Oral History Program Thomas Zito Interviewed by Mary Werner 06 July 1973 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Thomas Zito Interviewed by Mary Werner 06 July 1973 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: Zito, Thomas, an oral history by Mary Werner, 06 July 1973, 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 Thomas Zito. The interview was conducted on July 6, 1973, by Mary Werner in the location of 3962 South 1150 West Ogden, Utah. Mr. Zito discusses his experiences and knowledge of the railroads in Ogden, Utah. MW: This is an interview of Tom Zito by Mary Werner for the Oral History Project at Weber State College. We are at Mr. Zito's home, 3962 South 1150 West, Ogden, Utah. The time is 6:15 PM. Could you tell me just a little about yourself? TZ: Well, I'm actually a farmer to start with, I went to work at the railroad in 1941. Things were rough. Farming was as rough as anything. Couldn't hire anybody, and nobody wanted to work. The war began and I thought since I can't make a go of it here I'll just give up the farm and go to work for the railroad. I had an opportunity to go to work for the railroad so I took it and started in the car shop in February of 1941. MW: Now this was in Ogden wasn't it? TZ: Yes, at the car shop in Ogden and I stayed with it until I retired. I did everything there was to do on the railroad; fixing boxcars, passenger cars, wrecker, and emergency road work that took in Ogden to Evanston and sometimes beyond. We repaired cars that sometimes went bad in trains in transit from here going east. If a car would have a hot box or bad air, the train crew would stop the train and set it out somewhere; such as maybe Morgan, Echo, or places like that. They would just set it out and a dispatcher would notify us, and we would go out and repair it. The next freight train that would come along would pick it up and continue on. Off and on I did that type of work plus 1 working in the shop. Then I tried to do a little farming, and I still have a little garden out here that I still work at. My wife went to work for Hill Field, so I thought if she could work out there I'll stick with the railroad. I worked down there, I think five years. But then I got into a little hassle about seniority down there one day and I says to heck with it, I quit. I quit and went into a little business for myself. Down on 12th Street I started a cement products company. That was the worst thing I ever did in my life. It did nothing but lose money, and I mean it really lost money. So it soon got to the point where I had to go back to work. I ran into one of the fellows from the shop one day, and he said, "Why don't you come back down to the railroad?" "Things are going pretty good down there now." That's what I did. I went back down there and stayed with it until I retired. MW: You said you started on the railroad in about 1941, would you say that that was during the peak of the railroad in Ogden? TZ: Yes, the starting of the peak. I think that it has continued to build up and is still going. They have eliminated a lot of people that use to do a lot of hand work that is now done by machinery. But the U.P.R.R. (Union Pacific) now has the biggest business they have ever had. It is amazing how it continues to build up as we read about it anyhow, I take what is called a labor paper that comes from the labor organizations, and every time I get one it shows figures where the U.P. is continually climbing business wise. The railroad is spread out into four different categories. I forget just what they are now, but they're not only in the railroad business, they are in oil, mining, and real-estate. They have got their fingers into everything. Well I guess they’re the richest railroad in the world. They have also progressed more than any other railroad I've known, but as I say machinery has eliminated a lot of people that were once working for them. 2 MW: Could you tell me some of your experiences while working on the wrecking crew? TZ: Some of them were pretty rough experiences. I remember one instance we were out where a half a dozen cars of cement that had derailed, where we called a cut, just up from Sperry Mill a little ways. We had the darndest time trying to pick them up; they were so heavy. A lot of times we weren't sure if we would get them picked up. One car in particular we would pick it up and sit it over on the trucks, and it would release itself from the wrecker and everything would tip over again. We did that a half a dozen times and we were, I guess, a couple days picking that darn mess up. The poor guys on the ground, what we called the ground crew, worked. My goodness they walked around in just loose cement clear up to their knees. You couldn't tell if they were a cement ball or what, all you could see was the white of their eyes. Work wise, I think, it was as about a rough a wreck as I was ever on, and I ran the derrick. It was about 150° up in that cab, and I couldn't leave it or get off of it. As fast as I would take a drink of water, it would run right out of me. It was, I think, about as rough a job as I ever had there. Of course we had a lot of others where we would hardly do anything. We would be called out and by the time we'd get there they had maybe one car derailed and we would mess around and have dinner and just take it easy. I remember another one up in Idaho, it was kinda a