Jack-
I started working in the Illinois Bell Suburban Building Engineering department at 225 West Randolph Street in 1968.
While it was a different industry it was very similar in practices and procedures and corporate culture to the railroads. There was still such a thing as “A Company Man” and many people put the job at hand first and were rewarded for competence.
I think the Friden machine you picture was called a “comptrometer” in our office and a guy named Ray was the only one who knew how to drive it. He was our in-house liaison with the accounting department and he was the keeper of all the capital, expense and repair figures that went into authorizations at various levels of approval for building projects.
In 1972 we moved to Bolingbrook and I started a round-robin Model Railroad club and one of the members was in the BN operations department. When he got transferred to the Black Hills region I got a phone number that I could call locally that plugged into the BN in-house system so we could talk on the BN’s dime.
My first exposure to computers was at the Bell System Center for Technical Education at Lisle. Access to mainframe computer was through a teletype machine that you would program your cost study off-line using teletype punch tape and you had to type in all the data each time until the computer would accept the tape data. Not a very good interface!! We also could play “Adventure” on it where the greasy troll would tell you that you didn’t have the weapon you needed….in frustration, you would cuss at it (typing in the responses) and it would, after investing several hours of play, come back and say “Tsk, Tsk!! Such Language!!! Goodbye!!!” and kick you out of the game and disconnect you!
Charlie Vlk
As a side note….where do you think the Tariffs for Commuter Service might be archived? It might be the place to get dates for establishment and discontinuance of suburban stops. Some established stops don’t show up on timetables but were made official flag stops by filing ticket price tariffs.
From: CBQ@groups.io <CBQ@groups.io> On Behalf Of Jack Schroeder
Sent: Friday, December 4, 2020 2:02 PM
To: CBQ@groups.io
Subject: Re: [CBQ] 547 West Jackson Boulevard
Tom:
I worked on the 8th floor of the white marble HQ in Chicago from June 1969 until March of 1970. I remember on my first day. I was handed a small stone and a dust rag. I was told that the rock was to keep the papers on my desk from blowing off when the windows were open, esp on a windy day. The rag was to wipe the soot off of my desk that blew in from the windows. I also remember the oak toilet seats and old wooden stalls! Some people I remember were Don Lamb, Al Rung, Ivan Ethington, Gene Carven, Gene Lacy, Roger Sperry, Art Pew and a many others.
There were two phones on the floor of our Costs and Statistics office. One shared by seven of us, and one used by the office manager. When we needed to talk to someone in Fort Worth, we contacted the operator and ask for a line to Fort Worth. When a line opened up, she would ring us back with the Fort Worth connection. We didn't have paper staplers, we had pins for bind pages together. The were cheaper then staplers. My 'in basket' was full of capital budget requests with supporting papers all 'pined' together. It was a daily thing getting badly stuck by a pin.
I also remember eating a Lou Mitchel's restaurant about a block west on Jackson. We made a visit there about two or three times a week. When the line to enter started to get long Lou, who always stood just inside the entrance, would shout to the customers "Don't any of you folks need to get back to work?".
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I had a great big Friden calculator on my disk that I had to learn to use. Making it divide was a special feat! Another memory was when I needed to get the freight rate for a shipment. I went down to the 7th floor marketing, (I believe it was the 7th), and ask a man at the rate desk for the price. He opened up a document, make a note from it, then another and then a third rate document. He wrote down the rate $ 1.54. I was shocked that it took that much work to just get a rate. I was more shocked at the rate! "Oh that is per hundred rate" he said. I returned to the 8th floor asked what a 'per hundred rate' was and then told my story to my co-workers about needed three documents to get a rate. I pronounced that I was never going get near freight rates again as long as I worked for the RR. It was the computerization of railroad freight rates and rate distribution systems that was the core of my railroad work for the last 25+ years of my career. And I loved it.
Jack Schroeder
Hurst, TX
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