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To add to Karls story of "borrowing" a pad to start a fire. I spent a good portion of yesterday and last night with an old friend and customer,Danny Gabriel of Trinity Industries in Dallas. Bear with me as there's an interesting tie in here to Karls story about taking a journal pad to start a fire in the Congos w/c stove.
Danny and I were at dinner last night telling one old BN story after another as he and I hired out about the same time. He in Galesburg and me at Aurora. As many others,he wanted to go into train service but when he took the medical exam he learned he was color blind. The company Dr. told him the mechanical dept was hiring . Long story, short he not only got hired but rose thru the ranks of carman,foreman,general foreman,wrecker foreman,mechanical supt and ended his career in Ft Worth arguing FRA fines. (That must have been a really fun position). He then moved onto Trinity where I met him 7 years ago. He will retire shortly and move back to the Galesburg area, I have a semi promise from him to attend the fall meet at Mendota.
I related Karl's story about the brakeman on the Congo stealing the journal pad and he immediately went into the following story. The car inspectors in Galesburg would work an inbound train and then seek shelter in one of the wood shantys scattered around the yard until the next inbound train arrived. One car inspector upon finding no material available to start a fire in the shantys' stove would take his packing hook and go to a string of cars and remove a journal pad and toss it into the stove for fuel to get some heat going. He would accurately fill out a bad report for the car with the missing pad so it went to the rip for repair. Meantime he was toasty warm as the oil in pad would get a nice hot fire going to the extent that the stove pipe would get red hot up through the roof of the shanty. His downfall was that he did this on a regular basis and was soon an ex employee.
Leo Phillipp
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