21 Years On The Erie Railroad

The very heavy snow fall we here in Pennsylvania had this past week-end reminds me of my first winter spent on the railroad. On December 12, 1944, snow began to fall about noon. I was still in high school, so it was no big deal to a high school student, except that visions of snow days crossed my mind.
When I went to work at 5:30 the next morning, there was 8 inches of heavy snow on the ground, and this snow continued until we had 21 inches of the stuff. School was cancelled, of course, since the buses couldn't run. That meant that I and my student buddy could work full time on the railroad until school re-started in a few days.
That was the day of railroad passenger trains, and the Erie had 6 of them daily, 3 eastbound and 3 westbound, plus 2 more that carried mail and express only, 1 eastbound and 1 westbound. There was a long (about 100 yards) black-top platform along side of the main track, where the passengers detrained. This platform had to be clean of snow and ice, which was our job during the blizzard. I can remember starting to shovel at the Main Street crossing, work east to the end of the platform, shoulder my shovel, walk back to the Main Street crossing, and start all over again.
Due to the heavy wide-spread snowfall, the New York Central Railroad, which at that time ran from New York City to Chicago, right along the Great Lakes, had to detour their main-line west-bound passenger trains from Buffalo, New York to Cleveland, Ohio over the Erie. We were amazed and excited to see the legendary trains of the Central; The Empire State Express, The 20th Century Limited, and others passing our station. I can remember the wonderful whistles of the New York Central steam engines, especially the 4-6-4 Hudson types. I think that the Central also had the new 4-8-4 Niagaras in stock, but am not sure. I also remember some of the Central freight trains also being detoured over the Erie, since this was war-time, and the freight had to be moved.
It was a three-day school vacation for my buddy and me. It was hard work, but pleasant.
A result of this snowfall was that Main Street of our little town developed two ruts in the heavy snow, since we didn't have any snow-clearing equipment to handle such a large snowfall. The standing joke at that time was that a stranger, finding his way into town, would ask "Which rut do I take to get out of this place?" That was more truth than fiction, since the ruts grew larger by the day, and if you didn't stay in your rut, you didn't go anywhere.
As I have mentioned before, Camp Reynolds was just a few miles down the road from our town. In, I believe, March of 1945, an engineer company stationed at the camp brought in its equipment, which included power shovels, bulldozers, etc., along with high-pressure water hoses, and cleaned up Main Street. We hadn't really seen the pavement since December 12 of 1944.

21 Years On The Erie Railroad

I do believe that railroaders are some of the finest story-tellers on earth. Railroading was an exciting occupation, sometimes dangerous, sometimes humorous, but always interesting.

An old-time Railway Express man once told be this one, and he swore at the time that it was true. Names have been eliminated to protect any remaining relatives.

This story happened around the time of World War I. There is a small town just a few miles west of Greenville, PA named Shenango. Shenango at that time was a very busy place; in fact, it was busier than its larger neighbor Greenville. The main reason for this was that Shenango was a railroad hub. The Erie Railroad, the Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Railroad all entered Shenango, and shared a large passenger station there.

The station agent at Shenango was, to put it mildly, not a very nice person. At the time of this story there were many immigrants moving through the area on the various passenger trains of the three railroads. All the trains stopped at Shenango to discharge or pick up passengers, and the station agent had a little business going on the side. He would brew up a large batch of tea, pour this tea into beverage bottles, jam corks deep into the necks of the bottles, and sell the tea as beer to the passengers passing through. He made sure that he didn't sell to any of the passengers that were going to spend some time at the station; just to the ones who might get off to stretch or pick up some tobacco, etc. By the time the unfortunates discovered that the beer had turned into tea, the trains were on their ways to Chicago or Jersey City or Pittsburgh.

The station agent was not very well-liked by anyone, due to his temper and self-importance. My friend, the story-teller, and a friend of his once got even with the agent. They had unloaded a calf in a large crate from one of the late evening trains just after the station had closed for the night. The crate was open on one end, with just some wire keeping the calf from escaping through that end. The two men parked the baggage truck containing the calf and the crate in front of the agent's office door, with the open end right next to the door, locked the wheels of the baggage truck, and went home after a hard day's labors. On arriving at work the next morning, the agent was greeted by the crate, the calf, and a large pile of manure.