nasty wreck. We got up there and the Pocatello derrick was there too, so we picked up one car and we lolly-gagged around and visited with people out on the road, and then finally they decided to send us back home. That's all we did was pick up one car. We made a two day trip out of it. The nice part of being on wrecker call was they paid us time-and-a-half from the time we received the call until the time we got back. We knocked off some pretty good checks. Of course, they fed us only the best and all we 3 wanted. As I say, we had a lot of easy wrecks, but we had some tough ones too. There was the passenger wreck Angus was talking about. It was so cold up there you couldn't hardly stand it. Boy I really was in a good position on that one because I could go anytime I wanted. I could leave when I wanted or I could stay when I wanted. It was so cold however, that you just couldn't get around, I think it was around 26°-27° below 0°. Man that wind whistling down through there, that's the coldest spot in Wyoming anyhow, I stayed on until they got it all picked up and went on to Evanston to repair the passenger cars so they could move them on to Omaha where they would rebuild them and fix them up so they could be useable again. They were really smashed up. Another time we had a real nice easy wreck. We're called to Granger where there were 25 or 26 cars off the track. It seemed like it took us all the afternoon and part of a night to get to where the wreck was. When we got up there all we did was pick up a couple of brokenup-old- empty cars and a few pieces. Since they tied us up we stayed up there for another day and didn't do a darn thing until they decided to send us home. We were gone a total of 5 days and we did not do more than 4 hours of work. That's the way the railroad operates on some of these wrecks. Sometimes when you go out on a wreck you work every minute, they won't even let you stop and get a cup of coffee until they get the main line open and have everything cleaned up so the trains can go on through. Other times you go up to a wreck and just lolly-gag around and listen to one guy say let’s do it this way and another say let’s do it that way, and they kill most of the time arguing. As I say, the easy ones came with the hard ones. The winter time was when it was a little bit bad because it would be so cockeyed cold up in the country, we use to have to do into. We worked between here (Ogden) and Greenriver, and most of the time 4 it would be colder than a son-of-a-gun. Of course, I myself have been fortunate enough to always have an inside job, I was either a fireman, or working the derrick where it was warm. A time or two, however, they caught me loafing so they put me to work. All and all though it really wasn't too bad. There were times when it was actually fun. MW: Since you have been retired have you recently gone down and looked at the yards or visited anybody down there? TZ: I've gone down to the shop a couple of times, but it wasn't actually to go down and look the railroad over. That's one thing I really haven't missed much is the job on that railroad. When I walked off the job in September, I said well goodbye, and that was it. I think I've only been back down there about three times. MW: At least you have been down there enough so you can observe what is different from now and when you began in 1941. TZ: Oh yes. MW: I wonder from your observations if you could tell me what has changed? TZ: There is quite a bit of difference. When I started down there we had the old steam engine, coal burner, and they were noisy and dirty. They were good for what they were supposed to do at that time, but the difference, between the trains they pull now and then is just like daylight and dark. Then, it would take two engines to get over what we would call a "hill" with about 60 or 70 cars. Now, they have diesel units at the middle and the head of the train and they take 150 or 175 cars and they go so much faster. Heck, they'll expedite a trainload of stuff from California to Chicago in a lot less time than it did before with a lot more cars. It required a lot of labor people to maintain the 5 steam engines, where now one man will maintain three or four diesels where it would have taken 100 men to maintain four or five steam engines and keep them going all the time. MW: That is quite a difference, TZ: There is just that much difference in the two types of locomotion used to pull these trains. Another thing, what we called green food or perishable cars called refrigerator cars. They were called refrigerator cars because they would ice each end of the car to keep the perishable food inside from spoiling. They have replaced them with a mechanical reefer and have done away with the P.F.E. refrigerator car that had to have ice in each end. These mechanical reefers have a cooling unit in one end just like your refrigerator. They start the little motor in there and the whole car can be kept to the exact desired degree. That change eliminated a lot of people because they needed an ice house and an icing crew with machinery to ice with. The freight train would be run on the side of a long, long dock and then they would come all the way down through the train and they would ice all those cars. There would be several men come along and pull the doors open. More men would come along and chop ice to fill those bunkers full of ice. More