Start on PDF page 9, text page 6. It’s a great oral history of the C&IM/CP&St.L. The racial stuff is ugly, but real for the time. It’s a minor part of the story.
Done by the University of Illinois - a midwest history tale.
Oral histories can be a wealth of information for the researcher.
The railroad part sure gives an up close view into the rough and tumble nature of the business. Everything seems so down-to-earth practical, including the personalities. I like how they did all the coal loading and ash handling with shovels—shovel the coal right out of gondolas and into the tenders. I thought it was interesting that he always refers to the locomotives only by their cylinder diameters like, number such and such is a seventeen-inch engine. What is a birch loader? He uses that term also as a general classification for engines.
This oral account reminds me of Brownie the Boomer, an autobiography of Charles P. Brown edited by H. Roger Grant.