT: Explosion? RK: Like someone coming down on it with a 10-pound sledge hammer. JT: Were you born in Utah? RK: No, I was born in Wyoming. JT: Why would your family travel? RK: Well, because my father took a job out in Nevada when I was a kid. He used to travel back and forth between Nevada and Wyoming considerably, and down to California and different places. JT: How long have you lived in Ogden? RK: I’ve lived here the principle part of my lifetime. So my railroad interests have always primarily been as making a living out of Ogden. JT: When you started working for the railroad, in 1926, were you living in Ogden? RK: Yes. JT: This about three years before the time, but about 1923, the depot down here had a bad fire. Do you remember that at all? 5 RK: I remember the fire. My dad remembers it well. How about getting him to relate something on that? Dad, would you like to tell about the burning of the depot? RKS: I can’t tell you much about it. My wife and I were out at a clerks’ party that evening and word came to us that the depot was burning, and they wanted some of the employees to get down there to salvage some of the records and take a filing case drawer and throw it out the window. Upstairs window. JT: All the files that were stored? RKS: Yes. So I don’t think many of the records were much good after the fire. Lots of times we had an occasion to want something of previous times and no files to go to get information. But they soon put up new filing. JT: There’s speculation on the how the fire itself started. Do you have any opinion on that? They said somebody was ironing a pair of trousers in one end of the southern end of the depot. There was a hotel there, and he got the iron too hot and this started the fire. Is that still the general...? RKS: It could have been. RK: Well, I think I could explain that. Recently they tore down the old hotel part of the depot, and it had an airway between the part that burned and the hotel part of about 12 feet or such a matter wide. The hotel part didn’t burn actually. It was in a pretty fair state of preservation when they tore it down. It was known as the hotel rooms over the old express part of the depot. So I don’t know whether that rumor that you mentioned about a man pressing his pants in the hotel is incorrect. 6 JT: I got that from doing a little bit of research. You know, trying to get some background on this. That was one of the interesting things. And they said it mentioned some guy came down and told the operator that a room’s on fire. They never got the man’s name. They don’t even know who he was. Said he was dressed like a porter; he might have been a porter. RK: There might have been rooms also directly in the depot building itself also. But this building I was relating was an annex with 10 to 12 feet air vent between... There was a man that was killed as a result, in the cleaning up operation afterward. Big stone fell on his head or something. JT: That was about three days after or so. He was a clerk. RK: Either a clerk or a workman. Well, anyway, I don’t know just what to talk about right now. The subject was about gauges and so on, and historical interests. This fire, of course, was in our lifetime, and my father, he was, I believe at the Christmas party at the old hotel right directly across the street from the depot at the time it burned. As I remember, I went down the next day, as a kid. It was about the year 1921 or so, wasn’t it Dad, when it burned? JT: February of 1923. RK: I went down the next day, anyway, and my goodness, the water had frozen into solid ice and there were icicles and everything was on the side of the building there. It looked like Niagara Falls had frozen. You know, from where they poured water on and run right off. Never will forget seeing that. That was my reaction. JT: How did you get on the railroad ? Was it because your family was in it? 7 RK: My dad got me on. I worked out at Lucin in the quarry where they prepared ballast for the railroad. It was an interesting experience. I went out there right after school let out... through the summer time... I went out there and lived for three months. JT: You worked in the summer. RK: Of course they had steam shovel operations out there. A large quarry, and they dug coyote holes in the side of the cliff, and it went in some 190 feet. I helped load one of them with black powder, and they had this Hercules black powder in boxes that was all wrapped up in probably about six-pound bars dipped in wax. All we did was stand in a big, long line in the coyote hole and hand the boxes from one guy to the next, right along under our legs. Passed them through until finally we got them in place. Of course the experienced loaders were down on the far end doing the loading. I was just in the chain operation of passing them through from one to the next. JT: How many people were out there? RK: Well, it was a good-sized operation. The quarry itself had two large engineering diesel engines, six cylinders or two-story high in a regular engineer shop where they generated electricity. Of course the electrical use was directed to the grinding and the aggregate operation of the rock. The steam shovel did the digging, and the black powder did the breaking up. They had powder set by six guys that did nothing but set dynamite. Then there were a couple of Irishmen engineers that ran the work trains. One of them