men would come along and put salt on the ice to keep it cool and more men would clean the top off and close the door MW: It took quite a lot of time then. TZ: Yes, a lot of time and a lot of men, where now they just don't do that anymore. That is really progress as far as the railroad is concerned because they can run those refrigerator cars from California to their destination without no care at all. The units just keep a running and operating. Just set the desired temperature and it never varies. It 6 can be set to 15°-20° below zero if desired. Some stuff they do freeze solid right in the car. They can go from California to Chicago or New York or wherever it's going. They have certainly built up progress in that respect, because they can now move stuff so much faster, so much cheaper, and they have eliminated a lot of labor. They now make the cars bigger and stronger. We use to have to change a lot of wheels. Practically all the freight cars had what they called cast iron wheels. Those wheels would get hot with the brake shoes rubbing against them and they would get burnt. It sounds funny that a wheel would get burnt, but it would get so hot that where the shoe would ride on the wheel it would just crumble. It was burnt alright, because there was a big old hole you could see right on the wheel. Now they have what we call a steel wheel. It doesn't get hot enough so it burns like the cast iron wheel. They’ve eliminated all the cast wheels, so there is nothing but steel wheels now. Where there use to take a tremendous crew at every shop to change out wheels, now they very seldom change a wheel. I remember in a 24 hour shift in this little old shop in Ogden, we would change over a 100 pair of wheels. Now they don't change one. Another thing they've done is gotten rid of the friction bearing. It is a brass and lead bearing that rides on the axel of the wheel so as it turns and rolls it is lubricated with a lubricating pad stuck underneath the axel in a germ box. As the wheel turns it would lubricate itself. Switching back and forth they would unseat the brass or something would get underneath the brass and form a hot box by the thousands. Now they have what they call a roller-bearing. This roller-bearing, all that it requires is once every six or twelve months, whichever side it happens to be. One man can go through a whole freight train and check them and if they need a little bit of oil why they would dab a little bit of oil where it use to take several men an each side of 7 the complete freight train to check the boxes and oil them. This would take a lot of time. They use to have visions or points where every so often a freight train would have to stop and they would have to completely inspect it; air, oil, and boxes. They would also inspect what we called the brakes. Now they have progressed so far that they just roll the train by one man on each side of the train who stands there at night holding a flashlight to make sure nothing is dragging. They don't even stop anymore. They use to stop and take out all the bad order and everything. Now, they just wheel them just as fast as they can. Where it would take some ten men, one man now does the same thing. They have cut down on labor in every department. From the time I began working down there, where there was 20 men working there is only 2 men now doing the same thing, I was down at the shop, where I use to work, about a month ago, and by golly I couldn't find anybody. There was nobody working. I also went into the office and there was only one person in the office. I said “Where in the heck is everybody?” There just wasn't anybody there. Every time a man retires or dies they don't replace him. MW: What is the reason for that? TZ: Mechanized railroad. They don't need them now. They have everything so that it doesn't require anybody or any maintenance. Once in a great while they will have a little trouble with a car, and wherever it happens to be they send someone out to repair it and send it on its way. MW: Is that why they have torn down so many buildings down there? TZ: Right. The buildings pertain to the roundhouse. When the steam engine went out of existence, and they started bringing in the diesel, they did not require such a big place to maintain it. Now, they have a little old open pit right out here in Riverdale yard and if 8 they need any work or shoes or anything to put on these diesels. They roll it right over the little pit and in about fifteen minutes two men do the work of, oh heck there must have been when the roundhouse was operating with the steam engines there must have been 500 men working down there. When they decided to tear it down I bet you there wasn't 25 men. They just laid them off, sent them to different points if they wanted to go. Anybody that retired they didn't fill his vacancy. Anybody that would die or quit; they still wouldn't fill their vacancy. They claim that they are going to phase out all the labor pertaining to repairs on freights and passengers within two years. Then there won't be anybody working. Oh, they will have someone see that there is nothing dragging as the train goes by. If there is, why they will stop it and pull out from under whatever it is and keep right on a going, MW: I bet you are relieved you are retired then, aren't you? TZ: Oh boy, you know, I am glad I'm out of it because it started to fall to pieces