Last Train to Texas

Fred W. Frailey

Description

Midnight train rides, head-on freight collisions—there is never a dull moment when it comes to trains. Take a look at America's biggest railroads and meet the thunderous personalities who operate them.

In Last Train to Texas, author Fred W. Frailey examines the workings behind the railroad industry and captures incredible true stories along the way. Discover how men like William "Pisser Bill" F. Thompson swerve from financial ruin, bad merger deals, and cutthroat competition, all while racking up enough notoriety to inspire a poem titled "Ode to a Jerk." Bold, savvy, and ready for a friendly brawl, the only thing louder and more thrilling than these men are the trains that they handle. Come along with Frailey as he travels the world, one railroad at a time. Whether it's riding the Canadian Pacific Railway through a blizzard, witnessing a container train burglary in the Abo Canyon, or commemorating a poem to Limerick Junction in Dublin, Ireland, Frailey's journeys are rife with excitement and the occasional mishap.

Filled with humorous anecdotes and thoughtful insights into the railroading industry, Last Train to Texas is an adventure in every sense of the word.

Foreword by Thomas G. Hoback

Part I: Running the Railroads

1. President Carter to the Rescue

2. The Man You Never Wanted to Cross

3. Watch Rob Run

4. Thinking Outside the Container

5. The World According to Mcclellan

6. The Saga of 'Pisser Bill'

7. A Man in Full

8. Mike Haverty's Long Shadow

9. How to Go Boots Up in Railroading

10. The Battles of Powder River

11. When Lou Menk Saved a Zephyr

12. Inside the Mind of Michael Ward

13. The Legacy of Hunter Harrison

14. A Battle for Supremacy in the West

Part II: Travels around Trains

15. The Cocoon of a Long-Distance Train

16. No Place for Man or Beast . . . or Train

17. The Ladies from Cork Are Aghast

18. Crossing the Country in a Blur

19. Ode to a Coach Yard

20. By Train to the End of the Earth

21. Pencil-Whipping Train 101

22. I Plead the Fifth

23. My Prestigious Experience

24. The Late, Late Train

25. The Train to Cordoba

26. You Gotta Love the Soo Line

27. New York City, Then

28. New York City, Now

29. Best Little Railroad in Effingham

30. Last Train to Texas

31. Railroading in a Fiery Furnace

32. Night Train to Nowhere

Part III: Kicking the Train Down the Tracks

33. Miss Katy's Funny Pieces of Paper

34. Moments I'd Rather Forget

35. The Timeless Clovis Sub

36. What's the Matter with Florida?

37. The Brain Drain

38. A Little Drawbridge that Couldn't

39. That Commodore Vanderbilt Feeling

40. The Ageless World of Stan Kistler

41. Saturday Night Fever

42. Who Really Saved Illinois Central

43. Why You May Yet Read by Candlelight

44. 14th Street at Night

45. The Wreck of Old 54

46. The Mother of All Traffic Jams

Sujets

• América
• Railfan
• General officer
• Engineer
• Rail transport
• Chemin de fer
• Business
• General
• American
• History
• Transcontinental
• Locomotive

