Railroad Series: Chapter 1

In order to tell the story of working on the Railroad back in the 1970’s, the best place to start is with an overview of the organization. Things have changed since then and the SP Company no longer exists and many of the places have changed but the memories are still there. The human characters will come later but the real stars are the trains and tracks and the people only make sense when the big picture in the background is clear.

The entire Southern Pacific System stretched from Washington State clear down the coast to LA and then all the way over to Texas. The System was divided into several Regions and they in turn were broken into Divisions and Districts which put me in the Eastern District of the Oregon Division of the Western Region. Within that Eastern District we had Sections of track connecting the various Stations along the right of way. And every mile along the way was a Mile Post telling how far it is back to San Francisco. We lived at Fields Station, Mile Post 542.

The Work Force is composed of Departments according to their responsibility. Trainmen get to ride the rails but they are away from home the most. Carmen are home every night and rarely leave the roundhouse except for derailments. There are departments for everything from Welders to Mechanics, and Electricians. There are special Departments for Signal Maintainers, Machine Operator Trainers and Curve Lubricator Maintainers. There is a special high risk Department called Bridge and Building which also includes tunnels. I was in the biggest department of all called Maintenance of Way.

The Maintenance of Way department has various gangs the most common being the Section gang with 5 men responsible for every 5 miles of track. There were other seasonal gangs that only worked during the good weather months from May to October. There was the Steel Gang to replace the rails followed by the Tie Gang replacing the bad ties. If the Tie Gang went first you would end up pulling spikes on new ties which was no fun. Last in line is the Surfacing Gang that cleans everything up.

There are System Gangs that have to go the whole distance doing odd jobs like “Rail Grinding” with a big long grinder famous for starting fires. There was the System “Brush Cutter” that cut all the vegetation on both sides of the track up to 30 feet out along the right of way. Then there was the Rail-Car which was a big X-Ray machine running down the tracks looking for internal flaws. The biggest system gang replaced everything all at once using a single monstrous "Track Replacement" train.

Each Gang has its own set of machines unique to the job at hand. That is the next Chapter in the Railroad series.