When I was a youngster, relatives knowing of my interest in Trains (I already had the classic Trains Tracks and Travel) gave me a wonderful hard-cover book, an autobiography of a DL&W engineer, whose railroad career spanned the time from before the introduction of air-brakes and the automatic coupler to the classic days of steam and heavyweight limiteds. At the time he wrote the book, probably the early '30’s, he was still a regular engineer on the Lackawanna Limited. The book could be compared with Doug Riddell’s “From the Cab” in many ways, and it gave a wonderful human interest and behind the scene’s view of the railroad industry. Do you know that during much of this period, a second section of freight or passenger train could get an order to simply follow the marker lights of a first section without signal protection? The author describes such a trip in a nearly blinding snow storm. Presumably, if the first section had to make an emergency stop, the rear brakeman would throw a lighted fusee off the back platform of the caboose or rear coach. I still recall his desription of the Lackawanna’s Utica, NY, branch, where he fired and ran for much of his career, and of Utica’s Schyler Street, and the Grover Cleveland - Harrison election campaigns, and a chartered train, and the descriptions of a few of his firemen. I have not had the book for a long time. Has anybody else read this book or have it?
Excepts would be wonderful material for either Trains or Classic Trains. I would have also posted this on the Classic Trains forum, but Kalmbach has not yet received my renewal check, and I just got the issue telling me it is time to review.
Regarding the railroad “tailgating” refered to earlier, of course dispatchers did use common sense. I light engine move or