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 04 février 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• EAN13: 9780253045263
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2020 by Fred Frailey
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Frailey, Fred W., author.
Title: Last train to Texas : my railroad odyssey / Fred W. Frailey.
Other titles: Railroads past and present.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2020. | Series: Railroads past and present
Identifiers: LCCN 2019033925 (print) | LCCN 2019033926 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253045249 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253045270 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Frailey, Fred W.-Travel. | Railroad travel-Anecdotes.
Classification: LCC HE1038.F73 L388 2020 (print) | LCC HE1038.F73 (ebook) | DDC 385.0973-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033925
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033926
1 2 3 4 5 25 24 23 22 21 20
CONTENTS
Foreword by Thomas G. Hoback
Introduction
PART 1: RUNNING THE RAILROADS
1. President Carter to the Rescue
2. The Man You Never Wanted to Cross
3. Watch Rob Run
4. Thinking Outside the Container
5. The World According to McClellan
6. The Saga of Pisser Bill
7. A Man in Full
8. Mike Haverty s Long Shadow
9. How to Go Boots Up in Railroading
10. The Battles of Powder River
11. When Lou Menk Saved a Zephyr
12. Inside the Mind of Michael Ward
13. The Legacy of Hunter Harrison
14. A Battle for Supremacy in the West
PART 2: TRAVELS AROUND TRAINS
15. The Cocoon of a Long-Distance Train
16. No Place for Man or Beast . . . or Train
17. The Ladies from Cork Are Aghast
18. Crossing the Country in a Blur
19. Ode to a Coach Yard
20. By Train to the End of the Earth
21. Pencil-Whipping Train 101
22. I Plead the Fifth
23. My Prestigious Experience
24. The Late, Late Train
25. The Train to Cordoba
26. You Gotta Love the Soo Line
27. New York City, Then
28. New York City, Now
29. Best Little Railroad in Effingham
30. Last Train to Texas
31. Railroading in a Fiery Furnace
32. Night Train to Nowhere
PART 3: KICKING THE TRAIN DOWN THE TRACKS
33. Miss Katy s Funny Pieces of Paper
34. Moments I d Rather Forget
35. The Timeless Clovis Sub
36. What s the Matter with Florida?
37. The Brain Drain
38. A Little Drawbridge That Couldn t
39. That Commodore Vanderbilt Feeling
40. The Ageless World of Stan Kistler
41. Saturday Night Fever
42. Who Really Saved Illinois Central
43. Why You May Yet Read by Candlelight
44. 14th Street at Night
45. The Wreck of Old 54
46. The Mother of All Traffic Jams
Index
FOREWORD
FRED FRAILEY AND RAILROADS HAVE been inextricably linked for more than 40 years-60 if you count his apprenticeship hanging around railroad depots and yards as a youngster. It s a good thing, too, because for those of us who love this industry, Fred has been a constant source of in- depth analysis, insight, and stories about the people who make our business work, all of which have served to illuminate so much of the change we ve seen during his tenure as a writer.
Railroads are a big business, requiring enormous sums of capital (frequently as much as 18-20 percent or so of annual revenue). They use huge locomotives and rolling stock that move over vast distances to do the jobs for which they re required, and they demand extremely skilled professionals to move the trains over the road and to manage the far-flung systems. Making these systems work well is a big job.
Fred has brought together a unique set of skills and talent to keep us, his readers, abreast of the latest changes in the industry. In addition to the sheer size of the industry, it is continually changing, evolving, and redefining itself, often in response to changing regulations, management whims, and market conditions. Fred has been at the forefront of allowing his readers to follow and even to anticipate changes, through his articles, columns, and blogs.
In some ways, though, Fred Frailey is a bit of an enigma. For many of us who grew up in and around the industry, our dream was to work for a railroad and bring energy, vision, and passion into our chosen line of work. Fred, on the other hand, while showing an early passion for railroading, was also influenced by his father, a newspaperman in the old tradition of being ready to find the big story, ask hard and probing questions, and then take his efforts to the public in his own writing style. In that respect, Fred is the proverbial chip off the old block. He has effectively married his passion for railroads and his considerable writing gifts to become one of the United States foremost railroad storytellers.
Since Fred began his professional writing career, he observed dramatic changes in the industry, including the passage of the landmark Staggers Act and the creation of Conrail at a time when many observers believed eastern railroads could have been nationalized. He also had the advantage of growing up in the pre-Amtrak era and observed the creation of Amtrak for contrast.
Fred was able to meet and then later get close on a personal level with many of the influential leaders who were instrumental in not only saving the industry as we know it today but then reinvigorating it. For instance, his chapter about the late Jim McClellan ( The World According to McClellan ) is on point. McClellan was one of the true visionaries that helped create Conrail and then returned for round two by engineering the subsequent break-up of Conrail, which became parts of Norfolk Southern and CSX respectively. Fred was masterful at distilling from a speech McClellan delivered the pungent conclusions that the speaker reached about the realities of railroading in the twenty-first century.
As a journalist with a natural inquisitiveness, Frailey is quick to pose good and often hard questions in an effort to get below the surface and ask why. This skill takes us places other writers cannot. For example, Fred s interview with Rob Krebs ( Watch Rob Run ) is remarkable for its insight into why the proposed Burlington Northern Santa Fe-Canadian National (BNSF-CN) merger died stillborn, how Krebs was able to meld two entrenched senior managements from two organizations with vastly different philosophies into one with his merger of Santa Fe and Burlington Northern, and how events in Krebs s personal life affected his own management style.
There were countless articles and columns written by many financial writers and others about the BNSF merger, its integration, and then the failed BNSF-CN merger (which would have been a stroke of genius had the merger gone through). No other writer had the sheer force of will or the ability to delve through the merger s many complexities to get to the heart of the matter. Fred used his natural inquisitiveness to take us behind the scenes to understand why certain decisions were made. He gets us behind the person in the blue suit to understand what makes the individual tick. What other writer could have encouraged Rob Krebs to speak so candidly about his son, Duncan? It also was a measure of the man himself, Krebs, who was so open and genuine with Fred. Fred has a way of having that effect on people who know and trust him.
Likewise, Fred s chapter on Mike Haverty ( Mike Haverty s Long Shadow ) is a glimpse into the man who many consider to be a genius by not only having big ideas that bring new revenue into the railroad sphere but by implementing them. As Fred so candidly points out in this piece, Mike was among the last of the breed of class 1 CEOs to come from the operating ranks. (Mike began his career as a brakeman.) The industry is in desperate need of the next Mike Haverty and Rob Krebs.
More than just analyzing railroads and their operations, Fred also enjoys riding trains. His philosophy of having no concerns about how late his train may be is a testament to his unbridled enthusiasm for just being able to live in the moment.
I met Fred at a small reception in Chicago of senior railroad officials more than a decade ago, and I found him to be one of those rare, larger-than-life figures. We got into a conversation about railroads and other worldly matters, and that conversation has been going on ever since. As a youth, I grew up greatly admiring and being influenced by the writing of David P. Morgan, who stood alone among writers of the day and who made Trains magazine The Magazine of Railroading. Today s readers of Trains have Fred Frailey as that lens into the railroad industry and reflect what he sees and so carefully observes.
All of us are fortunate that Fred decided to follow in his dad s footsteps to become a journalist and not a railroader. Oh, Fred would have been good at anything he might have tried, including being a railroader. Who knows, he might have been the original E. Hunter Harrison with new and innovative train operations before the world heard of E. H. H. Had Fred gone that route, though, it would have been our