On vacation these past two weeks I had the honor and privilege of meeting my wife's great uncle for the first time. Nick Nixon was a Trainmaster and later divisional Superintendant with the Wabash, and after the merger the N&W. During our two-day visit, Nick regaled me with stories of things he saw over four decades on the job, from the late 30s to the early 70s.

All the tales were great, but three stand out:

1. Always wear a hat

I knew railroad officials in the day were never, ever seen in public without a hat. What I didn't know was that this rule applied indoors as well as out: even though a gentleman used to remove his cover inside a building, a railroad manager on the Wabash at least was expected to have a hat glued to his head even sitting at his desk. Nick told a tale of a Wabash president whose business car was passing through the division on which he was the senior Trainmaster. The divisional superintendant was away, and Nick was accompanying the Boss over the division in his place. They came to a station and an ATM was there on the platform to meet the train, head uncovered. The president thundered, "Jones, where's your hat! Never appear in front of the men without a hat." And with that the poor offending soul was fired on the spot. The story has a happy ending however--the offending ATM's wife was the heiress of a prosperous ice cream factory in Florida, and the fellow apparantly got on just fine in the ice cream business after his Wabash career came to a hatless end.

2. How to quit smoking

When Nick was the Superintendant of Wabash's Chicago Terminal division in the 60s, one of his crews put a train on the ground blocking the grade-level crossing of the Chicago Belt Line. The Belt at that time put about 40 trains a day over that crossing, so needless to say this was a Big Problem. Nick was on the scene working with the wreck crew and making sure that the repair equipment and supplies they needed were organized and flowing to the scene for about 36 hours running, smoking the whole time. The next day he said to Betty his wife that he could handle the lack of sleep, but the damned cigarettes were making him feel like hell and that was it: he was giving up the habit. Moral of the story: if you want to quit smoking, try blocking half the railroad interchange in Chicago for a day and a half as motivation.

3. Be careful what you walk through

A lot of Nick's stories from his Trainmaster years had to do with clearing wrecks--those were the times when a TM really earned his pay. Nick told a tale of being on the site of a wreck on the Wabash's Decatur-Chicago line. Nick and a colleague, a road foreman of engines, got to the site and began to walk the wreck. Nick eyeballed the derailment site and the pileup to estmate what kind of materials he needed to get flowing to the site to repair the line. Meanwhile the RFE walked toward the head of the train to check on the state of the power. On the way there and back he waded through a creek. Well, Nick was eyeballing the wreck and his colleague walks up and says "Nick, I dunno what's going on but my legs are itching like hell." Turns out that the train had a car of acid which had dumped its load in the creek, and the poor man had just walked through it twice. They got him to the hospital as fast as they could be he ended up retiring on disability from that day. As Nick said in summing up, "By the time I left the railroad we would have looked at all the waybills before doing anything else, but back then you were expected to just pitch right in and get the wreck cleared. We never stopped to think about hazardous materials in the cars or things like that, we just got in there to assess the wreck."

Suffice it to say I could have listened to Nick all day long--and was desperately wishing I had a tape recorder. The buildings trains and engines we save are all great, but its the stories of the men that help bring it all to life.

eledbetter@mail.rypn.org

By all means, record them! Its sad to think of all the GREAT stories that are gone forever, because nobody thought to write them down.
My Grandad, now gone, worked MoW on the "Bums an' Outlaws" and later Chessie, from just after WWII into the early 80s. He saw the demise of steam, the mechanization of MoW (the "demise" of decent maintenance), etc.
He had so many stories, and there are so few the rest of us only half remember. Like the one about his co-worker who fell 50 some feet off a trestle into a couple inches of water on a very shallow rocky creek. When the crew went down to recover his body they found him stunned, but the only thing he had broken was his glasses.
Or the story of hundreds of men shoveling snow into gons then pushing the gons into the Allegheny River (to let the snow float out) when they cleared the yard in Pittsburgh (where the recently demolished 3 rivers stadium stood) after big snows in the 50s....

IMHO it is the human stories that make this hobby, without them a locomotive or car is just a chunk of iron...with enough of them, even a "stuffed and mounted" engine still lives.

