Trains in Utah

William John Gilbert Gould, edited by William R. Gould, My Life on Mountain Railroads (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1995).

My Life on Mountain Railroads is an enjoyable collection of stories told by a fifty-year railroad veteran. The author begins his career as a "hustler helper" in the Denver Rio Grande Roundhouse in Salt Lake City. Before he turned twenty-one, the required age for a fireman, he was firing for the railroad. During his career, he witnessed the evolution of the railroads, from manual signals directing coal-fired locomotives with oil running lamps to electric signals guiding diesel electric trains.

Gould was born in Wales in 1888. He and his family moved to the United States after converting to the Mormon faith. Most of his father’s brothers took positions in coal mines in central Utah, but he went to work for the railroad, eventually becoming a section foreman. Gould grew up along the tracks in the Tintic mining district southwest of Salt Lake City where his stories begins.

Most of Gould’s stories are from his time as a fireman on the Rio Grande, especially firing steam engines over the steep mountain grades. Coming down off Soldier’s Summit was especially tricky, when a bit of frozen condensation in a brake line could result in a disaster. He recalls how firemen had to be careful lighting the running lamps on the front of a locomotive, for if the wick was too high, the airflow into the lamp would cause the flame to smut up the globe. Then the fireman would have to walk out in front of the engine and clean the globe, a dangerous task when the train was moving. The fireman also had to be careful that his fire not "clinker over," causing the boiler to produce less steam.

Gould also tells secrets of the trade. Firemen and engineers, sometime stranded on a siding for hours, would trade coal for a good hot meal. Other engineers would develop a special whistle sequence that they’d blow coming into town so their wives would know to get dinner ready. When the sequence was learned by others, they’d imitate the same sequence, causing his wife to prepare dinner early and causing him to have a "cold dinner," when he finally make it back to town.

Gould never finished his stories. He died just a few years after retiring in 1958. His final years of employment was as a engineer on a diesel electric for the Utah Railroad, a shortline that hauls coal from the mining camps in Carbon and Emery Counties. He’d gone to work with the Utah Railroad in order to be home at night. Unfortunately, Gould never got around to discussing the transition from steam to diesel.

Trains in Florida

Les Standiford, Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002).

What could be a better combination for a good read than a visionary, a seemingly impossible obstacle, trains, a hurricane and Papa Hemingway? Last Train to Paradise tells the story of Henry Flagler’s obsession to extend his Florida East Coast Railroad to Key West. Building the line across the Florida marsh and Keys, including a seven mile expanse of ocean, seemed impossible, but in 1912, after seven years of work, the line was completed. Flagler who developed much of Florida’s East Coast, had reached his goal. He hoped the opening of the Panama Canal and travel to Havana (it was a short steamship ride away) would provide a boom to this railroad. In this regard, he failed. The railroad never turned a profit. Ironically, considering that Flagler was a teetotaler, the one commodity the line attracted was bootlegged liquor. But this was after Flagler’s death, during the era of Prohibition within the United States. Bootleggers brought liquor into Key West from Cuba, and then shipped it up the east coast. Flagler’s railroad was destroyed in 1935, during one of the worst hurricanes ever to strike the Keys. The heroic effort by railroad employees to save residents of the Keys is retold. After the storm, so much of the railroad was damaged they never rebuilt it. The destroyed trestles were rebuilt for automobiles. One of the first observers to the hurricane’s destruction in the Middle Keys was Ernest Hemingway, who at the time was residing in Key West.

Trains in Michigan

Bruce Catton, Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood (Great Lakes Books, 1972; republished by Wayne State Univ. Press, 1987)

Although trains appear in the title, this isn’t technically a railroad book. Instead, the author tells about growing up in small towns in upper Michigan in the early years of the 20th century, the waning days of the White Pine logging industry. The Morning Train is a metaphor for leaving home as one goes out into the world. In his last chapter, "Night Train," the author talks about his father’s death as he himself waits for the last train. Even though this is not strictly a railroad book, there are several good descriptions of "jerkwater trains" that crisscrossed the region. The Pere Marquette, that "was often in receivership, and was half-affectionately referred to as the Poor Marquette," the Manistee and Northeastern, the Ann Arbor railroad and the Boyne City, Gaylord and Alpena. As the railroads were mostly built to support logging operations, they were at best temporary. One of highlights of Catton’s early years was visiting relatives in Minnesota. Taking the Ann Arbor from Beulah to Thompsonville (a short trip), we’re they have to walk over to the Pere Marquette station and wait for a night train to Chicago. Once in Chicago, they’d board one of the first class lines: the Northwestern, the Milwaukee Road or the Burlington. These trains boasted ballast roadbeds, double tracks and automatic switches. After riding on them, it was always a letdown to come back into the woods of northern Michigan.

Although Northern Michigan didn’t have the grand railways that connected Chicago with the rest of the nation, Ernest Hemingway also used the logging railroads in his writings. In his short stories on the "Big Two-Hearted River," takes a train across the Upper Peninsula to the river he plans to fish. In an unfinished novel that’s published in the Complete Short Stores of Ernest Hemingway, the author starts out on a train heading south from the north country (Hemingway’s family had a cabin on Walloon Lake).

Books about Trains and Places

As a historian working primarily within the 19th century, I love railroads. That century, now long past, witness the speed of transportation increase exponentially. In the United States, the century began with people moving no faster than a horse could carry them. Canals were considered high tech. By the end of the century, one could speed across the country on iron rails. Although trains have given way to automobiles and airplanes, they are still important in our economy and in our psyche. The sound of a train reminds us that there’s a new place to explore down the track. The purpose of this blog is to explore "places" through the lens of the railroad.