Oral History Program Harold George Interviewed by John Thompson 03 July 1974 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Harold George Interviewed by John Thompson 03 July 1974 Copyright © 2012 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: George, Harold, an oral history by John Thompson, 03 July 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 Harold George. The interview was conducted on July 3, 1974, by John Thompson. George discusses his experiences with Union Pacific as a brakeman and a conductor. He describes the responsibilities of various members of the train crew, discusses accidents, and gives a vivid description of his work in labor organizations for the rights and safety of railroad crews. JT: Could you tell us a little about your life please? Where you were born and how you got interested in railroading? HG: I was born in Evanston, Wyoming, in 1917. I attended grade school and high school in Evanston, Wyoming, and it was during the Depression that I graduated. In that town, if your people were railroad people, you had no choice but to go railroading, which turned out real good for me. I was interested in railroading because my grandfather came to work in 1874 on the Union Pacific Railroad for his brother-in-law, who came out of Omaha with the Union Pacific when it was built. JT: Was your family from Evanston – the whole family? Was your grandfather in Evanston at the time? HG: At the time. They were originally from Ohio, around Columbus, Ohio. They, he came out here to go to work in 1874. Then, of course, the whole family since has more or less followed in his footsteps to the degree in railroading. We didn’t all follow his footsteps in the classes of service. So in 1935, when I graduated from high school, I went to work as what is commonly known, on the railroad, as a gandy-dancer. That is a common laborer. 1 JT: Common laborer... This was in Evanston now, right? HG: Yes, that’s when I started in 1934. JT: That was a Depression year... Was the railroad hiring a lot of people like this? HG: On the extra gang, renewing ties, ballast, and rails there were quite a few. JT: You were about 15 at the time? HG: I was 17...When I first started in ‘34 – I was born in ‘17, hired out in ‘34. JT: Did you consider yourself lucky for getting a job then? HG: No, because I had a lot of pull... through my grandfather, through my father, who was a section foreman on the railroad. Several uncles were railroaders. So really it did...pretty much guarantee I’d get a job...Those were the rough years of my life – gandy-dancer, extra gang laborer, whatever you want to call him, they were rough. They put a foreman on there that could get men by the handful, as many as they needed. It you didn’t cut the buck, you just didn’t work. JT: What were some of the jobs you’d have to do? HG: Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever been on the railroad or not when they did this. Now they do it with machinery, but at this time you’d dig out, you’d have a gang of men out in the lead dragging out between the ties, and another man come out behind and knock the tie over in this hole. Another would come along and drag it out, another drag a new one in. They put it in there, and then they clamped it up against the rail. JT: Maintenance crew. HG: Maintenance crew. We had some foremen in those days that were real rough. In fact, if 2 you came to the job in the morning, and hadn’t eaten before you got there, you wouldn’t eat until noon. Because you had to have half a day in so you could pay your board and room, such as this. JT: Did you always work out of Evanston? Come there in the morning, and did you ever have to go out for a couple of days or so? HG: Yes, I worked as far as Cheyenne and as far west as Ogden on those gangs. There I worked until 1938, then I took promotion as a rail inspector... You take the promotion actually as a foreman but they put you out on jobs like rail inspector, which has a glass and he goes along and looks underneath the ball of the rail for any defects. Then from there, you go to where they want to put you, either out as a foreman on an extra gang or even on sections. They have a section every so often, or the railroad every few miles as a foreman there, or put you out with a steel gang or tie gang, what have you. JT: How were the working conditions? HG: Pretty rough... You bet. You kept head down and your tail up. No doubt about it. JT: How were they different then safety-wise? Or was it just hard labor? HG: Was just a lot of hard work. JT: How much were you paid? HG: Thirty-eight cents an hour... Three dollars and four cents a day. JT: That was the minimum wage then, right? HG: That was maximum on that kind of work... And they charged us on these extra gangs. They charged us a dollar a day for board. Two meals a day for a dollar, and they were 3 fair meals. They weren’t good meals but they were fair. So they weren’t the best. I lived in an old outfit car alongside the track. Had a straw tick for a mattress...They give you a tick – a mattress or mattress cover like a mattress. You go in the car and fill this thing; tick full of straw and that was your mattress... Furnish your own bedding stuff, like that, clothes. All this, you had to furnish your own. JT: What were the working hours? Dusk to dawn? HG: No, it wasn’t that bad–usually from eight to five with an hour off for lunch or for dinner. But you’d be out from maybe 15, 20 miles from your outfit, take off at noon, ride this motor car with trailer cars behind it, drag, have you into the outfit for dinner. Hurry up and eat your dinner, and then take you back out to hit the ball gain for another four hours. .JT: With your promotion, what else did you do? HG: Well, like I say, I was on an extra gang... I was a rail inspector. I was an oiler maintainer inspector... Oiler maintainer, and what that is on the railroad, on steep curves especially up here on Wasatch and down the hill from there – on real steep curves, they have flange oilers – what they call flange oilers... They fit on the rail like this (demonstration). On the flange on these steep curves, and as your wheels of your locomotive hits this, it squirts in on this flange so it don’t wear the rail out. Keeps them lubricated. An oiler maintainer is the one that goes along and has to take it all apart. Clean it, keep it clean, fill it with this graphite oil. He’d have about 500 pounds of equipment on your motor car, just one man to handle it, and keep out of the way of trains from getting hit. JT: Were you ever hit? 4 HG: No, I come close one day. One day at Wasatch. I never did see the train go up the hill with a helper. So I worked away with this flange oiler, and this helper go up at Wasatch and turned on the way and come back after he helps the train up the hill. JT: This is another job, your helper? HG: No, this is a helper engine off of a freight train– another locomotive that’s pushing them up the hill. And I never did see it go up the hill, I was too busy. But I heard him whistling for a crossing coming out of this way. And I unloaded this motor car by myself. I was all by myself, and he got by. He just barely missed me, but I couldn’t get that car back to save me... You just get so you’re shocked. JT: Shaken. HG: I unloaded the motor car, 500 pounds of weight off it and everything else, and I still couldn’t put it back. I had to wait for another group of men to come along and help. JT: Was that standard practice then–just one man out on a job like that? HG: On those kind of jobs, yes. On these oiler maintenance or rail inspector jobs, like I was saying, that was just one man