about two years before I retired. I could see that it was going to fall the minute the passenger trains were removed. When they were abolished right out and out I thought that boy your lucky your close enough so you can retire and get the heck out of here. I decided practically overnight. I would be 69 years old on the 29 of September and about one week before that I went in and told Mr. Hickey, the boss, that I was going to retire. He acted like he didn't like it, but he didn't say much. Come the 29th day of September I said, "I'm long gone." I took the last trip to Evanston. I rode up with the two boys working with me, and said, “this is it," When I came in that night, I signed out and it took me about 60 days to get straightened out on my annuity. I finally got it all straightened out. My wife got hers all straightened out, and we have done nothing but spend it since. 9 MW: That is great. Did you ever use your pass that you received for passenger service? Did you ever travel? TZ: Oh yes, that is one thing I did use. We use to go to Las Vegas a lot, my wife and I. Of course, we went to Los Angles and Denver too. At that time it did not cost us anything to ride the train. All it would cost me was a bedroom, I got a bedroom because my wife couldn't sit up too long on the train, I would get a bedroom and it would cost me $16.00 from here to Las Vegas. I use to use a pass for that all the time. There for a while we went to Las Vegas about once a month. We also went to Los Angles a lot. We could use our pass, for a long time, on the Southern Pacific also. Later on, if we wanted to use our pass on a foreign railroad, what I mean is a railroad other than the Union Pacific, it would cost us half fare. Whatever the fare was we would have to pay only half. MW: Did Southern Pacific go from Ogden to Las Vegas or was that U.P.? TZ: No, that was U.P. Southern Pacific went from Ogden to San Francisco, you could go to Las Vegas, but you would have to go to San Francisco first. U.P. had a direct route right here to Las Vegas, then from Las Vegas to Los Angles. We could get on the train here and ride all the way to Los Angles and it wouldn't cost us a dime. We could also go from here to Denver on a pass and it wouldn't cost us anything. We could also go as far as Kansas City on the U.P. pass and it wouldn't cost us anything. Of course, then as I say, they started bringing in this half fare business. After the thing got going a little bit it used to be a lot of people would even pay half fare to ride it. MW: That is not too bad, TZ: No it wasn't. 10 MW: What was it like to ride on a train? TZ: Well, I would rather ride on the train than anything else there is, automobiles, airplanes, or any of them. MW: Then you have ridden on an airplane? TZ: Oh yes, we've flown a lot. We just came back from Honolulu, Hawaii. I just use to enjoy getting on the train, me and my wife, grand kids, mother, and son, and just go to Las Vegas or Los Angles or wherever we wanted to go. MW: What made the train so much neater than the airplane? TZ: Well, you are so much more relaxed and you felt so much more at ease. I still say that I'd like one foot on the ground, but on the train you have everything that you'd have at home: beautiful lounge, dome car where you could get up there and look all over the countryside, dinner service, and there was nothing like it. You could get out and wander down the train too. Most of the time, for me anyhow, there was always somebody on the train I knew. If it wasn't somebody from the crew it was somebody from a different part of the country or going to Los Angles or Las Vegas. We'd visit and run into a lot of officials of the train and we'd sit around and bull con or go to the lounge and have a drink. The seats were always comfortable. Actually you didn't need a bed, you could just sit back and recline in the chairs, just as good as in bed. I really, really enjoy riding the train. The one thing I did miss about the railroad is the fact that we couldn't ride the train any more, MW: About when did the passenger service decline? 11 TZ: I don't think it ever did decline too much. Every time we were on a train it was always filled with passengers. I think they just used that as an excuse to take the trains off, I can't say they were losing money; that is only the excuse they gave. They wanted to get rid of the passenger trains because they were really in the road. They would often have to sidetrack a freight train to let a passenger train through. It would slow down the freight trains and that’s what they were really yelling about. They wanted to get rid of the passenger trains because it was slowing down their freight business and they used the excuse they were losing money, but I don't think they were losing money. I would almost gamble that they weren't losing money on the passengers. MW: Do you think they were making more money on the freight then? TZ: Yes, they were making a lot more money on freight, but they weren't losing money on the passengers either. That’s the excuse they used all the time because I rode those passenger trains a lot. Never were they empty and maybe only once and a while there would be an empty seat, but not very often. They were usually always filled to capacity. It was something that broke my heart when I couldn't go down and get on the train and go to Las Vegas, The beautiful part was too, we could get