was, ah I can’t think of that Irishman’s name to save my neck now. He later told the interviewer it was MacClaniham . He was an Irishman, a real happy-go-lucky guy, and I was a tool nipper carrying these heavy drills on my back from the blacksmith shop into the cut to these guys drilling holes in the rock. 8 JT: A tool nipper? RK: Yes, they called it a tool nipper. And this Irishman, he one day, sitting up on the cab of the locomotive, he looked down. He’d always pass by the blacksmith shop when he’d bring the work train into the dumps of the crusher plant. So he says, “Hey kid. When you carry them drills, that’s pretty hard work, ain’t it?” I says, “You’re darn right. I just wore three pair of shoes out here in about two weeks.” And he says, “Well, hey, why don’t you load the steel right up here in the cab. I’ll stop the engine here. And when we go over to the pit, why it’ll save you carrying them over.” Fine. So I learned to ride my first steam engine out at Lucin... It was a great help. That man saved me untold hard work, I’ll tell you. JT: You mentioned that you’d just work out there when school was out. Was that just a three-month operation, or were there people out there all the time? RK: That’s right. Well, this that I worked was just during the school break, you know... But the quarry itself operated about six months out of the year because it was a very necessary operation. They stockpiled this ballast material. It was a crushed rock, limestone by the way, a very good limestone. And there were some very interesting things in that quarry out there. Had some natural geological interests that anyone would be interested in along those lines, like pipe organ coral, horn coral, and things of that kind that some men take great pride in looking around. You know. JT: What do you mean by ballast? RK: Like geology, geologist, road foundation. JT: Would it be used mainly for the bed of the railroad? 9 RK: That’s right. When they would raise the track line out on the main line, and they would have extra gangs out there that would work through the summer months. Of course they would be made up, some of them, of college fellows and others. There would be Mexican fellows and others would be Japanese fellows. They had an Italian foreman usually, and one of two Japanese foremen, and quite a few Irishmen foremen. JT: Did they have any blacks that worked there? RK: No, not that I remember... not then. Not any at all at that time. It was in the wrong location of the country, country-wise. JT: How large an area was this rock used for the bed? Would they send it all the way to Washington? RK: It would go all along the Salt Lake Division, from Ogden clear out to Sparks, Nevada, which would be some 500 miles distance. JT: Mainly used for Utah? RK: Well, not particularly. Perhaps a lot of it would go also into Nevada, into the Nevada area. They also had another large ballast quarry out there in Nevada on the Humbolt River, known as the Palaside Quarry, and it was equally as large as the one that was in Lucin. So you ask how many men. It was a good-size outfit. Probably something like, roughly speaking, 300 men… There were some men that would work nights. For instance, they had a repair crew that would repair the crushing machinery and lubricate it and put new babbits in the bearings. And all this would be done at night when they closed down the power plant. Then in the daytime, the steam shovel crew and the blasting crew and the engineers that handled the load off crushed rock going down 10 through these various crushing devices and aggregate screening devices would be working on the day shift. Usually on Sundays, they always ran stake or would shanghai a bunch of guys to work on Sunday. Ten hour shifts to shift the work trucks into the pit so that they would be in position to be loaded Monday morning by the steam shovel. All this would advance week by week by week... and finally it would take a great slice off the mountain away, you see. The coyote holes that I spoke of, this particular one, had I think it was 40 tons of black powder in it when they blew it, blasted it off. The one I helped blow. There’s a mental picture of what went on the hour it was to be blasted that was something that always stood out in my mind. I never did forget it. It was kind of comical, in fact. We had a Swede that was the foreman and the old quarry superintendent, and his name was Peter Lackin. He wore a great big sombrero hat. It was awful hot country out there, particularly in the middle of July and August. We did have rattlesnakes and coyote. Well, anyway, this particular hour, the moment they were supposed to blast this thing off, they had blown the whistles and given everybody due notice that they’re going to blow it, and the quarry itself is about one and one-half or three-quarters of a mile away from the camp where we lived, where the engineering plant was that supplied the electricity because it was out of reach where, when these blasts would take place, the rock wouldn’t destroy any of the installations in other areas. Well, this particular day, we’re all up on the quarry ground, and underneath flat cars and waiting for the thing to blast, and old Pete Lackin gave the signal to blast. And the fellow, the powder monkey, pushed down on the handle to set it off. And this Pete Lackin, he had a big Mexican hat on, and when he discovered the thing