with a motor car by himself. JT: You’re still describing working with just track and maintenance. You ever get up to the engines at all? HG: Later on. But this is just track and maintenance then... until 1941. Then I made student trips in May 1941, April ‘41, to go in train service as a brakeman. And I took 30 days. You paid your own expenses for 30 days to make trips on the locals and work trains, and mainline trains, passenger trains, what have you, just as a student. Then after you get through your student trips when they feel it’s time, then they give you the book of 5 rules and make a brakeman out of you. That’s the purpose behind it. Sometimes they don’t succeed to make a brakeman, but I finally took the book of rules of a brakeman and went to work as a brakeman in June 1941. Then in the winter of – well I worked nothing but locals. JT: Still in Evanston now? HG: No, this is between here and Green River, Wyoming. That’s where my district was as a brakeman. I worked a lot out of Evanston on these locals. A local is a train that does all the switching at intermediate points like between Evanston and Green River. JT: For the mainline train and that? HG: Mainline train, you just get in the clear and let the mainline trains go. We just do all the sorting out and picking up. We had sawmills and stuff. We were loading timber and different things like that. You have to switch pallets and different things like this, see. And all that summer, that’s what I did. I worked outside. My home was here in Ogden. JT: When did you move to Ogden? HG: I moved to Ogden the first time in about July or August of ‘41. I moved my family down here. In January ‘42, I was cut off. I couldn’t work there, so I went back into the track department, maintenance away department. That’s where I had my rights as a foreman. And I worked there then until I was called back here in July of ‘42, and from that day until 1947, I was never cut off. I worked between here and Green River all the time. Just worked locals, worked work trains, get on the mainline with the extra board for a while– however you could happen to work. I told them whatever choices they had, you had to go. 6 JT: Was brakeman, at that time, a dangerous job? HG: It’s always been a dangerous job... It’s as dangerous as people make it. Lot of people had no sense. It’s just like driving a car. They have no more sense about what they’re dong than nothing. JT: Did you have a crew then, or were you part of a crew as a brakeman? Or did you work independently? HG: Well no. Part of the time I had a crew. Some of the time I was on the extra board, which you had a vacancy on a crew, you worked that crew, maybe Green River and back. Then you go back on the extra board and then come four, five, six times out. When they run everybody ahead of you, other four or five on the extra board, then the next vacancy you get. Whether it happens to be passenger, or local, or work train, or mainline, or whatever it happens to be. We also had some real tough old codgers as conductors in those days. JT: A conductor is over a brakeman? HG: He’s over the whole train. He’s like the captain on a ship. And one of them we were talking about a minute ago. That was a tough old guy to work for as there was, that’s that Jim Murdock. JT: Mr. Murdock. HG: He was tough. JT: Did you work on his train? HG: I was on his crew, caught him on the extra board a couple of times. At that time he was a conductor on what was called a 319 and 20, which was a mixed train. It had a 7 locomotive, and a baggage car, and a coach, and then whatever freight cars they wanted in there, and the caboose all by myself back there. And the rear brakeman’s job was to do the flagging when they stopped, if they were in the yard limits so they didn’t have to flag. Like in Echo, Evanston, and Carter, we had a thermometer on the caboose. The flagman had to take the temperature at each of these stops. JT: Outside temperature. HG: Outside temperature. We had a lot of reefers, see – refrigerator cars– with ice, had tomatoes, different products. The vents go to a certain temperature, you have to close the vents or open the vents. So you had to keep a constant check of the temperature. JT: That was your job, to open and close the vents? HG: That was part of my job, as I would come up the train to inspect the train. In inspect the train that is part of the brakeman’s job. He has to inspect the wheels to see that they’re not broken. He has to inspect the journal boxes to see there are no hot boxes, that the brake riggings are up, I mean so that they’re not dragging, you know. Brake rigging used to be, not so much anymore, used to be that if they dropped, they would break bolt somewhere, and drop and drag on the rail. They were dangerous when they did this because if they get caught a certain way under the wheel and derail the car, if you’re gong five miles per hour or 50 miles per hour. So that was part of your job, was to keep an eye on these things, and making inspections, you’re to watch them as you went along. JT: Are there any inspections you make while the train is rolling, or you just make these when you’re stopped? 8 HG: You have them under constant observation, and you have to learn what to look for. There are different signs that show different things that are happening to the train up there. Like for instance, a hot journal. At that time, years ago, everything was waste pack – journals packed with waste would heat up. JT: What was packed with waste? HG: The journal box. JT: The axle, outside of the wheel. HG: It was about 18 inches long and has a brass that fits on top of it, then weights hold it there. Underneath the journal in this box is packed with waste – oil waste, oil-soaked waste, and gets turned like this. Something gets under the brass, starts wearing, cutting the journal and then it would cause friction and set this waste afire. That’s how you could tell if you had what we called a hot box. JT: Smoking, see the flames. HG: See the flames sometimes; maybe you just saw the smoke. JT: Did you ever see that? HG: A lot of times. Also if you have a brake rigging dragging like I was telling you, it throws up kind of like a pale blue smoke. You can see sand or gravel flying in all lines of cars that’s dragging. Then if you have hot wheel brakes stuck and won’t release on the car, the air just blew around that car smoke, you know. The wheels get so hot and there’s a certain amount of oil that drips from the journal boxes onto the wheels, and that is what causes the smoke when they get hot. JT: What would you do if you were riding along in the train and you see this hot box? 9 HG: If it were night where you were in curved country, or a lot of curves, they would have flares – fuses we called them on the railroad. You’d light one of those and hold it out the caboose window. And the engineer on the head end or the fireman would happen to be on the left side and would see this flare. They’d stop. JT: They could see the flare from the caboose? HG: They could see it from the head end, see back to the caboose and see the flare and stop. If it was in the daytime and you couldn’t get them to see the flare or fuse, you had a brake valve in the caboose, an air brake valve, and figured you’d pull air on them. Rear man opens up this brake valve and stops them. JT: Stops the whole train from there? HG: Stop the whole train, that’s right. Your train operates with standard brake pipe pressure of 90 pounds. You start drawing that pressure down that sets the brakes upon your train just like you’re going up and hitting the brakes on your car. Sets the brakes on all four... JT: The