Hellooo, Texas! Or, How I Became a “Fiddler”
A ROCK ISLAND ENGINEER FINDS REFUGE ON THE COTTON BELT //
A Rock Island engineer finds refuge — and a different style of railroading — on the Cotton Belt
December 1979 started out looking pretty grim for a lot of Rock Islanders. The end of the Rock was apparent and there were no guarantees any of it would be picked up. So, when word spread that Southern Pacific was hiring, it was a note of Christmas cheer. A phone call to SP’s human-resources department confirmed it, and I was assigned a date (late December) and a place (a motel room in Cedar Rapids, Iowa) where I was to be given an interview.
An SP HR person was there, along with a general road foreman of engines. They rented two rooms and had most of us filling out employment applications and paperwork in one room while the general road foreman interviewed us one at a time in another. It was a pretty intense grilling. Most of it dealt with “situations,” i.e. “What-would-you-do-if . . . ?” questions, sprinkled with mechanical questions such as, “How do you change ends on an engine consist?” You knew your woods had been shelled by the time he got done.
It must have gone OK, for a week or so later we received phone calls from the SP telling us to a) report to a certain doctor in the Quad Cites for a company physical, and b) pending the outcome of the physical, to report to Tyler, Texas, on a certain date, where we would become Cotton Belt employees. Whooppee! My friend Bill Bosley and I both were familiar with the Cotton Belt’s reputation for running fast trains.
Our first stop in Texas was Hooks. Hooks is the first exit on I-30 past Texarkana and it was where we decided to get something to eat. When the waitress came over and said “Howdy, what kin ah git for y’all?”, it was too much for Bill and he broke into laughter. Every time she spoke, he could hardly contain himself, and, after a bit, the waitress no longer saw the humor. After we got back on the road, Bill was still hoorahing about her accent. However, when I pointed out that after his then-3-year-old daughter spent a couple of years around a bunch of native Texans, she would sound just like that, his tone took a 180degree turn. “If she ever sounds like that, I’m going to beat her butt” was his very serious response.
Our arrival at Tyler was the first indication our bubble would burst sooner rather than later. The Cotton Belt boys were not about to turn their pride and joy, the Blue Streak Merchandise, or any other of their hotshots, over to us ex-Rock Islanders. We didn’t know it at the time, but the locals differentiated between Tyler and Commerce crews. Tyler-based crews were “Rosin Bellies,” referring, I think, to the piney woods of East Texas. Those based at Commerce were “Fiddlers,” for their supposed propensity to switch (fiddle with) cars and sometimes entire trains. We were destined to become “Fiddlers.”
When word spread that Southern Pacific was hiring, it was a note of Christmas cheer.
COMMERCE, WHERE?
Any description of Commerce, Texas, would be incomplete without mentioning Billy Warren. She was a slight-of-frame, chainsmoking (R. J. McDonald, who started out clerking at Commerce before transferring to engine service, said it wasn’t unheard of for her to have three cigarettes going at one time — one in the ashtray, one in her hand, and one in her mouth when things were going hot and heavy) habanera of a woman who ruled the roost at Commerce.
Billy knew all the big names of officialdom on the Cotton Belt/SP in Texas and was on a first-name basis with almost all of them. I always suspected that if any skeletons existed east of El Paso, she knew where they were. If you were smart, you made every effort to stay on Billy’s good side. Fortunately, in spite of my being a “Yankee,” she liked me and helped me more than once.
Commerce was a boomer haven in its own right. Working on the Texas enginemen’s seniority roster were a couple of refugees from Florida East Coast, a Canadian from Canadian National, a former San Diego & Arizona Eastern man, a trio of Rock Islanders from Shawnee, Okla., an ex-SP engineer from California, and, of course, Bill and me. I probably left someone out, but you get the general idea.
The Commerce extra board was almost like being a permanently assigned boomer. From east to west, it covered yard engine jobs in Texarkana, a road switcher at Mount Pleasant, the “Simtrot Dodger” (a road switcher at Commerce in addition to the road jobs based there), yard jobs at Miller Yard in Dallas, four road switchers at Carrollton, and yard jobs at Hodge Yard in Fort Worth. Because there had once been a branch to Sherman and a small yard there, the Cotton Belt enginemen covered one of two Sherman jobs six months of the year — at night, of course.
FLYPAPER
In his book Blue Streak Merchandise (Kalmbach, 1991), author
Fred Frailey accurately described the gridlock the Cotton Belt had become in 1979 and ’80. It certainly came as a shock to us ex-Rock Islanders. It was ironic and curious that the Rock and the Cotton Belt faced the opposite problems: the Rock Island had starved to death for want of business while the SSW was choking on a glut of it. In an effort to prevent any delay whatsoever to the BSM and its running mates, the ABSM and APW, everything else came to an absolute standstill for a good part of every day. My first pay trip as a Cotton Belt engineer can serve as an example.