didn’t blow up, he very excitedly threw his Mexican hat off and jumped on it. He just about crushed it. 11 The guys, they all laughed and got quite a bang out of it because he made a big spectacle out of himself. But it was near the end of the shift, and we all went down to supper to retire for the day. Oh, I would say after we had our supper, some hours later, the thing did blow. So they set the thing to work, and we all anticipated that the blast would lift the mountain up a little and shake it up so they could work late at the quarry head. But at this dovetailed entrance to the coyote hole that was all blocked up with ties and stones, it broke loose and gave way, and it projected like a projectile quite a thundering set of rock in a mile, and some of them fantailed out, and one of the big rocks flew right down through the cookhouse dining room and it made a hole. It’s just a good thing we all had our supper before this thing happened because somebody could have got hurt. Well, the next day we got up and looked over the face of the blast, and we found out it did shake up the mountain considerable. JT: How big was the rock that went through there? RK: I would say it was about as big as a double bushel basket. One bushel basket stacked up on top of the other. Then we discovered there were ties that had blown out of the coyote hole entrance scattered all over, and it had knocked off some of the control signs, warning signs on high voltage, off a pole and some of the banisters of some of the catwalks. It rained a little bit of hell calamity up there, but not enough to worry about. They repaired it very fast next day. So the blast was a success. Well, there were a lot of other funny things that happened in the quarry and activities on weekends occasionally, if we hadn’t worked on a Sunday. Half the gang usually was retained to work to do dead work while the quarry was shut down, such as setting up tracks and saving various installations in the quarry head, like portable track and things of that kind. They had to 12 grease the cars and blow out the boilers on the steam engines and get a lot of things ready for the ensuing week. Well, anyway this one Sunday a bunch of us went out to Montello to play ball, and they had a bet up to about $100 against the Montello team that we could beat them. Of course everybody in the quarry threw in a dollar to build it up to $100 purse and, by golly, we beat them. Well, that was quite a blow that weekend; we had quite a time. Had a great big feed after the game, and then we caught the train and came back late to Lucin. Oh it was past midnight. We had to wait for the number 10, the late train. Usually came through about ten, about twelve... So the next morning we woke up, we were pretty groggy, as it was quite a day the day before, but we managed to get by. Well, occasionally at breakfast time in the old bunk house, I should say the old cook house, it was manned by about four Chinese boys that served table, and two or three Chinese cooks. And these Chinese boys that served the table were kept very busy in the morning bringing out the food. There were a great number of fellows all told, possibly something like... about 200 people that would eat, and then there were some that would eat a little bit before and a little bit after, like the dignitaries and the superintendents and the bosses. JT: You were still, what, 16 or 17 at this time? RK: Yes, 16. JT: Were there many other boys your age around there? RK: No, there were just a few. One that I made acquaintance with from out in Nevada, that was a very fine fellow, a pumper operator, and he worked on nights. But he and I paired off together. 13 JT: What would he do, quick explanation? What’s a pumper operator? RK: Well, he kept the water circulating from the main line water reservoir ...which is about a mile and a half away to the elevated tank up on the quarry. And he ran what they call a Well-Fairbanks and Morris pump and kept this water filled in the tank. It was for the needs around the quarry, like the shower bath facilities, and all the necessary drinking water and so on. What was necessary in this camp? Well, this cook house deal, the old Chinese boy came running out real fast, bringing the hot cakes, and the guys would all holler, “Hot cakes, hot cakes, we got to have more hot cakes!” And the little Chinese boy, he said, “Oh, me bringee too many hot cakes! You guys eatee too muchy!” And of course, they purposely would take these hot cakes and hide them under the table just to keep the little guy hopping back and forth from the kitchen. They’d get quite a kick out of it. There were some of these fellows, of course, that were college fellows, but most of them were ... The stable quarry workers were employees that had worked for the company for a number of years. JT: Did these boys, did these men stay out there all the time? How long an operation was this? RK: Well, the operation lasted about six months through the year because, of course, winter conditions. But in the summertime they would always hire students and younger fellows... timekeeper jobs, store department jobs, and things like that. JT: What did these men do after six months, in the winter? RK: Then they would be transferred to farther out in the desert at some of the old sites where there was copper mining. 