on at night and go to bed after we got tired of bumming around the train, and the porter would wake us up the next morning in Las Vegas, Coming back was the same way. We would get on at night and would be back here early the next morning just in time to go to work. I'd go to work, the wife wouldn't, but I would get off the train and when I was working down at the pit, the passenger pit, thats where we repaired all the passenger cars, my daughter would always come down to get us. She would bring down my work clothes, and I'd change 12 clothes and go to work. It was really wonderful and as far as riding the train, I still say I would rather ride the train than drive an automobile, or fly in an airplane. MW: Have you ridden on the Amtrak at all yet? TZ: No, I never have. We have threatened to go to Denver a couple of times. We can go to Denver now on our pass and it won't cost us anything. But it will cost us half fare to ride Amtrak from here to San Francisco. Maybe we can even go to Omaha on our pass, but I'm not too sure on that because I've never taken time to find out. One of these days we’ve just going to go down and try Amtrak. To tell the truth I've never even seen the train. MW: That is probably because it leaves so early in the morning. Someone told me, I believe it was Mr. Maccarthy, it comes in at 3:15 every morning. TZ: Oh! MW: In fact he said it has eleven cars and it is always full. TZ: They say it is just as nice as it always was, I've heard Charly Whitehead, a kid I use to work with down at the pit, say it was as nice as any train you've ever ridden. You can get any service you want on it. They have a diner and sleeping accommodations just like the old U.P. trains, MW: Do you think the U.P. will ever take back passenger service? TZ: I don't think they will. What I look for one of these days is for Amtrak to put a train back on from Ogden to Los Angles. You say the Amtrak Train leaves early in the morning. That’s an ungodly hour but if anyone wants to ride it, ok. They do say it’s always full? 13 MW: Mr. Maccarthy was telling me that some of the people that work on the railroad can't get on, because you can only get on if there is an empty seat. He was also telling me he was going to Denver on Tuesday, "if I can get on." TZ: I guess that's a problem too, with the pass. They're in the same boat we were in before. If there was room you could get on with the pass, if not you were out of luck. They never bothered me. I never heard of anyone they turned down that had a pass at least during my travels. The meals were just out of this world. To this day I can't find anybody who could make coffee like they did down at the diner. That was the most wonderful, best tasting coffee a person ever drank. MW: That is funny you would remember something like that, TZ: Yeah. Oh when I use to get on the train the first thing I'd order was a pot of coffee. A pot would hold two big cups of coffee. Then I would always have maybe another pot. I knew several of those colored cooks, and I asked them how they made coffee so good. They said, "Oh, I'll tell yeah, just go buy some coffee, boil some water and pour the coffee in," “The heck you do,” I said. There is something else. Like I said I never drank coffee like at that diner. Their food was out of this world too. It was so tasty. MW: What was the Depot like when they had the passenger service in Ogden? Could you tell me about that? TZ: It was quite a busy place. Heck there was trains coming, and trains going, I use to use the subway where you could go down where the trains came in and walk off the train and go down and into the depot. It was a big, big, open building. I would say at least three stories high. There were offices all around there, they would call it a mezzanine, I 14 guess. The ticket office over on one side and the ladies restroom was on one end opposite the baggage room. You could go down there and see huge benches clear across the depot. If you had to wait for a train you would sit there and wait until the announcer would call the train number, which way the train was going and so forth. When the train arrived they would say the train was ready and you would just walk out of the depot and go onto the train. It was just a brick building with every contraption in it in the world. MW: What is it like now? TZ: It's just a big building with nothing in it. They have been trying to get it for a museum. It is just a huge building with one big room, they have even taken the benches out of it now. Just a big old deserted building, and there's no one in it except a man to sell you tickets for the Amtrak train, I believe that they have two or three offices still in there, but I don't know which official still has his office in there. Way up on one end he has his office in there. Then they use to have the express office next to it where everything you sent by rail express was sent into and picked up. Next to that was what they called the D.C. and H. It was a dining car hotel department. They furnished all the dining cars, and hotels on the railroad with all the food they needed and linen they needed. That's gone—they tore all that out because of no massive passenger service. They use to have a big laundry next to that where they did all the U.P. laundry—linens, bed linen, tablecloths, well everything they would need. They have also closed that up. Everyone that worked in