engineers will never see this, will they? Or sometimes they do? They just concentrate on what they are pulling. HG: No, that’s part of their job, too, to look back also. The head brakeman, which most trains have, he’s also supposed to be alert – the fireman, the head brakeman, and the engineer on the engine. They’re all supposed to be looking ahead, and they’re also supposed to watch back periodically... The conductor and rear brakeman are usually on the caboose. JT: Is there just head brakeman and brakeman for a train? HG: Yes, you have two brakemen and a conductor in the train crew. You have an engineer 10 and a fireman in those days. Now you don’t so much. JT: No matter how big the train was, that’s what the crew was? HG: Yes, that’s what your standard crew was... Two brakemen, conductor, engineer, and a fireman. Big train in those days, if you had a reefer drag or a drag of some kind, which was mostly empty, you might have a hundred cars – you had a big train. Even with these old steam engines we had, we had some big engines. In fact one of them was called the Big Boy. It was 117 feet long from one end to the other of it. It was an articulated steam engine. The drive on it was articulated. Between here and Evanston, you’d use 40 tons of coal going up the hill. It was all stoker fire, that firebox in there was as long as from here to that wall (about 20 feet) with that firebox in it. It generated 300 pounds of steam. That’s where it should be. Lot of the time you’d get poor coal, something would go wrong with the flue, you’d have to stop and blow up, they call it. Shake the grates on the thing, getting the power going good so it’s level, you know, so it starts piling up, so it wasn’t any good. JT: Once the engineer would stop the train or you as brakeman would stop the train...would you have to repair that hot box...? HG: You’d have to stop it. Find some water if you had to carry it from the caboose. You’d carry water up there and splash in on this, pull all the packing out first that was on fire. JT: After you take it apart? HG: Take all this packing out. Then splash water in there to get it cooled down. Then we had planks about that long 3 feet and two inches thick, and we put what we called a crow’s foot on it. This was an iron about that long and that wide with a screw thin in it. And this 11 flat part would fit onto the lip of the wheel. Then you put a jack on top of this bar and start jacking it up underneath the journal box. This screw-thing here would hold the wheel down so it wouldn’t all come up, see. Until you’d get it up high enough so you could get the old brass out and put a new brass in, put some cooling compound in on top of the new brass. Then let it back down on it. Then re-pack with oil-soaked waste, re-pack the box. Then go 10 miles per hour for 15 or 20 miles and make sure this new brass is going to seat and not cause more trouble. And that you had to carry all this equipment up to the front or back to the rear. JT: All this is in the caboose? HG: All this was in the caboose. And you had to carry it, bodily carry it, up to where the hot journal was. JT: Was this a one-man job, or would the brakeman help you out? HG: Usually the head brakeman and the conductor would brass the boxes because the rear brakeman was the flagman. He was out flagging, making sure nothing would run over us. JT: How long would this operation take, roughly? HG: It would all depend on how hot the journal was and long it takes to cool down. We sat there a couple of hours, waiting until you could do it. In the meantime, regardless of the weather, he’s got a flagging can and his light and his red light, everything else. He’s hightailing it back into the country. JT: How would they know – would the conductor or engineer toot the whistle or something, when he’s ready to go so he’d come back? 12 HG: Oh yes, they have signals to call in the flagman. If you’re going east and the flagman was out, four long blasts of the whistle calls in the flagman from the west. If you’re coming west and the flagman goes out to the east, five long, long blasts of the whistle calls him back in. They’re supposed to wait until he flagman gets back in there, but they didn’t always do it. Sometimes you get left high and dry out there. JT: Is that right? HG: Catch the next train that comes along. Most of the time they’d wait for you. JT: Why would they leave you? Just wouldn’t know you were there? HG: Just figured you had plenty of time to get in. Maybe they couldn’t see the caboose and just figured you had plenty of time to get in. You should be there so they’d go. JT: Would the conductor realize it when they got back, saying you have to be picked up? HG: Well yes, but there’s no way of telling them after it gets back on. He’s up the road there. JT: Oh, when they go into the next station the conductor would tell them you didn’t make it back? HG: No, he’d just come into town. Come on down to Ogden or Green River. And you’d catch the next train; the flagman would, and finally catch up with them. JT: Ever happen to you? HG: Yes, I’ve been left. I don’t think there’s anyone here that hasn’t. It’s a habit. It just happens that way. JT: Part of the job? HG: Part of the job. It’s like some of the close ones we had on this hill out of Evanston. This 13 side of Evanston, coming down 35 miles per hour railroad. JT: Winding? HG: We had this one incident I was just going to recall. We had a pretty good train. We were following another train all the way. You have block signals telling you there’s another train ahead of you. You either have a clear signal which is green or a yellow signal or a red signal for stop. Yellow signals show you’re catching up with him. The next one should be red. We were coming down this hill this one morning, the great big old 4,000 one of these “Big Boys,” and were sailing down there pretty good when we hit a yellow block. So I told this engineer, “A yellow block.” He’s supposed to start setting the air to get ready to stop. He didn’t make any attempts at all. So I walked over to his side of the engineer, the right side, and he didn’t have any air left. He been going like this and messing with the air, and he didn’t have any air left to stop. We’re coming down there possibly 40 miles per hour. JT: You’re head brakeman now? HG: I’m the head brakeman this time. And we’re coming down there, what we call Crane Curve, just above Castle Rock. It’s a quick reverse. And that 4,000 – we still don’t know yet how we ever got around that curve without tipping over. The block which we went right by, a mail crane which was yellow, which meant the next one would be red. JT: What’s the distance? HG: About a mile and a half. We’re going 40 miles per hour with no air, there’s no chance of stopping. But the train ahead – luckily we had a fellow in there, engineer we called Rabbit Lashapell. After he got to Castle Rock, he’d just take off, which was lucky. If he’d 14 ever stopped at Castle Rock, we’d have gone right through that train. Because from where we should have stopped for this block signal, was where he would have been. Before we finally stopped, we were eight miles further down the canyon before we finally got stopped. It could have been... JT: Quite lucky that day. HG: This old engineer, we found afterwards, was drunk. JT: The one that didn’t have the air left, he was drunk? HG: That was probably a hairy experience that day. We had quite a few like that, this is just one. JT: When you were head brakeman at this point in time, are you always head brakeman, or could you just pull seniority when you’d get on a train so you’d be head brakeman? HG: Well at this time, I was head brakeman all the time. I didn’t have enough seniority to be a flagman or rear brakeman. That took seniority to do that. JT: The higher position was the rear brakeman? HG: You bet. One reason for it is it was cleaner and you could move around in the caboose and you could carry a good lunch, and sit down at the table and have lunch and have coffee. JT: Up in the engine you couldn’t do that? HG: Up in the head engine, the cinders are flying, the dirt’s a flying, and the steam’s a flying. If you eat, it’s not very good. JT: What would you do after that? Is fireman the next promotion? 