14 JT: They would still stay on with the railroad? RK: Yes, it was a railroad proposition where they would pick up this slag. Actually they would work the slag, prepare it for loading. At that time they were experimenting in the use of slag for ballast on the railroad, and they found out it was very good. In fact I believe now it’s even better than limestone. Well, there were a number of other incidents that would take place out there. Some of things like the old movie shows that would come. Maybe once in a month. The fellow had an old Dodge truck, and he had an electric generator on the running board. He’d pull up to the schoolhouse there in the little town of Lucin, jack the rear wheel up. On this rear wheel he had a pulley arrangement. He’d connect the belt to it over to the generator on the running board and pour a lot of water in the radiator and let her go. And that would run his moving picture projector. Well, there were quite a few of the guys that would go down, the younger fellows, go down, take in the movie, and of course, in town there was a boarding house. A few young girls that worked down there, they’d always come over and see the movie too. So it would make it turn into a nice little party, like. But this thing would start about just at dark, say about nine o’clock, eight-thirty, something like that, because this was all during the summertime. Came in July and August, and when it got dark anyway, he’d pour the water in the radiator and start the thing going, and we’d have reel number one. And then after reel number one, he’d have to turn off the projector, run out and put in some more water in the radiator, and get his motor going, tuned up just about right for speed, so it would supply enough current to make the light and the motor run to operate the movie projector. And then it would be time for reel number two. Well, for a six or seven reel show, you know, why it lasted until about one, two o’clock in the morning. 15 But it was a lot of fun. In the meantime, while he was doing all these chores to get the thing operating, why we would be trying to tip the benches over where the girls were sitting or something like that to give them a bad time. It was, it was just for fun anyway. JT: Would you ever come in to Ogden or Brigham City, you know, the big town? RK: No, no, no, it was all right out there in the toolies, right in the desert. JT: Just an occasional baseball game or something once in a while? RK: Yes. And they had a little country store out there that was real interesting. It was run by a Basque... He was a man that dealt with many Basques that lived in that area that were in the sheep business. Of course there are no better sheep herders in the world than Basques. They are considered the very finest animal tenders in the world. But once in a while, we’d go down in the general store and maybe order something like a watch or a pair of dungarees, or maybe a pair of work shoes. We’d always get our work gloves and things from him. And he’d always cash our checks. There’s a peculiarity in these days of cashing a check. If you had cents on the remaining part of the check, like 53 cents or something like that, they would pay you 55 cents. But if you had 52 cents written on your check, why they’d just pay you 50 cents. Now this was the old custom in the old days out around Nevada and western Utah. Apparently it was something that was left over from the old days when they built the railroad and had been kept in practice all through these years. JT: Just as convenience? RK: As a matter of bonus more or less, just the way they did out in Nevada. It would only be a three cent division there. 16 JT: What job did you have on the railroad during the Depression? RK: Well, let’s see. There were several furlough jobs I was sent out on. One was a quarry watchman, and my duties were to be track walker, milk a goat... I had to keep the goat milked because the man that I was relieving taking his furlough job for was in town. His wife was having a baby, and he said, “By all means, keep that goat milked.” Because we got to have that goat, that’s for sure. JT: Were there many people that worked for the railroad that were affected by the Depression? RK: Well, as a rule, the railroad company was pretty good. They always would find a furlough job of a lesser nature for a fellow laid off of the regular job... And I was very fortunate. I had a checker’s job and track walker’s job, and had to throw the switch for the little narrow gauge out at Palaside, and oh, other less type jobs. I even worked on a gandy dance in 1938, which consisted of about 80 college fellows. I was about the only one outside the boss that was the oldest one in the gang. And he gave me a very good job. I had the job of being the tool nipper, putting all the wooden handles in the molls and things like that. When the boys would want to go into town to cash their checks on payday, the boss would let me go as an overseer, and he’d say, “Now, you keep these guys out of the pubs.” So I organized a quartet, and we had a lot of interesting music attachments. JT: They called them pubs then? RK: Well, out in Nevada, I guess you’d call them just the good old barroom, you know. But we did run across one place out there that was pretty decent. The lady would come and 17 play the piano for us. She’d have a stack of music, probably a repertoire of about 80 or 90 pieces, current at the time. And she’d sit down and play these