Right now, I'm working on an oral history project at the University of South Dakota. I'm in an undergrad research program where I'm being paid $10 an hour to conduct my project, "An Oral History of the Milwaukee Road Railroad Shops of Sioux City, IA."

I can't emphasize enough the impact the stories and informaion I'm gathering will have on the interpretation of the shops as a historic site. I am learning thigs that no one in the historic group ever imagined went on in those shops. I would urge anyone with a museum to go out and interview some railroaders. If your museum is in an old shop, and there are former employees still living, go interview them. Otherwise, try to interview some of the railroaders about working in the town where your museum is located.

Since everyone reading this is familiar with railroaders, I don't have to talk about the networking process a person uses to meet sources and get interviews. It is interesting, though, to see the dynamic that emerges. Often, I find that initially, the railroader is doing me a favor by granting an interview. By the end, I'm doing him a favor by giving him a bit of immortality.

When you interview, stay out of the way. Keep your questions short. Don't ask big long questions that demonstrate your knowledge; let your railroader show his knowledge. If he says something factually incorrect, racist, or disagreeable to you, let it slide. The tape is about getting the informant's views down. As a historian and interpreter, you can comment on them later. And never, no matter how bad the interview, never destroy a tape. There's always something worthwhile on it.

If you want an example of oral history at its best, get a copy of "To be an Indian, An Oral History" by Joseph H. Cash and Herbert T. Hoover. They were pioneers in oral history, and they did it right.

The requirements for doing an oral history project are minimal. You need a good tape recorder, some tape stock and some release forms.

First, the release form: Copyright law states that you and the interviewee are co-authors of the tape. You need to get your interviewee to relinqish his or her rights and allow you free use. The release form I'm using uses words to the effect that the interview is his or her "gift to the South Dakota Oral History Center." I can send examples if anyone wants.

Second, get a good tape recorder and know how to use it. If cost is a factor, use whatever you can get, but if you can foot the $299 price tag, a Marantz PMD-201 is excellent ( found the best price at B&H Photo/Video). It's just a step below the model most radio reporters use. A good mic is important, too. I use an ElectroVoice 635A. The thing is indestructable, and when your railroader's wife pipes up with a comment from across the room, it will pick it up. If you use that mic with the PMD201, you'll need an adapter cable to go from the XLR plug on the mic to the 1/8" mini plug on the recorder. "The Sound Professionals", an online site, offers custom adapter cords that will do this.

When you finish and interview, be sure to remove the tabs from the cassette so that you don't accidentally record over your interview. And have backup copies made as soon as possible.

If you can find a site that will archive your tapes, by all means, do it. Mine will be accessable to researchers at the SD Oral History Center. There's always the debate about whether RR artifacts should be in some collector's basement or in a museum. That debate gets fuzzy. I think this one is clear: get your tapes where others can access them.

If you finished reading this rant, congratulations. This oral history project has been incredibly rewarding to me. Just as rewarding, I think, as working on the trains themselves. Feel free to contact me with comments or questions.

TSS

tsschult@usd.edu

One of things I like the most about my job at the Conway Scenic Railroad is that so many railroaders show up here to look the place over, and talk about their long gone days on the railroad. Most times I'm really interested with what they have to say. They make me think about how life was not so long ago, and that my work today keeps their heritage alive. Perhaps listening,and then passing on what I heard,is my most honorable job here?

Brian Hebert



Conway Scenic Railroad
btamper@hotmail.com

The oral history of railroading is indeed quite important, As a conductor at Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum's operations department, I have experianced the same thing many times over. Many of our older members are "old men" who worked for the Southern, the Dixie Line (N.C. & St. L.) or the Old Reliable (L & N). One of our members is in the process of writing down the stories of her current husband, a retired L & N engineer. For that reason I feel that many of the so called railroad books of today can't begin to compare with the works of Benjamin Botkin and Alvin Harlowe (A Tresury of Railroad Folklore) or Freeman Hubbard (Railroad Avenue). Authors like Louis Newton and Doug Riddle would be among the few exceptions. Anyone can make a photograph of a locomotive or train. Very few photographers did what O. Winston Link did, working to show the human side of railroading. Link understood what many railfans fail to recognize to this day- railroads are not just trains running on tracks. Railroads are people doing jobs essential to keeping our country moving whether it's the engineer running his or her train, the dispatcher tracking trains as they operate over their division, the signal maintainer fixing a signal at some lonely siding in the middle of nowhere or the special agent patroling the yards. Human interest stories remind us that people are what make the railroads what they are, and often serve as valuable teaching aids.

