Both brothers keep telling me that I should write some railroad stories for posterity, so I guess I should. So here goes:
The New River trainmen who worked out of Hinton were, I guess, about the best ones anywhere. As dispatcher Martha Morgan said, "You could tell them to go over in a field to get a groundhog, and they would not argue about it. They were like a happy family.”
I suppose the classic one is the one about a witty brakeman named Zack Ferguson, whom they all called Fergy. He was switching the yard at Deepwater and derailed some cars out onto the main line. He jumped on the block phone and rang Thurmond to report it. Mr. Cobb was on the phone talking to somebody, and Fergy rang in his ear. Mr. Cobb growled, "Don't, you know you're supposed to ask if the line is busy before you ring this phone?" Fergy said, “Well, yes, but this is an emergency!" Mr. Cobb said, "Do you know who you're talking to?" Fergy said, "Well, no." Mr. Cobb said, "This is Mr. Cobb, the superintendent!" Fergy said, "Well, do you know who you are talking to?" Mr. Cobb said, "Well, no, I don't." Fergy said, "Well, kiss my ass," and slammed down the phone.
Another interesting character on the railroad was Kenny Richmond, a lighthearted guy with a great sense of humor and wit. The best one is about the time he was working extra agency at Cotton Hill for Clarence Smith, an old guy who could still jump and kick his heels together twice. A fancy dog came in in a crate on the local freight for someone in Fayetteville who had ordered it. Kenny was supposed to feed it, but when he opened the crate to put the food in, the dog took off like a wild Indian and ran down on the riverbank. Kenny went looking for it, and he couldn't find it, but there was an old, skinny stray there. Kenny took it up to the freight room and put it in the cage.
When the man came to get his dog and looked at the stray, he said, “That's not the dog I ordered!“ Kenny said, “Well, that's the one they sent.” You'll have to take it up with an agent for the kennel company.”
Another good one concerning Kenny was when he was working as an extra operator clerk at Quinnimont. The yard crew was taking“20”(lunch) and setting around talking. Willo Seco, the engineer, was telling the others about the fine points of running an engine. He was a witty one also. Kenny said (he always talked in his nose) “Aw heck Willo, I could teach a monkey to run an engine.” Willo said, “Kenny, to teach a monkey, you have to be smarter than the monkey.”
Then there was the Agent who was talking to the Superintendent about a matter, and they couldn't understand each other for some reason. The Superintendent lost his temper and said, “I want somebody on this phone who has some sense!" The Agent said, "Okay, go get him, I'll wait.”
One of the wittiest fellas wasn't a railroader at all but he worked with the railroaders a lot. Tom Prince was the teletype & telephone repairman for the C&P Telephone Co. One day when he was working on the teletype at Quinnimont, a west man (a train) stopped at the yard office and the brakeman came in and reported a man lying in the other track as they went by, and he said that he appeared to be disturbed. Tom looked up at him and said, "If you were lying in tracks, with a train going by on the other track, you'd be disturbed too."
Allen, who was strong as an ox but not really careful in his work. He was engrossed in a book when the phone rang, and a contractor working on the east portal of Big Bend tunnel asked Bruce (working at MX Cabin) if he could put off a shot (of dynamite). Bruce was supposed to get the Dispatcher's permission, but he was busy with the book so he said, "Yeah, go ahead." The contractor called in after the shot and told Bruce that the track would be blocked up for a couple of hours. Bruce hadn't realized that, so to protect himself he got on the dispatcher’s phone and he said, "Mr. Germer the contractor wants to put off a shot at the east portal of the tunnel." Mr. Germer said, “Better not let him, Bruce, for No. 13 is due in an hour. Bruce said, "But Mr. Germer, this is only a pot shot, it won't take very long to clean up.” Mr. Germer said, “ I guess it'll be okay in that case.” Then Bruce leaned back in his chair a few minutes, got back on the phone, and said, "Mr. Germer, you know that little pot shot I was talking about? Well, it was a little bit bigger than we thought; the track will be blocked for about 2 hours."
The other one about Bruce took place at the Quinnimont Yard office. The telegraph office was in a tower above the yard office, and there was a chute with a pulley wheel with a rope around it with hooks on each end. The telegrapher and the yardmaster sent messages back and forth with it. One 4th of July, the clerk whose office was under the chute put a firecracker on the hook and lit it and yelled at Bruce, "Pull it up quick, Bruce, it's a hot one!" Bruce pulled it up, and it exploded in his hand, making him curse.
