This may be a bit off topic since the theme is dealing with health issues, but I think the best way to preserve ourselves is by writing down our experiences or recording an oral history of our lives. Many of you have been around since the beginning of the preservation movement and have been directly involved with it. You've witnessed the struggles of forming a museum, transitioning it from a club mentality to a more business like organization and dealing with the modern day issues that present themselves. You've probably known the movers and shakers of this hobby. And you've certainly got some great stories to tell. By writing or recording these stories and experiences you're also preserving yourselves for all time.

Just my two cents worth...

Sammy, it's posts like this one that make me really wish we had a "LIKE" button here at RYPN. Very well said. My dad was not a career railroader but did work for a couple years on an L&N extra track gang. He lived a hard life and stated several times he wasn't going to live to see 30 or 40 or 50 or... He's in his mid 80s now and lamenting that his plan to die young and leave a pretty corpse has not worked out. He also is starting to regret not taking better care of himself when he was younger. I've reminded him that he needs to not do anything stupid because I'm curious what kills an adult male in our family -- the three generations before him didn't live past their mid late 50s. Dad worked in facilities that used a great deal of lead, PCBs, Asbestos, and so on, BTW.

ETA

Get rid of your riding lawnmower and your snowblower, don't drive your car down to the end of the driveway to get the mail. Walk when you can while going on errands. Ride a bike if it's too far to walk. Use the steps instead of the elevator. Eat all the fresh produce you can when it's in season. All things in moderation.

And I'm not done yet !!! Thank you Mr Alco, us ego freaks feed on praise.

Much as I love railroading, I took a buyout from BN because the Class I lifestyle was killing me, and I didn't want to be in the 40%. Part of it was breathing concentrated diesel exhaust, and living near a busy freeway. I never took a breath of fresh air for 13 years, and constantly coughed up black crap that tasted like train smoke.

What might apply to RyPNers are two more cautions --- The first is to get your rest. One reason I started railroading was that I've always been an insomniac, might as well get paid for it. But, I never had a decent night's sleep for 13 years, either. The worst of it was when I worked the extra board seven straight months without a day off. Your body gets so run down that you can never catch up, but all that overtime is what I'm living on now, thanks to the RRB.

The other killer is coffee !!! More specificly, TOO MUCH coffee !!! I can live without booze, dope, cigarettes, illicit sexual liasons, and games of chance, but coffe is another story. It most definitely is an addictive drug, and I was up to 24 cups every 24 hours just to keep my eyelids open enough to drive good enough to have my excellent safety record. I tried to quit once, but went into serious withdrawels, just like you see junkies do in the movies !!!

Again, my doctor advises me that if a fella is going to be hooked on something, he could do a lot worse than coffee. OF COURSE everybody is different, and my doctor's advice might not be right for somebody else. I manage just fine now on considerably less than I used to, by avoiding coffee if my stomach hurts, or if I feel shaky. LISTEN when your body tries to warn you !!! The reason I mention all this is that plenty of us are strung out on coffee, but are not aware of it. BEWARE. It's an occupational hazard

There is no doubt that (especially) being a freight railroader does nothing for your longevity. I think the passenger T&E people have it somewhat easier, especially those who hold regular runs, and know when they will work weeks in advance. Holding a "regular" freight pool job under most circumstances just means you always go between the same terminals, never knowing for sure when the call will come. The stress of that alone I'm certain contributes to the early demise of a lot of railroaders.

When Congress was considering changing railroad retirement age to 60/30 about 10 years ago, I heard an interesting statistic from someone connected to one of the operating unions. The average railroad retiree, when the minimum retirement age was 62, lived to collect a pension around three years. This idea of raising the retirement age for everyone to 70 is proposed by a bunch of pinheads who've never done an honest day of physical labor in their lives.

That's a fact, Brother Woodring, you're still on call 24/365 with a pool turn in most cases, just like3 the extra board. As much bitching as I just did in my last post, I stayed in the yard because at least I was home when I wasn't working. The guys on the road had it lots worse.

I know being in favor of rail trails does not endear me to some fans, but the 1000 or so miles I spend on the bike each year (mostly on the former P&LE Yough Div.) has brought me down from 232 lbs to 194. Long term objective is 175. Might just be out there for a couple hours tonite, come to think of it. Care to join me?

"work for a couple years on an L&N extra track gang."

"He's in his mid 80s now and lamenting that his plan to die young and leave a pretty corpse has not worked out."

Just because that spike maul doesn't say "York Barbell" doesn't mean you aren't working out.

I have a book at home- I think it it is the CNJ in Color, and there's a picture of a CNJ track gang there. Not an ounce of fat on them. Based on that, and the stories my grandmother told me about my late grandfather (died when my age was measured in days), I'd say your Dad was not only working out, but was a professional athlete.