15 HG: No, brakeman never becomes fireman. JT: Two completely different jobs? HG: Two completely different jobs. You become a conductor. JT: From a brakeman? HG: From a brakeman you become a conductor. JT: From a fireman you would become a conductor? HG: From a fireman, you’d become an engineer. They don’t have many firemen any more. In 1959 they started to eliminate firemen on railroads. JT: What was the fireman job? HG: Well, in the old steam engine days, his job was to take care of that fire, to keep it burning. JT: He was the shoveler? JT: Well, at the time we had a hand-fired engine, yes that was his job. Then on these bigger engines, they had stokers. He’d have to adjust the jets and everything to blow the cool where it should go to make a good fire. The head brakeman would sit there and watch the train, and if there was any work to be done, like switching, the head brakeman would do that. The fireman would stay on the engine, he didn’t get off. Except he’d get off to take water in the tanks of the engine when he’s come like into Echo or into Evanston. He’d take the water. The engineer, he’d get down and check around the engines. JT: Oil and stuff? 16 HG: Oil it and mess around with it. But a conductor, like I said, before is the same as a captain on a ship. And he is the elite. A lot of them let you know that. Like Jim Murdock for one. They let you know, “I’m the boss.” He’s responsible does all the book work. The conductor does all the book work, all the bills, waybills, consists... JT: Freight and passenger? HG: Freight and passenger, and does all the switch lists where the cars have to be switched and that is all his job. JT: So, on a freight train, as well as a passenger train? HG: On a passenger train, also on a passenger train conductor you don’t have waybills on a passenger train, but he is the man responsible for checking all the tickets of each passenger and any new that get on. He picks up their transportation, puts them in a certain seat, marks the seat so that they and anyone else comes in there. Like a person going to Evanston from here on a passenger train. The conductor goes through, picks up his ticket, and marks on a little ticket about three inches long and about one and ½ inches wide, 917, which is Evanston. That’s the mile post at Evanston. That’s 917 miles from Council Bluffs. JT: Why Council Bluffs? HG: Well that’s where the Union Pacific originated is in Council Bluffs. If you’re going to Green River, it’s 817. That’s the station number. That’s part of your job, see, and he has to work the tickets and punch them. That’s conductor’s job on passenger trains. And your brakemen on a passenger train, he’s head brakeman assisting the conductor, helping him pick up the tickets and put the people were they belong. Here’s the poor 17 little old flagman back here all by himself again, and I was usually the junior man on passenger doing the flagging. JT: Flagman junior to you? HG: In seniority, and the senior man, he’s up there with the elite. He’s up there with the captain. JT; Flagman is the brakeman in the caboose, right? HG: On the rear end of passenger trains. That’s his job if the train stops, is to flag. JT: Fires or flares or flags. Does he have flags, actual flags? HG: Oh yes, we use flags in the daytime and flares at night. And then on flags, you also have, besides your flags, torpedoes. The flagman, when he goes back from the rear end of the train, he goes back one-half mile from the rear end of his train and puts two torpedoes on the rail a hundred feet apart. On the engineer’s side, which would be the right side in the direction you’re going. Puts down two torpedoes a hundred feet apart, then he proceeds back another half a mile and does the same thing. Then he comes back up to the first set that he left and that’s where he stays. And when the train comes behind him, he lights this first set of torpedoes. That’s the warning that there’s a flagman ahead somewhere. So they’re supposed to slow down. Then when he comes to you and blows this other set, in the meantime you got your flare and your flag and he’s supposed to stop until you tell him he can go. JT: Now, the distance – how fast were these trains coming, or does it depend if you’re on a curve or wherever? Half mile or so, is that plenty of time for that train to slow down? HG: Yes it is because you have these block signals also that I was telling you about. In the 18 older days, in steam engine days, we had just an approach signal and a stop signal. But now, on this fast traffic like they have today that have a flashing approach, which is the third signal in back of where your train is. So actually you have pretty near four miles to get the train down in... JT: Four miles and you know you’re going to hit something? HG: Something up there, see. So inside of this four miles is where you’re going to find this flagman, in this four-mile district. JT: Is the pay comparable for brakeman, fireman, engineer? HG: Well, an engineer is the highest paid man on this crew. JT: Higher than the conductor? HG: Higher than the conductor even though the conductor is in charge. He’s more equal now than it used to be because of negotiations and things there have been over the years. It’s more equal than it used to be, but it used to be that the poor old brakeman was the low-paid man on the crew. JT: And doing the most work. HG: And on the ground doing all the switching and all the work. He was the low man for pay, but the rates have gone up quite comparable now. JT: Could you still change over? Could a fireman become a conductor now, or is that still pretty much... HG: Well, in instances it’s happened. A friend of mine now, a brakeman on the Western Pacific... He’s only been there a couple of years, and they needed engineers. Well, this 19 retirement plan they figured they were going to lose so many engineers. So he made application to take this training for an engineer. Nowadays they have a simulator, just like you’re sitting in a cab of a locomotive. And they run the truck just by you, which ever area you’re working to give you the feel of what your train is like. Out of 144 people that made application for this simulator thing he’s going to go through, there were 20 that were chosen, and he was one of the 20. Because he had prior experience as a brakeman, see, so he had a little idea of what was going on that will help him. Those days you come up the hard way. You started as a brakeman. After so long a time you’d get short of conductors. You were promoted. Then, if you were lucky, you might get a crew. You might be working the conductors’ extra board or work brakeman part of the time, conductor part of the time. Then if you were a fireman, you went to an engineer when you were promoted. Very little changing from one craft to another. JT: How busy was the railroad here around Evanston and Ogden during World War II? HG: Real busy. In fact, we were spending very little time at home. We might be home eight hours or 10 hours. We had to be home eight. That’s legal rest on the