The clerk was reared back in his chair laughing, right under the chute. Bruce picked up a bucket of bugdust (slack coal) between the stove and the chute and poured it down the chute all over the clerk’s white shirt, down into his pants, and even his shoes.
Another story about Fergy. He was the conductor on a 20-car work train which arrived at the east end of Handley yard ready to quit for the day. Fergy called the yardmaster for a track to get in. The yardmaster told him he didn't have any available tracks, remarking, "We only have 20 tracks, you know." Fergy said, "Well, we're not coming in there sideways!"
Another one about Bruce. He tried to get a job as a brakeman before he was hired as a telegrapher. He was training in the Hinton yard at night, and the trainer brakemen told him, "You get halfway along the train, and when I give you a signal from head-end, you relay it to the rear. So Bruce went back to the middle, and the head brakeman wound up and gave a big back-up signal from the head-end. (Lantern swung in a big circle). But the handle for his lantern broke, and the lantern went into the river. So Bruce wound up his lantern and threw it in the river.
Another one about Kenny. Before I go on to another interesting character. When Kenny was an agent at Gauley, he was alleged to have given favors to some of the customers who were his friends. Jack Reed, the Superintendent of Operations at Huntington, called for an investigation. Kenny was pretty shrewd and got all his stuff together, and after a pretty hard trial, Kenny prevailed over Mr. Reed. After the investigation, as they were going out the door, Reed said to Kenny, "Pretty smart, aren't you?" Kenny said, "You're not so dumb yourself, Mr. Reed! "
Now on to a good-hearted (but nervous) Yardmaster at Thurmond, named Ed Straughn. Ed would go into the telegraph office and yell out the window at his yard crew down below because it was out in a bay window. The windows were filthy, and Jim Boyd, the Operator, cleaned them. Ed came in and stuck his head through the window, which Jim had shut. Luckily, it didn't hurt him. One day, Ed (back in his office) was talking on the telephone when he, in mistake, dropped the phone into the wastebasket. Ed got down on the floor and finished the conversation. He went to meet a head brakeman on an east man (railroaders call trains men) and asked the brakeman if he had a match. The brakeman handed him a box of matches. Ed looked and saw that he already had a lighted cigarette, so he jammed it out in the matchbox and handed it back to him and said, "I don't have time to fool with you. I've got work to do. "
On Piney Branch (out of Raleigh), the Beckley shifter coming back from the end of the line at Cranberry stopped at Beckley to take their "20” (1unch). Mr. Andrews, the trainmaster, came by in his automobile and noticed that there was no one flagging the rear of the train, so he parked and went over to the caboose and asked conductor Ted Darby why he wasn’t flagging. "Well, Hr. Andrews, we've already been to the end of the line and back so we know that there’s nothing in there.” Mr. Andrews said (smarting him) "Yes, but one might come up out of the ground and hit you." Darby said, "But Mr. Andrews, if I went back to flag, one might come up between me and the caboose!"
Darby couldn't get his car started on the day, and hitchhiked to work.The driver struck up a conversation with him, and asked him his name. Darby said, "For the life of me I couldn't remember my name." He said he was ashamed to ask anybody at work who he was, but he remembered his telephone number so he called his wife at home and asked her what his name was so he could sign the time sheet.
The same thing happened to me temporarily at Quinnimont. I was in the teletype room trying to straighten out consists. They had to be changed according to how the yard engine switched. It wasn't easy. In walked an official and introduced himself. I cannot remember his name now, except I remember it was of Greek paternal ancestry. I wanted to introduce myself but all the car numbers were still swirling around in my head, and my mind drew a blank. After I scratched my head awhile I remembered my last name and said, "My name’s Gwinn," and after scratching my head a little longer, "Marshall Gwinn." I didn't make a good impression.
Another interesting character was Jasper Morgan, a dispatcher who was so grouchy he was funny. He got into an argument with Little Joe Stevens the operator at Handley one day. Little Joe is so loud you had to turn the loudspeaker down for him, and Jasper talked so low you had to turn it up for him. Anyway, the Yardmaster was aggravating little so he said, "Dang it Jesse, Be still." Then he said, "What did you say, Mr. Morgan?" Jasper had gotten mad, and he yelled back at him. "You don’t have any sense!" Then added (Jasper wouldn't cuss), "Your mother doesn't have any sense!" Only silence on the other end for a long time while he figured it out.
