Life Along the Tracks
Life Along the Tracks - Candid Stories from a Career Railroader
‘I was working as a gandy, long hot hours with a shovel, lining bar, occasionally a brush hook and other instruments of extreme physical labor, the normal accoutrements of my “profession.” At 17, the exalted positions of brakeman or fireman were unobtainable, and engineer/conductor unthinkable.’ So begins Life Along the Tracks, a new hard cover book of 225 pages containing 46 short stories drawn from the career of Mike McLaughlin who hired out on the Great Northern at Seattle, WA in 1955 as a section man, the first of many jobs on several railroads. One GNRHS member described it as the best book by a former Great Northern employee since John Langlot’s two books.
Life Along the Tracks is a collection of short stories supported by maps and photographs about working on the railroad, including living along the tracks in outfit cars. Much of Mike’s career was in the signal and track departments, where the most physically demanding work on the railroad is done, and shovels are still a very common tool. Mike’s personal stories are also the story of many a railroad man. They show the effort and determination of the men who made, and make, the railroads function.
Life Along the Tracks describes life on the Great Northern Railway, the Rock Island, and the Rio Grande from 1955 through 1970. The book is arranged thematically and somewhat chronologically. Most of the Great Northern stories take place along the Coast Line north of Everett, Washington, and in and around Seattle, his hometown.
Railfan Mike rode Northern Pacific and Milwaukee switch engines in Seattle as a kid in the early 1950’s. Mike was fond of the Milwaukee including its trackage rights between Maple Valley and Seattle on the coal hauling Pacific Coast Railroad, which the GN purchased in 1951. He discusses loading and unloading MILW rail car barges at Pier 27 on the Seattle waterfront, and the MILW branches between Bellingham and Sumas/Glacier in Northwestern Washington. One of the longest stories covers an October 21, 1955, trip on the ‘Renton Rocket’ from Seattle to the coal mine at Black Diamond, return to Renton switching customers there, working almost 14 hours and covering 59.2 miles. Several train orders are included as is a discussion of the day’s movements under timetable and train order dispatching.
Finally, a railroad book with enough maps; excellent maps, many in color to help readers understand which railroad owned and operated what tracks in Seattle, Bellingham, Salt Lake City, and Denver plus an excellent color schematic track diagram of the Pacific Coast circa 1955, a string chart of a day on the Pacific Coast, several train orders and Employee Time Tables, and a DRGW track chart between Helper and Provo. The photos are by others, so some are a bit out of the time Mike was working. This is particularly true of those taken on the Rio Grande. All the photos are outstanding and support the narrative very well.
This is an excellent ‘I was there’ book with Mike’s feelings between the lines of his candid stories.
Considering that co-author Jim Providenza is not a professional railroader, the book is remarkably free of errors. I note them here only for the benefit of the detail-oriented reader. The map on page 37 identifies the NP Middle Yard as PC Stacy Street. The PC yard lay between the NP and MILW yards. The scale of the base map makes this level of detail almost impossible to see. Review the track diagram on page 48 for the general arrangement of the PC yard. This map also shows the ‘King Street Freight House.’ In fact, both the GN and NP freight houses were south of King Street with Second Avenue between them. The GN freight house was east of Second Avenue, the NP to the west. On page 82 the NP ‘Shore Line’ was never part of the Seattle, Lake Sore & Eastern. It was built in 1879 by the Seattle & Walla Walla predecessor of the Pacific Coast along the shore of Elliot Bay to replace the original line across the tide flats on a trestle. The impressive list of interchange points in and around Seattle at Page 187 does not include the GN, NP, UP, MILW interchanges with Alaska Hydro Train on Harbor Island. On page 197 the PC interchange at Henrys was with the Northern Pacific, not the Milwaukee. On page 208 GN engine 83 was not painted in the ‘simplified’ scheme in 1955, since it was introduced in 1962. The 1970 photo on page 209 shows her in the simplified scheme.