For all you Railroad buffs, I want to tell you some of my memories. My dad spent 30 years on the railroad, he had businesses and other jobs but he couldnt leave, he loved the click of the rails. Riding a freight on the engine from Salamanca to Buffalo or Punxy in my little engineers suit. Driving the train, put it in notch number eight so we can make some time. Sleeping in the boiler car to keep warm on the floor. Riding in the caboose [kind of hiding] to New York to see the Yankees play. Going by the dirty movies in Limestone or Batavia on the drive in and my dad telling us to close our eyes or look away. Train wrecks, I remember one in Limestone when the government and Railroad cops came and buried three box cars of Winchester rifles with bulldozers to prevent theft. Most derailments, there was the railroad hot line [no cell phones then]. The guys had about an hour until the Railroad cops showed up and everyone came quick, toilet paper, lettuce, soup, etc. all loaded up and gone. I remember one winter when times were tough we had 12 cases of Campbells vegetable soup in the garage. We ate it until it came out our ears. We boys used to open a can, put it on the gas burner and heat it up, no water, salty as hell but good. Cowboy soup we called it. All the Salamanca railroad men had farms, they would sweep out the corn and grain cars and put it in Burlap sacks and take it home to feed the animals. Occasionally somebody might show up with one of those old large hand drills and cut a hole in the bottom of the car and then cork it . All these guys are dead so I am just talking history. I can tell you some more very interesting stories. I remember my dad being stuck in a blizzard in Wyoming County. They had a hot box a brake that froze. The snow was up to the top of the cars. They called my mom and said they couldnt find him but he had crawled under the cars and was okay. I have so many great stories about the railroad.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 21:03:41 +0000