Bill Morgan, the road foreman at Commerce, had tried to get us qualifying trips over the entire territory and had largely succeeded. However, due to congestion on the main line from Mount Pleasant east to Texarkana, I had never seen that part of the railroad as I could never get on a train that got past Mount Pleasant. Naturally, my first pay trip was on that territory. I was the engineer on a crew called to relieve the hog-lawed crew on 318 (DAPBY, Dallas–Pine Bluff), stuck in the siding at Omaha, the first town and siding east of Mount Pleasant. The dispatcher in Pine Bluff called our conductor and told him we would be there for “the BSM and three more southbound trains.”
“Raj-ah,” replied Willie Magee, our conductor. The irony here for us was that on many days back on the Rock’s East Iowa Division, four eastbound and four westbound trains would be the whole train count for an entire day!
After watching four Cotton Belt trains sail past on the impeccably maintained main track, the Pine Bluff dispatcher came on the radio again.
“CB Pine Bluff dispatcher to engineer Lasher on CB 318 at Omaha, over.”
“This is engineer Lasher, go ahead, over.” (Cotton Belt radio culture was a lot more formal than it was on the Rock.)
“Engineer Lasher, can you have that train in Texarkana in an hour?”
Oops! This was a bit of a pickle. Since I had never been over the territory before, I had no experience to guide me. All I had was
“Engineer Lasher, can you have that train in Texarkana in an hour?”
the timetable that specified our maximum allowable speed and the distance to Texarkana, with no help as far as the lay of the land was concerned. A little quick mental math suggested it should be possible, so, with some tentative bravado (I figured when in Texas, do as the Texans do), I replied, “CB dispatcher Pine Bluff, sir, this is the first time I’ve ever seen this railroad, but if you’ll turn that signal in front of us green, I’ll die trying.”
In a few moments, the pot signal changed from its intimidating bright red “halt” to an “OK, let’s check you out” green, and the dispatcher came back on the radio.
“CB engineer Lasher, the signal is for you.”
Now, I can tell you, 90 percent of running a train is knowing the terrain and where you’re at and how you can expect the train to behave, so operating without that backup knowledge is uncomfortable in the extreme. But we made it to Texarkana exactly one hour later, and in one piece. I sure was grateful to step off that engine, though!
I can’t help but note at this point another, perhaps delicate, comparison. My conductor on this trip was Willie Magee, a black man. Now, I remember when the Rock Island hired the first black brakeman on the East Iowa in the mid-1970s. This was the heart of the Union and definitely north of the Mason-Dixon Line. But he was not warmly received and became sort of the Jackie Robinson of East Iowa trainmen. All sorts of ugliness came his way.
In contrast, black enginemen and trainmen had been a part of the Texas picture for years. On first thought, one might assume that it would be exactly the opposite. One usually argumentative Commerce trainman, Danny Kessler, always insisted I was a “damn Yankee.” When I pointed out that I was from Kentucky, his reply was “Yeah, but it ain’t south of the Red [River]!”
You couldn’t get anymore “South” than Texas, yet, in race relations on the railroad, the Texans were far ahead of their northern counterparts.
“DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN”
Less than six months after I hired out on the Cotton Belt, the recession of 1980 hit and whisked the covering of respect away, revealing that the SP/Cotton Belt had no clothes. In decimating almost all of SP’s major revenue generators — lumber, auto parts, and, the coup de gras, the already fading perishable business — the recession brought the SP/Cotton Belt to its knees, dealing it a blow from which it would never completely recover. It had no locked-in coal traffic base to help it through hard times. Gone were the multiple sections of all the trains, and the SSW’s train count dropped precipitously. Congestion disappeared overnight! As a consequence, several of the displaced Tyler enginemen exercised their seniority on Commerce jobs and helped lead to my first step down on the Cotton Belt.
The first move for me before being furloughed was being sent to Texarkana as a hostler for a several months during the hot, hot summer of 1980. It was like being forced from being an Indy car driver to a pump jockey. I was literally cleaning windshields.
Being at Texarkana wasn’t all bad. I discovered one of the greatest undiscovered comedic talents of all time in a guy named Klinkscale. Although I can’t remember his first name (I’m not sure I ever knew it), “Klink” had a down-home way that could have easily helped him hold forth at the Grand Ol’ Opry. The usual target of his “roast” was a switchman named Emmett.
Big Emmett, a former football lineman, had supposedly played for East Texas State at Commerce and had a tryout with the Green Bay Packers where, according to Klink, they had to paint a large L on top of one shoe and an R on the other so, when in his scrimmage set, Emmett would know which way to break.