railroad. We had to be home eight; a lot of times it was barely eight hours. Then we’d be gone, sometimes it would be 10 or 12, just all depended on your volume of business at that time. JT: This go on for the four years? HG: It went on for four or five years. That’s right. You just didn’t have any chance to... Matter of fact, my family used to say, my children would say, “Mother, who’s that guy that comes home once in a while. Comes around here once in a while.” Get so they don’t even know you. You’re not home. You’re gone all the time. 20 JT: Did you feel it was worthwhile? HG: Oh yes. It was very educational, and I got a lot of good out of it, a good living. JT: Did your family understand why, with the war and stuff? HG: Well, to a degree they understood, but couldn’t figure out why you had to be gone all the time. JT: All the time. Just the eight-hour day, was this seven days a week sometimes? HG: Well it originally... In train service like that, you don’t have any days. You might be working nights, you might be working days, you might be working mornings, afternoons. It all depends on when you’re called. But you’re paid by the mile on the railroad, not the day. In other words, from here to Green River, Wyoming, which is my district, it’s a 200mile district. You’re paid 200 miles for the trip, and so much per mile is what you’re paid. You’re not paid so much a day. JT: How about the people in the office – clerks and stuff? How are they paid? HG: They are paid by the day. JT: They’re paid by the day, but if you’re on the train itself, you’re paid by the mile. HG: You’re paid by the mile. Eight hours is 100 miles. Sixteen hours was a day. Between here and Green River was 200 miles, that’s 16 hours. That 16 hours is a lot of time getting there. Then you’d get eight hours in Green River, and come back and do the same thing over again. Come here eighty hours. Get paid for another day. In other words... this is a 200-mile district, so each round trip we would be paid for four days. See what I mean? And it might take you four days to do it, but 6 hours going, 16 hours coming, plus your layover time, see. 21 JT: Did the men like it that way? HG: Not too well. JT: They didn’t? HG: No. It was, matter of fact some people would even drop out of it because it was too much strain on them. They couldn’t take it. A lot of people became alcoholics over it. They really didn’t have time to drink, but did anyway. You know, they just got so tired. JT: I guess it was against railroad policy to drink while you were on the train. HG: It’s against the railroad rules to drink, period. JT: Period? HG: Period. Of course they changed the rules over the years. At one time that rule used to say, Rule G in our rules, says the use of alcohol or dope, or the frequenting of place where it is sold, is subject to dismissal. JT: Even on your own time? HG: On your own time, that’s right. JT: When was this? HG: Oh this is back in the 1940s, 1930s, back then. That’s what it said. JT: Is that right. HG: Of course they modified to the degree now, just says the use of alcohol or narcotics is forbidden. That’s what the rule says today. Not the frequenting of places where it’s sold. But the rule is still basically the same. 22 JT: The rule is still there. HG: It’s still there. JT: What do the men feel about that? HG: Some of them live up to it, some of them don’t. Some get fired for rule G. If they got fired for Rule G on the railroad, they are usually out of service. They fire them and they’re out of service for a year. Then most of the time, they get back. They sit out a year for rule G. They’re drinking on the job, or home on the job drinking. JT: Is there any government pressure for that rule? HG: Not that I know of. It’s just something the railroad itself... When I was first hired out here in train service, just to show you what the railroad thought of the rules, this one trainmaster that hired us gave us the book of rules. And he called the 12 of us in this one class that went to work, and he said, “I want to talk to you fellows.” He said, “Every rule in this book has been broken hundreds of times.” He said, “I’ve broken them a lot of times myself.” Because he’d been a conductor. And he said, “I know all of you are going to break them. But just don’t let me catch you. These were made to fire you by, not to work by.” Which is right. If you lived up to the rules 100 percent, you’d never get a train over the road. Really. There are such mumbo-jumbo rules. They’re trying to modernize now and do away with a lot of them. JT: The railroad has? HG: Yes, but some of the rules we have to work under have been... There’s just outdated things that have happened. Like when my grandfather went to work. Then I went to work. They were just so old and outdated that you couldn’t work with them. But just let 23 them catch you not working with them. JT: During World War II, was it mainly busy with freight or was it freight and passengers? HG: Well no, we had at that time, we had 15 passengers running on this railroad. So we had two crews for each passenger train, like one would work today and one tomorrow, see. JT: Still between Ogden and Evanston, or Green River? HG: The trains would go right on through, but the crews would stay between Green River and here. We’d have two crews on each passenger train. I mean one today, and one tomorrow, they’d go over today and back tomorrow the other one would go. We had 30 passenger crews working. So that would be three men to crew, each crew. That would be 90 crews we had here working at that time, at one time during the war. JT: That’s a lot of people. HG: That’s a lot of people. And then right at the present time, we have changed it again. Part of our crews work out of Salt Lake now, and not out of Ogden. I think we have 16 crews out of Salt Lake and 20 crews out of Ogden right at the present time. That’s how much it’s changed in volume of business. You’re hauling so much bigger trains. JT: You feel that’s good? HG: No, it isn’t good. That’s why I’m in the shape I’m in. On account of big brains. These diesels just keep adding the power on the head engine. They can haul any number of cars and do it safely. I mean semi-safely, get over the road with them. You don’t do it safely until you get over the road, which I didn’t the day I got hurt. They haul as high now as 200 cars. And when I first started in train service, like I say, if we had a 100-car train, we had a big train, mostly empties. You had fruit train or manifest or something 24 like that; you had 50 or 60 cars usually, 40 cars. Something you could move more fast. JT: Did you get another promotion after brakeman? HG: Yes, I was promoted in 1954 to a conductor. I worked on conductors’ extra board and worked selective service jobs. It’s what they called selective service on our railroad. They don’t bid a job in, they’re assigned on certain jobs. Now, like when they’re building highway along the railroad, got all this big equipment stuff working, they’ll pick a conductor and put him up there to protect the railroad from this equipment. I worked quite a few of those as a conductor. JT: Did you like that? HG: Oh yes, that’s a good job. Out there by yourself, might have one brakeman with you. You’re just out there protecting the railroad. You might not do anything for a week, just sit there. Of course at times when they’re blasting the old mountains and stuff, then you’ve got to have a flagman out in both directions to protect the railroad, protecting equipment, different things. How the stuff might come down on the track. I spent a lot of time out on those jobs. And I worked a lot of locals again. Here you go again, on this railroad, you never get enough seniority. You start out as a brakeman, you’re on the extra board until your working locals and work trains and stuff away from home all the time. So then you finally get a regular turn as a brakeman, where you can stay home and work to Green River and back. Then they promote you to conductor. So then you do the same thing. You’re one of the youngest conductors, so you’re stuck on the locals – freight trains, things like this. So then you finally get a regular turn as a conductor on a freight train. Then you’re a big wheel. So then they make a passenger conductor out of you. So you’re doing the same thing over again. 