for us, and we’d sit there and sing until the wee hours of the morning. Well, I’d make sure they’d cash their checks, and I’d get over to the post office, and I’d always get their money orders made out first and sent in. And then what they had left, I knew wouldn’t hurt them because they didn’t have too much left. A little railroad beer and hotel expense for the night, and their laundry bill, and maybe a couple bucks extra to spend for refreshments. But I’ve always had a good time, and they were a good bunch of guys. I had a lot of fun with them. JT: Speaking of good times, the Bamberger Railroad that went to Lagoon, did you ever ride on that? RK: Well, in my hometown, right here in Ogden, occasionally the time I was going to high school, on the 4th of July a bunch of us students would get together and go down there on the Bamberger and have a day. It was a real pleasant ride to ride on the Bamberger. We’d get on that old Bamberger on the 4th of July, and they’d have five cars following the motor car, and it would be packed. Somebody would start singing and they’d have community singing all the way to Lagoon. It really was lots of fun. JT: How about the Ogden Rapid Transit Company? What do you remember about that? RK: Oh the Rapid Transit Company had the old Brill cars that were designed probably about 1890, or perhaps the turning point of the century. Later they came out with the Bernie cars, which were of an early vintage, around the 1920s, but they were only four wheelers. The former type that I spoke of were eight-wheel cars, and the meter man, quite a number of them had big, curly moustaches. I remember the names of some of 18 them. There was a Mr. Cramer, a Mr. Evans, and a Mr. Boyle, and they all had big, widespread, curly moustaches. JT: I like your moustache and sideburns there – olden days. RK: Well, I acquired that after I had a slight case of palsy that hit me, and it kind of covers up a little of the defect. Well, the railroad had a lot of interesting things. There were many upgraded things I had seen during my 30 years. JT: What was one major upgrade or safety factor, something you would say was the best improvement? RK: I would say the switching over from the old romantic steam engines, which in my estimate was the most fantastic piece of machinery that had ever been invented, to the diesel era. I remember at the time they were introducing the first diesel operation across the United States, called the City of San Francisco, and it was scheduled to go through past our outfit in Nevada at a place right near Emily, at about 12 o’clock midnight. It was the initial run, and a bunch of us fellows, in the year 1938, and in the month of August, waited up until past midnight for it to come rolling by. We climbed up on top of the boxcar, which was our outfit car, sitting on a siding alongside the main line, and I had my piano accordion. We were singing some songs about ghost riders in the sky and what have you, and I remember very distinctly the month of August. We were also doing a lot of stargazing, and boy, out in Nevada, that’s one thing that you will notice very, very much. Interested in watching shooting stars in the month of August. It’s quite fascinating. Well, here we were, waiting and waiting, and shortly after midnight, we saw the light way down the main line. And of course it was the City of San Francisco, the new streamliner. Boy, when it went roaring by our outfit, it almost shook us off the roof. 19 It rocked cars so hard, it had quite a vacuum when it plowed within three feet distance alongside of our outfit, you know. JT: How fast was it going? RK: It was doing, I’d say, something like 70 because it was on a tangent line there, very straight, and they really open them up. Well, that was quite an experience. There might have been a discrepancy about the year. Possibly it could have been in, oh, when I think about it, 1939 instead of 1938. But nevertheless, it was quite a thing to remember, I know. They had had some diesel operation on freight service on the Denver & Rio Grande a year or two before that, operated over the Soldiers Summit. I had an occasion one time when I was driving my automobile in that area going over the Soldiers Summit to hear one of these diesels roar coming up over the divide. It set out a very decided rumble also. But these things were all very impressive then. But after the steam engine left and you think back about hearing the rumble and roar of a steam engine passing you, going at a high rate of speed of 50 to 60 miles per hour, or over a big Micado passing you at night, pulling a long lettuce-laden freight from San Francisco or from the San Jacquon Valley headed east. Rambling down the track and the flare of red light at every puff bursting out of the fire box and spitting out of the chimney. It gives you a picture, a mental picture. Then you smell the oil, smoke, and you’d always wave if you were in view even at night. They would wave to you. Many times out on the job, I worked nights, and the trains would have to arrive in the area where we’re working on a slow order, and of course the area would be flagged and set out by torpedoes. The engineer would always have to slow coming through a working area. Many times they 20 would be very alert, and if the gang was standing at the side, they would always wave. Trains men, engineers, and also the conductors, and the