Generally, Klink wouldn’t get
fired up good until the switch crew came into the shanty for beans and a game of dominoes. Before long everyone in the shanty was in tears laughing as Emmett threatened to chase Klink down and break his scrawny neck! Given Emmett’s size, that was distinctly possible. I was constantly grabbing a handful of paper towels to wipe away the tears as I struggled to catch my breath from laughing so hard.
Even the hostling jobs eventually came to an end, and a period of furlough ensued. The years 1981 and ’82 were not the greatest to be working for the Cotton Belt/SP. Business recovered somewhat, and SD40T-2s and GP38-2s that had been stored began to be seen on the road once more. In my opinion, these locomotives were EMD’s high-water mark. Unfortunately, I didn’t see much of them as my seniority only allowed hanging on by the hair of my chinny chin chin.
LIFE IN LUFKIN
It was a desperation move on my part. Lufkin, Texas, similar to Sherman, once had been served by a branch from Tyler. Cotton Belt had a small yard there. Eventually, Cotton Belt severed the branch and SP consolidated the yards. By agreement, the SSW engineers maintained rights to 25 percent of the yard assignments, meaning that for six months of the year, SSW engineers manned the afternoon yard job while the SP engineers kept the daylight job 12 months of the year and the afternoon job 6 months.
This was mainly an aggravation for the Tyler engineers. No one wanted to bid on the job as Lufkin was too far to be a reasonable drive from Tyler. The extra board men hated it as they would have to deadhead down and spend seven days on a low-paying switch engine before being relieved. So, the Lufkin job was unloved and unwanted by everyone but me. To me, it was a lifesaver. By agreement, there was an option when bidding on the job of working 21 days straight with 5 days off, which is what I did, as it was about a twohour-plus drive from my home in Greenville, Texas.
The SP yard office in Lufkin proved reasonably easy to find. Parked in front was one of SP’s legion of GP9s, most of which by this time had been through the rebuild program. I can’t say that these Geeps were my favorite engines to switch with. Most of them had their “switch/run” toggle switch on the throttle drums disconnected and ranged anywhere from reasonably to aggravatingly slow to respond to the throttle. They were so-so stoppers — any engine used in switching service that couldn’t stop what it could get moving was an item to be wary of. Their ratchet-type handbrakes at the end of the long hood could wear you out, and since the SP was strict about “securing” an engine you couldn’t avoid them. But in the entire time I spent at Lufkin, GP9s were the only engines we had.
On day one, however, we suddenly had our yard switching cut short by instructions to go out and dog-catch a hog-lawed “Rabbit” train north of town. The agreements allowed the yard job to go up to 15 miles or so outside normal yard limits to relieve hours-of-service-expired crews, a not-uncommon task for the Lufkin switchers, as it turned out. We drove out in the company carryall, and I couldn’t help but notice how dark it was driving through the piney woods to get there. The pine tops effectively cut off what little starlight or moonlight might have gotten through. It was black in there.
When we got to the crossing where the train was waiting, what was evident was a four- or fiveacre area devoid of trees. Heavy ruts and bulldozer tracks, along with a few odd freight-car parts, told one that a derailment had occurred here. On closer inspection you could see that trees on the perimeter were scorched and blown down. I was told that one of the chemical trains out of Houston (SRASK, Strang Yard to the Alton & Southern at East St. Louis) had derailed there. It seems that after the train had gone into emergency, the engineer and head brakeman
looked back and saw flames and decided to vacate the area. As they ran along the track, an explosion occurred that knocked both of them down and scorched the hair on the backs of their heads. One had to give the chemical trains the respect they demanded. They sure were effective at clearing out pine trees.
It was in Lufkin that I experienced two of Texas’s less than charming notables. One was fire ants and the other was a classic “Blue Norther.” I made the mistake of poking a fire ant mound in the city park where I usually walked daily. I can’t speak to cats, but curiosity surely didn’t pay off when it came to fire ants. I somehow got one on the knuckle of my left thumb and the sting was memorable, like a cross between a wasp sting and a mosquito bite raised to the fourth power. Needless to say, I decided to never do that again!
“Blue Norther” is Texas-ese for a fast-moving winter cold front. My first experience was late one evening on the Lufkin job. We knew it was coming and were trying to get done before it hit, but it caught us while we were in the middle of our last task of the evening, switching the Lufkin Foundry at the south edge of town. Earlier, the afternoon had been pleasant, around 60 degrees, and all I had on was a light jacket. The switchmen were similarly clad, so when the wind started kicking up — blowing dust and trash down the parallel street, the thermometer dropping alarmingly — we were all caught, perhaps with our pants not down but definitely too thin. In the blink of an eye, the temperature went from the high 50s to the mid-30s with a substantial wind chill. We all about froze before we finished and tied up.