that is gone. All persons who worked in the D.C. and H are gone too. It's just a ghost city down there now. Once there was a lot of activity. Boy, when a passenger train, especially when they had a lot of them, hit that depot you never seen 15 so many people that worked for the railroad try to take care of everybody. Now there is nothing, no activity, I don't think anybody even gets off of Amtrak now. In the depot there used to be a real nice restaurant. You could buy anything you wanted, to take with you if you wished, fix you a box lunch, buy any meal you wanted. Now they just tore everything out—there is nothing left, MW: I know you were working there during the war. What effect did the troop trains have on the depot and Ogden? TZ: They would come in there so fast and so thick that people just run around in circles. There were just too many people. Nobody knew where they were going or where they come from. The only time things cleared out quick is when the hospital trains came through loaded with wounded soldiers, I seen sights on there that would just tear your heart out. Those poor boys shot all to pieces. Some of them shell-shocked so bad they chained them to the floor, they didn't even have a bed. They would run some of those cars under the pit for us to repair and a lot of times we would have to get inside the car to repair it. Some of the sights were awful. But when those trains hit everyone got out of the road. The M.P.'s would come in there by the thousands, it looked like, and made everyone clear out of the road. There was a three star general in there one night and said, "I'm a general and you can’t push me around here." The M.P. says, “You’re pushed around. Now get the hell out of here and stay out." Just like that—the old boy took off too. They just lined up these M.P.'s and brung the hospital train in and serviced it. If there needed to be any repairs we would repair it. If we had to take a car out in the pit, we'd go there and repair it and wheel it back in and away they would go. Most of them were going to the same outfit back east. I forget the name of it. 16 MW: Oh, they never laid over here then? TZ: Oh no, not the hospital trains. They were here just long enough to service them then we'd get them out of here as quick as we could to get those boys to the hospital where they would get attention. MW: When the troop trains came through was 25th Street very active? TZ: Oh boy, that was the meanest and toughest street in the world. When the troop trains hit the depot, the soldiers piled out and up the street they would go. I had to go up and get a cup of coffee one night when they had called us in to do some work. There were two big sailors, they were tough looking and standing outside the Club on 25th Street, one of the toughest joints ever on 25th Street. This one sailor turned to the other and said, "Do you know I would never have believed this." The other says, "What do you mean that you never would have believed it?" He said, "I heard about this street over in Europe and I would never have believed what I'm seeing now." There were so many sailors coming out of those joints with bottles of beer in their hands, whiskey, and gals. Well, it was just something to see. It's hard to explain all the action that was goin' on that street when those troop trains hit. Of course, you didn't see too many civilians, because they had sense enough to get out of the way. Boy, those soldiers just didn't care where they went, how they went, or when they came back. They were just out for all the fun they could have. Some of them, well I guess the poor buggers had no way of cleaning themselves up, they had whiskers and they were actually dirty. But then there were so many of them that they couldn't keep the passenger trains clean because those poor soldiers would be riding for days and nights getting to where they wanted to go. They would sleep in the aisle and anywhere they could curl up and get a little rest. 17 There was just more people than they had trains to take care of. There was so much of the time that there wasn't enough food. It was just the wildest place you were ever in around that depot. There was just so many people that you can't imagine, unless you were actually there and seen how crowded it was. It wasn't just once and awhile it was 24 hours a day. There was just that many troops, and army personnel going back and forth. I heard those guys say a lot of times, if somebody would ask them where they were going they would say, "I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going." MW: Did they stay in hotels around here? TZ: They would just go outside in the summer time and drop anywhere where they could get a little sleep. Of course they moved them out as fast as they could, but there was for a long time during the war a passenger train in and out of the depot every five minutes around the clock. Just one right after the other. The S.P. was coming in there, the D. and R.G. was coming in there, and the U.P. There was three railroads that joined right there, you might say. All three of them would just empty out right in that depot. MW: That must have been a busy place. TZ: You just can't imagine how many people and action there was. We had a lot of military police around there, but I heard one guy say, "There ain’t no use trying to straighten this mess out, I'm leaving." MW: Were you working right in the middle of all these people? TZ: Well, the depot was like right here and we were just on the other side of the first road. MW: That's quite close. 