"I know being in favor of rail trails does not endear me to some fans"

It's not the rail trails that are bothersome, its the activists.

Even in my Army days (once, I went for 5 days without a moment of sleep, going full-tilt. I swear I saw a line of glowing, pulsing squares floating by a tank retriever at one point) I was never a coffee drinker. There were some times I was so exhausted that I'd take the freeze-dried stuff out of an MRE and gulp it down dry (chasing it with the sugar, then a swig of canteen water). But I'd have to be just about ready to collapse when it got that bad.
Coffee, to me, tastes awful and I don't get the appeal. I'm convinced that coffee was on its way out when Starbucks re-invented coffee in the form of overly-expensive insanity that fed into the pretentious hipster mindset. And look where we are now.
In the service, we called it, "Lifer's juice." Still, people from the Deep South were less likely to drink coffee, focusing on sodas instead (people form the South used to call any type of soda, "Coke" and you'd have to ask what flavor people meant). I always took a case of Mountain Dew with me to the field and even that got to me when it started dissolving the enamel on my teeth at one point.
But drinking coffee? Man, I'd rather drink mud.

Yeah, I'm a tea person myself, English-style in the morning (light and sweet), iced tea (never sweet tea - I'm a Yankee) later in the day, but never coffee. Just never learned to like it, and I sold enough of it on Amtrak. Not hard to do when you just put a measured filter pack in a commercial brewer. To this day I really can't make coffee in a regular home coffee maker, and don't keep any in my own residence. I did get sideways looks on the railroad for not liking coffee, but I also got those for actually liking trains from some railroaders, so there you go. About the only place I've ever had trouble finding hot tea is in the deeper South. As far as Roanoke, no problem, much South of there the person behind the counter looks at you like you're from another planet if you ask for hot tea. The best convenience store chain to make you own hot beverage at by far is Wawa. They have just about any combination of coffee, teas, sweeteners, creamers, etc. you could ever want, even lemon juice. Too bad they don't go West of Frederick, MD.

There's a lot of us that can't function without our coffee, but CHINA RAIL proves that railroads and their emoployees really CAN function without it. They couldn't function without tea, though, but I've never heard that too much tea is bad for you.

Too much soda pop IS,though. It won't just disolve the enamel. My dad was a dentist, he took one of my baby teeth and tied a string around it, then suspended it in a glass of Coke. In a few days it was gone, well, not GONE exactly --- there was a film of puss like scum floating on top. Convinced me a lot faster than him lecturing me about too much soda pop would have. Too much ANYTHING is bad for you. I bet if you drank a gallon of milk every day, that might not do you any good, either.

Too much laughter is OK in my book, though. Once a month we BN/BNSF/C&S retirees meet up at a local resturant, there are several hundred of us, but maybe a third will be there at any given month. (It's not just about seeing old friends, either, I've got three fellas I used to work with, who have solid CB&Q steam experience, interested in my Porter #6 project. Pretty much EVERYBODY is interested, those guys still remember how much of my time and effort was wasted trying to get the ferropseudointellectuals to permit BN employees to restore a Burlington engine back in the late 80s.)

To say our group represents the healthier railroad retirees is probably accurate, at least it looks that way to me. My observation is that what everybody seems to have in common is a healthy sense of humor, which seems to give them all the ability to take a licking and keep on ticking. There is constant joking and story telling when we get together, the only time we aren't smiling is when we discuss our departed brothers and sisters. I got some bad news the other day, too. The famous Carman Pete, who gave the longest and most elaborate air tests since we started using radios, in the hardest to understand accent, died within weeks after retirement. He was indeed another guy that was super nice, pious, responsible, ate healthy, excercised, never smoked/drank/cussed/cheated on his wife, never missed work or showed up late, or ever did anything wrong.

Whether railroading is your job, your hobby, or a personal problem, there is bound to be an awful lot of crazy shit that will happen to you in your lifetime. And, whether it's good, bad, or ugly, you are way better off if you can laugh about it.

"Too much soda pop IS,though. It won't just disolve the enamel."

It is diabetes in a bottle. We were not meat to consume something that is a solution of pulverized sugar that races into the blood stream, racing the engine of your pancreas.

It's not sugar.

What it is... we have only a few decades' experience with... Not long enough to understand long term health effects, but one look at the hockey stick graph of US citizen health and it's not hard to make some early bets. Much of the food we eat is actually illegal in Europe.

Anyway back on thread, don't underestimate the value of new sports body monitoring technologies to "keep you honest". For instance it's real easy to kill yourself shoveling snow, but with a FitBit on your wrist, you can read your heart rate directly and a) make sure to stay in safe and healthy zones, and b) pace and structure your activities to be aerobically useful.