The Lufkin job wasn’t a particularly bad one; it was just a bit of a drag being away from home for three weeks at a time. However, it ended when the six months of the Cotton Belt engineers’ time ended. I wound up floating from job to job as a fireman and being furloughed. A ray of sun came with the move of business from the Corsicana-SP route to the ex-Rock Island Kansas City–Tucumcari line. Being furloughed for a couple of months ahead of the move helped get us in the right frame of mind. Our available choices were Dalhart, Texas, or Pratt, Kans. Bill and I opted for Pratt. We headed there in early 1983.
HOME AGAIN . . . SORT OF
I can’t say the indigenous Rock Island people received us warmly. They had endured the arduous and endless work trains and all the attendant inconveniences that went with rebuilding the railroad from the ground up. With some justification, they viewed us as interlopers, although we didn’t hurt them, as we did have to dovetail in behind them on the seniority roster. It wasn’t quite as bad for Bill and me as it was for the few men that had come from Pine Bluff; at least
One had to give the chemical trains the respect they demanded. They sure were effective at clearing out pine trees.
we knew some people in common from our Rock Island days and had considerable road experience.
The Pine Bluff men, in contrast, had been furloughed soon after their promotions and had little road experience and, even then, little exposure to using the automatic air brake, as use of it was strongly discouraged on the original Cotton Belt. Most of the Cotton Belt had been brought up using the dynamic brake and were lost without it. The problem was, sometimes it didn’t work. But, apparently, the thought of turning these hot trains over to the com
paratively inexperienced Pine Bluff boys gave the company pause. They assigned an SP road foreman who had to ride with all us foreigners before we were allowed to mark up on the extra board.
This, for the most part, was my kind of railroading. Get on at Pratt, go like hell, and get off at either Herrington or Liberal. The portions of either line with welded rail were good for 70 mph, while the jointed rail was good for 60. The jointed rail was noticeably rougher. Although it had been retied and resurfaced, jointed rail develops a “memory” and the bent rail joints didn’t automatically forgive the lack of maintenance they had with the Rock. In general, though, it was haul-ass railroading. It was the only place I ever “tripled” the road, going from Pratt to Herrington, back to Pratt, and, after a box lunch, back to Herrington, making it comfortably under the hours-of-service in about 9 or 10 hours.
Coming east one night, we hit the 70-mph welded rail around Bucklin and, since coming eastward across Kansas is mostly downhill, we were up to the 70-mph speed limit in no time. Kansas Route 54 parallels the railroad almost all the way from Pratt to Liberal, and in some places is within easy sight south of the railroad. Kansas 54 is only two lanes, but it is a main route for that part of the country. As we bored east with our Pyle Gyralight swinging and us blowing for the country crossings, we began to catch and pass a semi truck. We got even with him and he noticed us, apparently offended, and with a “honk, honk” on his horn and a puff of black smoke from his dual exhausts, he stepped on it and pulled away. Five or six miles down the road a Kansas state trooper had him pulled over and was in the process of giving him a ticket. Of course, we saluted him with our Nathan 3-chime as we passed . . . at a steady 72 mph!
We saluted him with our Nathan 3-chime as we passed . . . at a steady 72 mph!
HOME AGAIN
For all practical purposes, Pratt is in the middle of nowhere. It was 75 miles of the longest miles in the world to Wichita, which was the closest town of any
size. Additionally, housing in Pratt was scarce and expensive, so I didn’t see myself moving there. A call to Miss Billy sealed the deal.
“You ready to come home
Steve Lasher?” she asked, in her Texas lilt.
“Yea, I am, Miss Billy. Can I hold anything at Commerce?”
“There is a pool turn with Ronnie Blair vacant. He went to Hodge on 17 last night,” she replied.
“Mark me up on it and I’ll catch him next time out.”
“OK, Steve Lasher” (I don’t know why, but she usually used my full name).
“Thank you, Miss Billy.”
Thus ended my booming days, as I worked jobs out of Commerce until leaving the railroad in 1987. Some experiences were good, some bad, and some just work, but I was and am proud to be a Cotton Belt “Fiddler.”
STEVE LASHER, who wrote about his late-1970s Rock Island and Burlington Northern in Winter 2013 and Spring 2017 Classic Trains, grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, then moved to Kentucky where he graduated from Murray State University in 1973. He took a Cotton Belt buyout in 1987 and moved to Louisville, where he retired as a Registered Nurse. He and wife Bonnie live close by in Indiana. His friend Bill Bosley recently retired from Union Pacific number one in seniority at Pratt, Kans., on the former Rock Island.