Fred Foeter was working at Deepwater when Jasper made him angry, and he threatened to come up to Hinton and whip him when he got free from work. So Fred got on the train and went to Hinton and went into the newsstand to get some refreshments to strengthen him up for the battle. Jasper had the same idea and was sitting beside him. They struck up a conversation, and Fred told him he had come up to Hinton to whip Jasper Morgan. Jasper said, "I'm him.” But by then they had made friends and just laughed about it.
Fred was working at Prince when the train dispatcher put out a message to hand up to a westbound train. Fred wrote it out in a hurry and handed it up. The train went on down through Stretchers Neck tunnel and stopped on the other end and called Fred and then asked him what the message said. Fred read it to him. The brakeman asked him why he didn't write so somebody could read it. Fred said, “Lookie here, fella, if you can't read my writing, I'm not responsible for your education!”
Old man Leonard Ford came to Beckley Junction from the L&N railroad in Kentucky years ago. He was a telegrapher's telegrapher. He could send and retrieve code faster than any I ever saw. The Ops at "HU" office in Huntington (supposedly hotshots) would take the weights off their speed keys and try to put him under the table— slang for sending too fast for him causing him to break. The old man would write it all down, and under his breath, he kept saying "(vulgar word) come on!, (vulgar word) come on! They were going too slow for him!
When (name withheld) was kicked off the branch line and had to go out on the main line, they told her it was very important to report anything wrong with a passing train, such as a smoke which indicated a hot box. No. 1 (a train) went by Meadow Creek with steam escaping from a l oose steam line (used to heat coaches), so she reported a hot box middle ways of the train. The dispatcher stopped No. 1 at Glade and had them walk their train, and they told her it was only a steam leak. The dispatcher fussed at her for causing him to delay a first-class passenger train. The next train, No. 91, a manifest (fast freight) which doesn’t have a steam line, went by smoking, so she reported a steam leak middle ways of the train. She got the nickname eagle-eye for that one. She turned out to be one of the finest operators and agents.
I had the same experience when I had to leave Piney Branch & go to Quinnimont. They told me the same thing, stressing the importance of reporting smoke and the like. No. 95 went by with one chemical tank car letting off steam from a pop valve on top of it, so I reported it. Jasper, the dispatcher, said, "Why didn't you go lean out the window and strike a match to it?"
Another interest!/ng thing happened to me when I first went to Quinnimont. I copied a telegram to the yardmaster, tracing a railroad car. I copied part of it as car of pickles for Beckley. The yardmaster yelled up, "Marshal, are you sure this message is right?" I said, "Yeah, that’s what it says." He said, “That’s funny, because that's the number for a coal car. They surely don’t send pickles to Beckley in a coal hopper! I said, "Well, I'll call HX (relay office in Hinton) on the telephone and verify it. The telegrapher at HX said, “Oh no! It says coal for Pickers and Becker, Cincinnati!“
A witty dispatcher named Bill Lilly coined a word for a fast-moving freight engineer. Country star Hank Snow had a song which was popular then named "Moving On." When someone asked how Nr. 90 was moving up New River, Bill told him that it was "Hank Snowin’ ‘ em." So that got to be the common term for a fast-moving freight.
Engineer Jake Lilly was sitting on his engine at Gulf Switch waiting for his brakeman to walk the train and fell asleep. The trainmaster showed up and climbed up on the engine and caught him asleep. Jake heard him and opened his eyes slowly, and saw a pair of shiny dress shoes and knew it was an official, then Jake said, "Amen," as if he'd been praying.
Big & fat dispatcher George Coffman went to the C&O hospital for an operation and they removed a lot of fat, and George returned all neat and trim. Someone said, " George what on earth happened to you?" Hickey Reese, a witty but sarcastic chief dispatcher said, "Huh, they gave him an enema and he lost 50 pounds." George said. "Yeah, one of them was a little old dried one they called a hickey." Also one day someone said, "Did you hear all about George Scott’s house burning down?" (George was an easygoing dispatcher alleged falsely to be lazy). They added, "Yeah, and all the neighbors pitched in and carried out his furniture." Hickey said, "Huh, who carried out Mr. Scott?"
It was a lot of fun working on the railroad. And as a witty brakeman named Chill Martin said, "You can get by for forty years on the railroad, claiming ignorance!" He wasn't far from wrong.