brakeman in the caboose. JT: Do they wave today? RK: I think so. They still follow that tradition very much. The railroad operations has a sign language on the mainline and there’s a lot of little things that go on by action of the arms and the direction of the way they’re pointing, and so on, that would indicate various things that might be happening on their train. If you’re an employee on the maintenance way and happen to notice any of these things, like a hot box or a break beam dragging, which is very dangerous, of course the instinct of letting the train crew know about it is the first thing you’d want to do to prevent a wreck. They have what they call hand signals to have all this information. One is like a brake beam dragging, they would indicate like breaking a board over your knee, like that (demonstrates), and then they would go along like this with the palm of their hand, and face down, and moving in a direction like something that’s dragging. And they would always indicate that in case anything sounded like it might be dragging underneath the train. In the event that it might be a hot box and it passed by you in the middle of the train where the train crew hadn’t quite discovered it yet, why you’d put your hand to your nose like something was burning, and then point halfway. And you’d come down one arm like this, about halfway. They’d be in the middle of the train somewhere. This would give them a clue, and they would immediately investigate it, of course, if there was smoke. Because sometimes hot boxes can be very dangerous. They would create a fire in time, and most all box cars in those days had wood floors, and the fire would circulate up into the wood floor of the box car, and it could even be an old-fashioned boxcar that had wood siding. You see, it 21 wouldn’t be long...But by that time, I’m sure the crew would know it if there was that much smoke. Well, that’s just some of the little things about safety. JT: Do you have any last statements about your career in the railroad? RK: Well, I wasn’t always out on the maintenance away. I finally decided that I wanted to come to town. And so I went through a series of studies and became a car-man and spent most of my career in town working in the shop. JT: What job did you enjoy the most? RK: Well, I look back around my youth, and I think about out there on the maintenance away, and all the things that happened, and I think I had more interest out there, actually. Of course I was more carefree, and I was only working three, four, five months out of the year, and the rest of the time coming and going to school. It was another story when you got on to it to make your life living and working year in and year out. Many a hard winter I survived. They had lots of cold feet, I know, and I worked in the car department, and they always had a good roasting hot fire in there that always made it possible for a fellow to go in and get warm. JT: Do you have any last statements now? RK: Well, 33 years of railroading, and I did have disability. I’ve been out of work for the railroad the last 15 years, so there are many modern innovations that have been added to the railroad since I’ve left. I haven’t followed everything too closely, but I know they use electronics a great deal now, and they have many, many hydraulic operations and also compressed air operations, which they use in the shops and also on the maintenance away. A wonderful communications system and, of course, it’s branched 22 off slightly from railroading in respect the Southern Pacific Company have built a pipeline from, I believe in El Paso, Texas, and it winds up, I think, clear to Porta Costa in San Francisco. This pipeline runs for thousands of miles, and they transport oil and coal and things like this through the pipeline, which has eliminated much railroading. JT: Well, the trouble Amtrak is having, at least with passenger service, as far as freight, do you feel the railroad is still here to stay? RK: I would say that in freight that the needs for railroading are vital and as long as the great populace of our nation eats and lives from day to day and has to have demands there will always be a railroad to a certain extent. As far as traveling and passenger needs, it’s been greatly changed because of the development of the super highways and also the increase in the number of automobiles. This could change the passenger. However, looking into the future, there are some new ideas that are being probed with and this is called the lineal electronic device they’re talking about putting on transportation cars that will move them at a rapid speed that actually attracts the cars, rather than adhesion by wheel onto the rail. It’s a polarity attraction meter. I understand this is being experimented with not only in this country but also in Japan. I think Japan is ahead of us in transportation excellence. We’re way behind. Europe is ahead of us in transportation excellence, but I think we’re at a lull right at this time. In the future, we’ll come out with something really super. This is about all I have to say. I don’t claim to know too much about the latest things, but my endeavors in model railroading have taken up a great deal of my time the last 15 years, and I have enjoyed that very much. I’ll still look back to the old steam days, the very best days of all. JT: Okay. Thank you very much for your time. 23