25 JT: Is passenger considered a better job than the freight? HG: It was at one time. Nowadays we only have the one train and that’s government train, that’s Amtrak. JT: Amtrak. HG: So we got young men working there, as conductors now. But in the older days, you know, you had the elite. When you climbed up to be a passenger conductor, you were the elite. You wore black tie or white shirt with black tie and uniform, and get no spots on the collar. Stay inside the passenger train. So you were the elite then. But you’re getting so darn old then, you don’t appreciate it. JT: Not that much fun? HG: So I was promoted in 1954. And I worked as a conductor off and on, different jobs of it, until last year when they retired us. I worked freights, locals, and... JT: Were you ever on that City of Los Angeles? HG: Yes, I was a brakeman on there. I was never a conductor on it. Worked as a brakeman on City of Los Angeles, City of San Francisco, City of Overland Limited, they called it, and a few more of them they used to have, Hot Shots. JT: Have you ever been involved in an accident with a train? HG: Yes, several. JT: Would you tell us something about them? – What happened, why were they caused? HG: One of them I was in, again I was on a local between Green River and Evanston. There’s a soda ash plant 20 miles west of Green River, which we had to switch every 26 day. JT: What year was this please? HG: Oh my golly, this was back, oh I don’t know, about ‘45, ‘44, ‘43. Along there. Also sometimes they use these locals to dump gravel. The section of gang had some gravel to spread. I’d grab these gravel cars and run out and dump the gravel for him. So this one day we been switching to this one back road. We had one car of soda ash we had taken with us on the east end of our engine. We had seven cars of gravel on the west end. We ran out toward Granger, which is 10 miles west of there, to dump the gravel. We left the flagman. He lined the switches into the passing track so we could come back in to clear the passenger train when the time came. We had a student hog head. I mean, he wasn’t a student, he was a young hog head, engineer again – that’s a nickname for an engineer, is a hog head. A young fireman... JT: Nicknames are affectionately given. HG: Yes, very affectionately given. We left our flagman there when we went out to dump this gravel, spread this gravel. So we dumped two cars of it, and our conductor was riding the top of this boxcar east of the engine. We were going back to West Vaco to get in the clear of this passenger train. And I’m riding the east end of the west car with the gravel car. All the dumps are open on it. I had the section foreman riding with me. We’re going back, we’re in charge of them, and this engineer got lost because he’s still on the right side but going the opposite direction, see. So he’s lost on this curve. The fireman we had that day, he’s sitting there like a dummy, half asleep, and he should have been able... Our conductor up on top of us topside... We’re getting close to this passenger track where we got switches lined into it. Our train is sitting in the passing track. This 27 one passenger train is coming west and the streamliner is coming east at the same time. City of Los Angeles and others. Anyhow this fireman finally woke up, and saw what was going on, and he ran over to the engineer side, got between the engineer and brake valve and said, “We’re going to hit our train. We’re going to hit our train.” We did. Ran into passing track train was in two parts. Put cars out on the eastbound track, cars out on the westbound track right ahead of these passenger trains. Our flagman had this one stopped back there, luckily. Streamliner was still coming toward me on my end of the train. All I could do is step off the car after I got my senses back. Found the switch which throws block, signal against the streamliner. We finally got him stopped. He was less than a quarter of a mile away, coming 90 miles per hour through this block, and slid his wheels trying to stop. He did get stopped. Cars sitting on the track over here, cars sitting on this track over here. We just buckled them up see. So they fired the engineer, fireman, and conductor. JT: Fired them. HG: Fired them right there. Of course, like I say, on the Union Pacific they fire them but technically they’re out of service just for a year. Well, in this case, they were out 90 days, three months. JT: Nobody was hurt though? HG: Well, another one we had, we were coming down the canyon where I was telling you about this one drunken engineer – JT: Castle Rock? HG: Castle Rock. And it gives you quite a feeling when you look out, sitting in the caboose 28 and leaning out on a curve, going around a curve leaning out there watching your train, and see cars starting to pile up. They broke a wheel. A car up there, about 25 cars from the caboose. JT: How big was the train then? HG: Well, about 100 cars that day. We had a reefer drag. What we call a reefer drag, all empty reefers. We stacked up about 15 of them. We had about 10 ahead of the caboose left, and we got stopped. The ones we picked up was just west of there, and this crew had a similar thing happen. This rear brakeman told me later – real good friend of mine. He said he was looking out this window, right in back of the engine, and they started stacking up. He only had 50 cars. JT: I guess when the wheel breaks, the ones are stacking up from the rear of it...? HG: Speed itself from behind causes them to stack up on one another. He had one car left ahead of the caboose when he got stopped. It started nine cars in back of the engine. That’s how fast they were going, and of course the pressure just keeps pushing them. You just don’t stop those things on a nickel. You got to, it takes a minimum usually of half to three quarters of a mile. It’s all depends on your speed to stop. Your wheels and your brakes are set up. They have to be against those wheels so long to start warming the steel before it will start locking and start slowing up the wheels. So it takes a little while to do it. JT: What is your career in the railroad now? What do you feel has been the one major improvement they made in working conditions and salary? HG: Well, one thing we did have happen to us that was beneficial that should have been 29 done years before, was they built us a new clubhouse in Green River. There wasn’t a place to stay in Green River. We used to stay... JT: The railroad itself built it? HG: They built it. That was part of the negotiations that they agreed to. It’s a three-story slab reinforced with concrete building is what it is. But it has 168 rooms in it. Has a dining room and café in it. Has a TV room in it, a reading room in it, a card room in it, and has several, on each floor, has several bathrooms and toilet rooms and stuff like that in it. We had an old ramshackle clubhouse. There weren’t even enough rooms in it for everybody. And old wooden one when I first went railroading. It was ramshackle. It got to the point, finally, where the wind would blow it pretty near blow you out of bed. That’s when we finally got the negotiations going for them to build a new one. Then they tore the old one down. JT: Did you ever strike? HG: Yes, 1945 was the first time I struck. JT: Over what? What was the reason? HG: Over wages. Again I was on local between Evanston and Green River. And of course you go on strike, you got to take your train into the next terminal and clear the main line with it. So we came back into Evanston. It was on a Tuesday. We go east on Monday, west on Tuesday, and east on Wednesday. We came west on this Tuesday afternoon, and the strike was on when we got there. So we put our train in the clear and walked off the property. That’s all you can do. JT: Was this just 1945 when you were brakeman still? 