envlink@voyageronline.net

I think you hit the nail on the head. What has been most rewarding to me is the education I have recieved about our museum site. When wrote my original post, I was thinking about passing along some of the things I've learned about doing oral hisotry, so I'm not sure I expressed very well my awe at what I am learning.

I've interviewed the Car and Wrecking Foreman; the female locomotive Dept. Clerk; a guy who worked as message boy, warehouseman, baggage agent,agent, and chief clerk; a guy who worked summers on the section; a guy who worked as "every helper there was," was a machinist's apprentice for 63 days before the 1949 coal strike caused him to be laid off, and as a brakeman on some of the construction trains to the Ft. Randall dam on the Missouri River; the man who was in charge of selling all property on the west end of the Milwaukee Road after abandonment; and I have more in the works.

Without going into detail, I have information that I know we, the preservationists, would not have ever found out about these shops without the interviews. I feel a bit humbled to know that I know probably more than anyone, the workers aside, about these shops. It will be a fun and daunting task to pass this knowledge on to my firends in the preservation effort.

> One of things I like the most about my job
> at the Conway Scenic Railroad is that so
> many railroaders show up here to look the
> place over, and talk about their long gone
> days on the railroad. Most times I'm really
> interested with what they have to say. They
> make me think about how life was not so long
> ago, and that my work today keeps their
> heritage alive. Perhaps listening,and then
> passing on what I heard,is my most honorable
> job here?

> Brian Hebert


tsschult@usd.edu

I've been around OERM for more than 30 years and over the years I have heard many stories of our history. These have been over the Saturday dinners, during slide shows, around "camp fires" and even during work sessions. These tell of the beginings of the museum and how it got cars brought them to the site, etc. Other stories involve searching out and talking with the people who once maintained the cars and engines and streetcars.

I honestly believe that oral histories also need to be done of the people who started our musuems and kept them going. Some of these will involve how the museum got strated, building it, but also of dealing with the railroads and talking with now gone railroad people and retelling the stories heard.

We need to make sure our own histories are preserved -- the history of railway preservation.

Brian Norden

bnorden@gateway.net

Just a thought, but wouldn't an Oral History page here at RYPN make an exciting addition to the Website?
I know you guys who maintain this page (Hume,Erik,Bob, et al) must chew your fingernails to the roots,trying keep up with the needs of the site. I remember the thread not long ago about L&RP, and how RYPN would really like more "How to or hands on articals" for the readers. Here is an opportunity for the readers to jump in and write a short story about something that really happened to them while working on the railroad.
It could be set up sort of like an Oral History Interchange format, but with no responses nessesary.

Comments or other ideas?

Brian Hebert



Conway Scenic Railroad
btamper@hotmail.com

I know you guys who maintain this page
> (Hume,Erik,Bob, et al) must chew your
> fingernails to the roots,trying keep up with
> the needs of the site.

And the ones that don't require any additional work get the most consideration.

Actually, I am currently working on an interactive event calendar. One where people and groups can come in and post their happenings. This gives me a chance to practice my webmastering/programming skills, and hopefully add utility and value to the site.

However, an "Oral History" bulletin board would not be difficult to set up. Like to keep it from becoming a "Tall Tale" board however.

Two questions:

1. Would anybody really use it?
2. Would somebody volunteer to administer it if I set it up?



Railway Preservation News
hkading@rypn.org

> Two questions:

> 1. Would anybody really use it?
> 2. Would somebody volunteer to administer it
> if I set it up?

I'd try to help Hume, but I'm not as computer savy as I'd like to be. Too bad too,because I visit this site almost every day.
Bummer...