18 TZ: Yes, we were close. That's where we maintained all the equipment to repair these cars in what we called the passenger outfit. We had kind of a long trench affair where we would get down in and they would roll the train on top of it, and we could inspect them from underneath and see if everything was alright. The train would actually run over top of us. Anything we seen that would need repairs we would check it and stop the train and pull the car out unless it was something that didn't require too much work, we would fix it right there. MW: Did you ever have any passengers come and talk to you? TZ: Oh yeah, lots of times people got out of the car and would come by wanting to know what we were doing and how we were doing it and what we were doing it for. They use to ask some silly questions. One lady came over when we were changing a brake rig that stops the wheels from turning. We were having a little trouble with it and I had a torch in my hand and was cutting the shoe off so I could get the shoe key back in and the old shoe out, and this old gal kept wanting to know what I was doing so I told her, "I'm cutting that shoe out.” She said, "What are you cutting the shoe out for?" I said, "Because it's worn out." She said, "Well it seems to me like you’re cutting everything up. How are you going to get a new one back in there?" I said, “Well lady I'll get it back in, just give me a little time.” Most of them were really nice people who traveled across the country. They would make remarks about how beautiful the view was from the top of the mountains. They were all really nice people. MW: What about the people whom you worked with? Were their attitudes toward the U.P. very good? 19 TZ: Well, yes. But once and awhile we would get someone, a supervisor that was a little bit out of line. And everyone got down on him, but as a rule all the people I worked with were real nice people, like Angus Hansen. I worked with Angus for a long, long time in the shop, out on the wrecker, and he was easy to get along with. In fact everyone I worked with, everyone in general, were real nice people and easy to get along with. They would help you as much as you’d try to help them. It was just a nice bunch of fellas. Actually I enjoyed working with them. MW: Did they enjoy their work? TZ: Most of them did. You'd catch somebody once and awhile who didn't like this and didn't like that although he'd be a pretty nice guy. After making all these complaints he really wasn't a bad guy. We had two or three of them, but as a whole, all the fellows I worked with, you couldn’t ask for a nicer bunch of fellows to work with. A lot are dead and gone, but they were real nice guys. No matter what you would ask of them, they would bend over backwards to help you, but then we were all in the same boat. The more we helped each other the easier was our work. Some of the jobs were pretty rough jobs. When I first started, when we were repairing freight cars, it was all backward. Everything you did you had to lift. We had to lift wheels, lift the truck frame that the wheels set on, etc. They were so cockeyed heavy. Boy, I would come home sometimes and say, "I don't know if this is worth it or not," The worst part I found when I first started working down there was, no matter how hard it was snowing or raining, you stayed right out there and worked. You couldn’t say, "Heck it’s too stormy, I'm going inside." You just stayed right out in that wet weather. I think the second night I worked, I was walking around down there and the water was sloshing out of my shoes. I said, "Boy if you get me back here 20 tomorrow you'll be a genius." But I got home, dried out, and stuck it out from then on. You work out there in all kinds of weather. That's one thing bad about the job where I was working in which we called the car shop. No matter if it’s snowing, raining, or wind blowing we just stayed out there eight or ten hours, whatever you were required to work. You could maybe go in and get warmed up a little bit. Lots of times we'd build a fire in an old oil drum. We'd go there and maybe get warmed up a bit or try and dry your hands. It was a little bit rough. In the summer time, during the day anyhow, it would get awful hot, but you'd keep a going until pretty soon you didn't notice it, MW: Wasn't it pretty good pay for around here too? TZ: Yes, it was about as good a pay as anybody got. They just kept it a climbing and climbing. I think some of those fellas are making pretty close to $6.00 an hour, and that’s pretty good pay. MW: We've talked for about an hour and I don't want to tire you out too much. In summary if you could tell me what’s going to happen to the railroad in Ogden? TZ: To the railroad itself I don't think anything’s going to happen to it. It is going to be here, the freight trains will continue on just as they are. They have disposed of a lot of people who have worked in the past and who will never be able to go back to work there again because they don't need them. As a whole, I think, the railroad is here and will continue to get bigger in so far as freight movement is concerned. The way things are going it's got to get bigger. It will be here long after we're gone. MW: Now, this is in Ogden right? TZ: Right. 