30 HG: I was a brakeman on a local, yes. JT: Was it just brakemen, or was it all the workers? HG: Everybody was on strike but the fireman. Of course he just as well have been on strike because he couldn’t work anyway. The engineers were on strike, the conductors were on strike and the trainmen were on strike at that time. JT: What month was that, do you remember? It would have to be after the war, wouldn’t it? HG: It was a... JT: The government wouldn’t allow you to strike. HG: Oh yes, they couldn’t stop you. On the Railway Labor Act, you could negotiate for a certain length of time, and then you were free to strike. Nowadays they don’t let them. They put blocks in front of them all the way now. But at that time, if you have negotiated, you know, in good faith, and you couldn’t come to any terms, then you’d just walk off. That’s all. JT: How long did that strike last? HG: About a week. JT: Was this all over the nation? HG: It was all over the nation. Stopped trains everywhere. JT: Did you ever strike for working conditions or safety conditions? HG: Well, a lot of the time they were also included in your wage negotiations. So actually there was a packaged deal. And I’ve been in several strikes since. Right here. For the same reasons, wages and conditions and... Because I’ve been more involved in the last 31 ones than I was in that one because I was just a brakeman in those days. The last two strikes we had, I been the president of my organization. JT: Would you picket them or just not ever come to the area? HG: No, they picketed. You’d take your turn picketing. The last one I picketed was up at Evanston. We had to picket the whole railroad, you know. And at this time, they had moved enough of the engineers and firemen from, out of Evanston. There weren’t enough to picket. So a lot of our trainmen went up there to relieve them. You know, work four hour shifts and you picket for the 24 hour period. So I’ve picketed up there several times. Because I assigned myself to it, being president of the organization. I assigned myself to it, and assigned the people to it. You know. Maybe once a week you’d get up to Evanston and do some picketing. Because it only lasts through the week any more. JT: Were you still in Ogden when they had, on a more local matter, the Ogden Rapid Transit Company labor dispute? ? HG: Oh yes. I seen a lot of that. JT: What did you feel about that? HG: I don’t think it was very rapid transit... It was, those streetcars were fun, but they weren’t fast. JT: Were they better than the buses they have today? HG: Well, they were cleaner, let’s put it that way. They were cleaner. You didn’t have all these fumes and stuff billowing up from under them. They run by electric line, you know, so they were clean to run around and ride on. And this thing, the old Bamberger, they 32 used to have between here and Salt Lake. That quite an electric thing too. JT: What did you think of that? HG: That was good. That was fast... JT: Say the automobile... put that out of business. HG: That’s exactly what did it. The Union Pacific still was part of the old Bamberger, and they ran a local out of here each day and then out to Hill Field, and take cars out to Roy – like Roy Lumber and things like this. They still have a local out of here. They acquired that in, let’s see, I can figure it out, 1952, about 1959 the Union Pacific acquired it. And they have a section crew out there that maintains the track. That’s the reason I can figure out. My father at this time, like I said, was a section foreman, and he was working Green River as a foreman, and he’d bid on this job on this old Hill Field out here, the old Bamberger. He worked there... JT: Considering tomorrow is the 4th of July, were there big parties down at Lagoon on holidays and stuff like that? HG: You saw some big times down there, you bet. Jump on the old Bamberger, think it cost you something like 15 cents to ride. JT: One way? HG: Yes, one way, and I think of times like this. But it was fast... Sometime they had the old Utah Central Railroad, which was something similar to the Bamberger. It ran from here up into Idaho. Just an old freight line is what it was. They didn’t haul any passengers up there that I recall. But they did have this freight that ran up there every day and night. JT: The Bamberger – did that run mainly like from Ogden to Lagoon to Salt Lake, or just 33 Ogden to Lagoon and then back, and have another train run from Salt Lake to Lagoon? HG: No, they were all straight through to Salt Lake. They’d leave downtown Ogden here, down on, well, where the post office is. Next building north of it there was the old Bamberger depot... And of course the Bamberger Depot in Salt Lake is approximately where the bus depot is now. JT: The Greyhound one? HG: Where the Greyhound is on South Temple... Right there across from the Salt Palace. JT: When Bamberger built it, didn’t he mainly build the line ...because he owned Lagoon? HG: Oh, he stopped there and then on to Salt Lake. See you could get off at any intermediate point. You could get off at Roy, you could get off at Clearfield, you could get off at Farmington, you could get off at Bountiful, or you could get on at any of these stations. They drive you there, pick up, get on. JT: With all these intermediate stops, it still was fast? HG: Still fast train. It’d take you something like, with all your stops and everything else; it might take you an hour to get to Salt Lake, an hour and five minutes, that’s all. JT: Enjoyable ride down? HG: Oh yes, all the windows are open, get a lot of fresh air. It was quite interesting. JT: That was steam, then it went electric, right? HG: Always electric. Always electric to my knowledge. Never did have any steam engines there. Now they have diesel on there. The UP goes there... JT: Were you sorry to see it go? 34 HG: Well, not especially because by this time, everybody’s getting automobiles. This old jolting ride like this, why... JT: Just came up with the times. HG: It’s like everything else, just left with the times. Times change and...That’s all there was to that. JT: Well, sir, I want to thank you very much for the time you’ve given. Any last statements you’d like...? HG: No, nothing especially, just that no line of work for the railroad for 16 months. JT: You still connected in any way with it? HG: I’m connected in this respect. I’m still president of my local lodge. When I retired from the railroad, I had to retire from the state legislative committee of the UTU, United Transportation Union. I had been for 15 years; I had been chairman of that. And I’m also on the board of directors of our Railroad Credit Union down there, and I’m the secretary to the board and the membership office on the wage review committee. And I’m on the planning committee of this credit union. Then I’m on the board of governors of the Union Pacific Old Timers. In the Union Pacific Old Timers, you can’t be an old timer unless you have at least 20 years of service. JT: With the railroad? HG: With the railroad. So I’m on the board of governors there... I’ve always been busy in politics and different things. When I was state legislative chairman for UTU that was a job, lobbying at the capitol. JT: For the railroad? 