Brian Hebert



Conway Scenic Railroad
btamper@hotmail.com

> I know you guys who maintain this page

> And the ones that don't require any
> additional work get the most consideration.

> Actually, I am currently working on an
> interactive event calendar. One where people
> and groups can come in and post their
> happenings. This gives me a chance to
> practice my webmastering/programming skills,
> and hopefully add utility and value to the
> site.

> However, an "Oral History"
> bulletin board would not be difficult to set
> up. Like to keep it from becoming a
> "Tall Tale" board however.

> Two questions:

> 1. Would anybody really use it?
> 2. Would somebody volunteer to administer it
> if I set it up?

Hume,
Like Brian, I too visit the website nearly every day and would be willing to help. But as Brian indicated I am also a bit unsavvy when it comes to computers. Still I can probably learn what I need to know.
Kent


kenta@ameritech.net

Who knows if anyone will read this, way down at the bottom of this thread, but here goes...

I like the idea of having a railroad oral history center on RYPN, but I have a few reservations...

1. If this site is going to be useful, it needs to be a bit more than a cute railroad stories site. In my mind, that means sticking to oral history practices. The stories on the site would have to be gathered in a responisble manner, with appropriate releases, etc. To a researcher, a story gethered in a controlled environment (i.e. an interview on tape) means a lot more than Todd the rail buff repeating tall tales from his buddies the old rails.

2. If we are going to post the stories/histories online, they will have to be in text format. And if they're going to come from interviews, that means transcribing tapes. I may not be the fastest typer, but it took me 2 days and 12 pages of 11pt/Times New Roman text to transcribe a 45-minute interview. That means typing it as the tape plays, reviewing the transcript by reading along with the tape, and then correcting errors.

These things considered, it is my opinion that posting the stores, except for cuteness factor, is impractical.

Here's my proposal. Let's start a searchable database of sources for railroad oral history. That way, we can include both institutional sources that already exist, and materials gathered privately by preservationists. For instance, I know there are several tapes in the SD Oral History Center that deal with the Milwaukee Road, and I'm sure many others that mention other roads. Those could be indexed at the site. And, say I go out and do some tapes that don't go into the SD center (as my current work will)--say I donate them to the archive of my museum--I could catalog those tapes on the RYPN archive and allow access to them.

Another reason that the database would be better in my mind: I'm hoping that some of the guys on the list who've expressed interest will go out and do some tapes. I'm sure that for some of them, it will be a big enough sacrifice to go out and do the tapes alone. To spend the time to accurately transcribe the tapes may be beyond their current means. (That's fine--an untranscibed tape has at least preserved the material on it from being lost. You've got decades before you need to do something with a tape for fear of losing the material on it; the sources for the tapes may only be around for a few more years.) If we go with the database format, people could share copies of both untranscribed tapes and transcripts, rather than being limited to the transcriptions-only format required by posting the whole story online.

Comments? Hume? Anybody?

> Hume,
> Like Brian, I too visit the website nearly
> every day and would be willing to help. But
> as Brian indicated I am also a bit unsavvy
> when it comes to computers. Still I can
> probably learn what I need to know.
> Kent


tsschult@usd.edu

You raise some very good points, similar to the concerns, or perhaps thoughts is a btter word, on the issue. Thouhgt needs to be given to the format and content of what goes in.

I agree that transcriptions of lengthy taped interviews would probably not be practical. I guess I had more in mind short, maybe anecdotal stories, but I don't want tall tales or cute RR stories. I want railroad workers, or at least persons who actually witnessed the events, describing incidents, or whatever, relating railroad history.

Maybe a combination of what you suggested, an offlince archive somewhere, with a catalog, but some snippets from the interviews posted to whet interest, or at least advertise what's available.

You, Brian Hebert, and K. Hughes have all expressed interest. If you guys want to work out a plan, I'll work with you to give you a place to enact it. I can make the computer part of this easy, either using the Interchange software with some modification, or if you prefer another format, that could be arranged also.

Let me know.


Railway Preservation News
hkading@rypn.org