Excessive heat, cold, stress from equipment failure and not always being able to trust the safety habits of your fellow employees, the possibility of hitting a rock slide, continuous disturbed sleep and disrupted circadian rhythm, a workplace of constant noise and vibration, daily occupational exposure to petroleum derivatives - topically and through inhalation, inadequate sanitary facilities, in desperation: standing at the controls to stay awake, untreated PTSD from killing people in a car who were taking a quick short cut home after work ...
This is not necessarily how a long-service running trades employee would describe their career in hindsight. They would likely remember 'the people', their greatest accomplishments (often unknown to, or forgotten by, others) and the particular things they loved about the job.
However, the first paragraph was a rough sampling of typical experiences of a railroader in the late 1900s. It is intended to show that the 'human experience' of railroading goes beyond the happy engineer getting a suntan on his right arm who waves at a trackside photographer.
Rolly Martin obtained a photocopy of the index cards kept on file for 40 years in the Division Office upstairs at Schreiber which documented key dates in his career. As I finally attempt to interpret these 'artifacts' ... it's just important to make it clear that 'key dates' do not give you the full picture of the typical life of a running trades employee.
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Rolly began his railway career as a sectionman at age 17. Aubrey is midway between Sudbury and Franz. In May 1947 he left the CPR for a short time, working on the section in the Hawk Junction area on the Algoma Central Railway. I think Rolly had a sibling in Sudbury, and Sudbury may have served as a base when he began his career (?)
He told me he had spent some time working at the CPR livestock rest and exercise pens at the White River yard, but he was soon in Schreiber working as a classified labourer and ashpitman at the roundhouse. Rolly was physically strong and if his Quebec farm background didn't provide this physique, his first few years on the railway certainly would have.
As he told me, Rolly's first paying shift as fireman was on the 3422 - the Schreiber yard switcher. His trial trips and previous jobs at the roundhouse would have given him good familiarity with firing locomotives and how things functioned in the yard.
Rolly also spoke of his time in Lambton - he was only there for about four months in the winter of 1950-51. Probably, the post-war economy was taking off in this area of Ontario and former railway workers were finding less demanding and more family-friendly work in factories and on construction. This was probably coupled with an increase in demand for railway service to southern Ontario factories.
The boom/bust of staffing a railway division was a contemporary reality when I worked briefly in 1977. Superintendent Al Small came downstairs to speak to our trainman class. He'd never seen the railway as busy as it was. Personally, as a new hire on the spareboard, I would soon be going out on trip after trip - essentially working 'full time'. I was usually called for the unloved but extremely scenic 'east end' (to White River). The Superintendent told our class that in the future traffic levels might drop ... and we might be laid off ... but he urged us to go on the maintenance of way gang, or to otherwise use our laid off time to get 'the big picture' of the railway.
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| from: Uniform Code of Operating Rules, Revision of 1962; Board of Transport Commissioners for Canada. |
You can see the 'Brownie Point' system in action on the card above. After 12 months, the December 1964, Rule 87 infraction was zeroed out by the replacement of his lost points. I reproduced the text of the rule above.
... I don't know any of the particulars of the recorded incident but it would have been before the installation of centralized traffic control on the subdivision. Guessing about the proper course to be followed: Rather than making a run for the siding and arriving without achieving the five minute buffer ... the crew should have had a headend flagman run out (and a tailend flagman drop off behind, I imagine) to provide protection. Depending on the visibility/grade characteristics of the line at that point, this flagging distance was to be 1500-2000 yards (i.e. over 1.5 kilometres) - which was calculated by counting trackside 'pole lengths'.
... Flagging protection probably would have been required by the rules for both ends of the train. Once the late train was protected ... preceded [~1.5 kilometres] by the headend flagman holding a red flag (or a white lantern by night) and armed with torpedoes and fusees ... the late train should have followed him with due caution and met the opposing train at the siding.
Generally, a whole train crew was called on the carpet for an infraction - with union brothers usually being reluctant to incriminate their fellows. Calling in the whole crew was probably the most efficient way to conduct an investigation and administer discipline, with the most Brownies being awarded to crew members in the positions of greatest responsibility.
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I met Rolly on a snowy night freight trip to White River, and, after we returned he packed me up from my motel and moved me into his upstairs apartment - a significant saving of rent for me. I had been keenly interested in his Van Horne's Road-based narration of the Heron Bay historical features on the daylight trip back ... and this probably helped him confirm his decision to take me in.
... I mention this because these events occurred just weeks after his 31 January 1977 action to report the broken rail (+ 10 Brownies). He was really proud of this action being recognized and told me all about it.
... One wonders if the prevailing railway culture should have allowed officials to 'catch their employees doing something right' more frequently.
The last note on the photocopy of Rolly's service record is his own. He documents the date of his last run and the engine number of his consist on Train No 2.