35 HG: No, not for the railroad, but for the union. No, the railroad fought us all the time. JT: Opposite of the table then? HG: Most usually because we’d have something to do with railroad labor, or something to benefit them, and of course the railroad would fight you. JT: Can you give me an example of that? HG: Well, what year was it – 1964. We had a bill in the legislature for safety and health conditions or cabooses and locomotives. In other words, to make them water, so they had good water to drink. To pass on the cabooses to keep the windows clean and things like this. So we get it through the House and there with a lot of work... We got it through the House with 54 in favor, four against, and four absent. And we got the bill through there. Of course it was popular all the way through it. So then it goes to the Senate, and one of our dearest friends from Ogden, Weber County, Frank Browning, runs the Bank of Utah at that time and was on the labor committee of the Senate. When this bill hit the Senate Labor Committee, we had a hearing of course. He started tearing this bill apart. Well, you can’t have this, you can’t have that, we can’t allow this. So he just tore that safety and sanitation bill right to pieces. The only serving clause we got in it was the thing he had thrown out – saying we could renegotiate with the Public Services Commission of Utah and get them reinstated to help our employees. And a lot of it we did get back, but a lot we never have gotten back. JT: Why would you fight something in the state legislature? I mean, what’s the difference in taking something and fighting it down in Salt Lake and fighting the railroad directly like you would for wages in your strike? 36 HG: You do. You negotiate with the railroad, and they won’t go for it. Then you try it with the Public Service Commission to force them to do it. Matter of fact, we have a penalty clause that was passed through the House that for each incident where they didn’t do what they were supposed to do, they were fined $100. That’s another thing. Frank Browning got that thrown out of the Senate. So after the bill goes through the Senate, it doesn’t have any teeth in it, no penalty in it, or anything else. What good is it? We’re still fighting it. JT: The same bill? HG: The same conditions. You go to the Public Services Commission and ask them to please come over and check these things out. “We don’t have enough personnel to do it” – so there you are. Every conductor down there, I’ve got them writing it up, if he has a caboose in here that the toilets are dirty, or the water’s not up to standard, insulation or things like this. The stove not kept up. You know, you’re supposed to be able to maintain 65 degrees in the cabooses in sub-zero weather. Well, they don’t keep them up. Sometimes you sit there with a coat on... JT: Is that the railroads’ fault? HG: Yes because they won’t do it. All right, so I have the conductor write the thing up for me, and I give it in the Public Services Commission when I was the state chairman. All right, by the time you get to the Public Services Commission, Union Pacific moved this caboose clear out of town again. It’s gone, gone back to where they don’t have a law. JT: How long have you been involved for the labor movement now? With the railroad – is that something you’d always been interested in, or the 1950s, or what? 37 HG: In 1937 I was, they instituted the maintenance way employee, Brotherhood of Maintenance Way Employees for the maintenance way people. I was one of the first officers of the Maintenance Way Lodge at Evanston. JT: So it was roughly three years after you started working for the railroad? HG: So three years after I started, I’ve been mixed up in it. I’ve been on the local grievance committee, I’ve been on legislature committee, I’ve been president, I’ve been vicepresident in my organization. JT: In that capacity, what do you feel is your major achievement? HG: Well, there’s a multitude of things we have done, small things that, you know, helped the men as a whole. Like through their legislature, get different things. We have now enough backing this one bill now that does help if you can get an inspector to check them see. I pretty near got fired, in fact, on one. Our assistant superintendent at the terminal down here – we were called. I was a brakeman on the rear end that night and... Supposed to have a hot train out here. And they were switching it. I get on the caboose, which was assigned to it, and you could have thrown a cat through the window. It was a cold night. The insulation was gone, the doors wouldn’t stay shut. There were no lights. The battery was dead; consequently I didn’t have a radio to work with. So this switch foreman got on my caboose. And I said, “Pee Wee, you go tell that tower we’re not taking this caboose. It’s not going to leave Ogden.” So he went on the radio on his engine and told the tower. The assistant superintendent and he says, “You tell that soand-so that he’s going to take that caboose.” So old Pee Wee come back to me and said, “Cherry says you’re going to take it.” By this time we’re by a speaker. There are speakers over in the yard. You push a button, and it activates the thing up there in the 38 tower. JT: So you can talk? HG: So I pushed the button, and Cherry the assistant superintendent comes on and says, “Who is this?” And I told him who it was and I said, “This train is not leaving town, Glen, until we get another caboose.” And I told him why. And he said, “I don’t have any more cabooses handy.” I said, “There are two right here on the caboose track.” “Yeah, but I’m saving them for other trains.” I said, “Well, this train is going to sit here all night because we’re not leaving. I’ve already called my conductor in Riverdale, and we’re not leaving town until at such time we get another caboose.” Well, we argued back and forth for a few minutes, and finally he says, “Okay, you son of a bitch.” He says, “I’ll give you one of them other cabooses over there. Then I’ll have to find another one for these other trains. But when you get back to Ogden, you’re fired. I want an investigation, and I want to fire you.” And he knew that I knew what the law said on the cabooses. I helped get the darn thing through the legislature. So we never heard another thing from him since. This is the kind of stuff they try to hand to you. So we’ve got to have someone stand up for the men. They call me up in the middle of the night and say, “Well, I got a caboose down here, so and so wrong with it. Some safety thing wrong with it, and I don’t want to take it. What should I do?” Refuse to go. All they give you is another caboose. Of course then the yardmaster and the assistant superintendent give them a lot of static trying to push them to go. And a lot of guys will go. If they get a little pressure, they’ll go. But I still got a few that will stand their ground and won’t go. JT: Find that satisfying, challenging? HG: Oh yes. I like that kind of stuff... Get in there and fight. 39 JT: Commendable. Sir, thank you very much for your time and information. HG: Thanks for the opportunity... And I appreciate having Dr. Sadler set you on me. 40