21 MW: You go down there now though and all you see is empty track or maybe only one or two trains passing through. TZ: Yes, because they move stuff out so fast. Before they would bring a train in here and break it down and switch it out, but now they just roll it from one end to the other. That's why you see so many empty track, because the trains don't stay here only long enough for one train to get off and another to get back on. That’s another thing, they don't even change diesels here anymore, or cabooses like they use to. When the S.P. would bring a train in they would break the whole train down, take the units off, the caboose off, and turn it over to the U.P. and they would inspect it and be there for hours. Now they roll it in, they don't even change units. If it's an S.P. unit that's good enough. You’re libel to see S.P., D. and R.G., Western Pacific, units all on one train, because they don't change them anymore. That's why you see so many empty tracks. You probably think that the railroads are going broke, but they’re not. You get some time one day and sit out on a point where you can see trains coming and going, and see how many freight trains go by. MW: Do you think the truckers will ever take over the freight business? TZ: No, they never will. It would be impossible for the truckers to take over the railroads business. MW: Why? TZ: Well, because one train can haul more than what a thousand trucks can, and get it there just as quick. It used to be that when you would go out on the highway you would see truck transports loaded with automobiles, after automobiles. You would maybe see 22 hundreds of them, if you'd go very far on the highway. The railroad then decided they would take that business, because they thought they could handle it on a bunch of piggybacks. I now believe they load fifteen automobiles on each flatcar and away they go. Truckers couldn't compete with them, in thirty days I couldn't see a cockeyed one of them on the highway. Not and then you see one while they are transporting autos from one point to another where there is no railroad going through. The truckers have the transport only overnight, you might say, whereas, the railroad got it all along. They will take 30-40-50 carloads of automobiles where it would have taken 250 trucks to haul them. Right now they took the automobile business away from the truckers, then they run the refer trucks up on a flatcar and put two on a car and away they will go on the railroad. They will deliver it to the next town a lot quicker, a lot cheaper than the trucks can. They have taken business away from the truckers by use of the piggybacks. So the railroad is in a position where they can never lose out here or no matter where. MW: You think Ogden is only declining as far as people and buildings go, because the railroad is becoming so automated then? TZ: Yes, I would say that. The railroad has eliminated so many jobs through automation that it’s absolutely a thing of the past for a lot of men to work there like it used to be, I don't think it will ever come to a point where they will rehire a lot of men on the railroad. In fact, I would go as far to say that in time they will eliminate more jobs because the way they have it set up with mechanized units of every kind they don't need them. They just push that freight through just as fast as the wheels will turn. Never will the railroad be eliminated. There's not a thing in the world they can come up with that can haul the amount of stuff in one truckload that the railroad can, and there's so many things that a 23 truck can never haul, such as: huge transformers that weigh 60-70-100 tons. But they can be loaded on faltcars and away they go on the railroad, where a truck can never even pull it. The perishable stuff out of California and Arizona can be loaded in a hundred cars and be on their way before two- hundred and fifty or three-hundred trucks could even be gathered to haul that amount of stuff. They just haven't got that many trucks. For a trainload of perishable stuff we'll say with 200 cars, it would take 500 trucks to haul the same amount of stuff, MW: That would be a lot. TZ: Yes, it would, but it would also be impossible to have that many trucks on the highway. The railroad is already there and all they got to do is get the stuff on them and away they go. They have a lot of wrecks too, but it seems like they don't try and pick them up like they use to anymore, they just push them off the side, burn them and sell the scrap and buy new cars. In a way this makes work for somebody. I couldn't say that the railroad was going to die out, I think it will just get bigger and Ogden right along with it. The S.P. comes in here and wherever the S.P. goes the U.P. comes in and picks it up and takes it on. Denver Rio Grande is the same way. Of course, the Oregon Short Line, that comes in from northwest Idaho and Montana has to also stop, here, where it goes east or to the coast depending which ever it’s in line for. Ogden will never lose its railroad. It may lose a lot more employees, but then again there aren't that many more to lose. They have it cut down now pretty thin. MW: I like your optimistic point of view and I have enjoyed listening to you. TZ: I've enjoyed talking to you. I get to rattling off there sometimes and I lose myself, 24 MW: That's what makes a great interview. Thank you so much 25