Tape # T-5-118

Working for the Railroad

Albert G. Roth, his mother, Mrs. Roth

October 16, 1978

Interviewers: Jerrold Gustafson

Cecilia Jankowski

Working On The Railroad

Gustafson: I'm just going to...

Mrs. Roth: He worked on various railroads all his life, that's his favorite

Gustafson: see if this is...

Roth: Stock, trade

Jankowski: It looks like (undecipherable).

Roth: It's like I said, right at the end of the steam period, and it was on the Pennsylvania and Seashore Lines, exact dates I can't remember because some of it was (undecipherable) possible, well lets go back to a little bit before steam which started with the street car era. this was when the trolleys were running around. I was about 15 and this was during World War I. This was about the time the war was getting a good start. And a, I knew this conductor, motorman on the trolley system in Philadelphia and he taught me everything there was to know about running a streetcar. So the Chester Short Line, which was part of the PTC, was startin to get hard up for help. It went down the Sunset Building, the Drydock Building, Westinghouse and several other big industrial plants along the line. So he said why don't you try to operate a trolley. I'm pretty sure they'll take you. He said you're big for your age. Lie to em a little bit. Maybe we shouldn't have that on there, but anyhow that's what I did. I went down there and said I was seventeen. And they said well, we can't use you for a conductor, but we can use you for a motorman if you can handle the cars. So they promptly took me out to the car barn and we took one of the big double winders around the barn a couple of times Didn't run any red lights, didn't hit any pedestrians and I had the job just like that. There was no filling out applications and stuff like you do for a job nowadays. So I wound up on a nightliner, and that's a car that runs oh from late evening to early morning hours and my run was from Third and Market Street in Chester to 87th Street in the Eastwick Swamps just outside of Philadelphia where a PTC man would take over and take the car into Philadelphia. I'd get off the car that I took in, bring the other car back. There was a, three of us nightliners on the line. So that lasted, oh, a good 2 1/2 years, and a, just prior to the demise of the line. And what happened was, one of my counterparts met a tractor trailer head on over Plumcrick Bridge. Fortunately, everybody got off the car. They had the presence of mind to open all the doors and people fled but the tank, the gas tank on the truck exploded. Completely destroyed the trolley, the bridge, the truck, everything. That was the end of the trolley line. Fortunately, I was down at Third and Market Street when that happened. I had just gone into the city of Chester and was on my supper period like I got stranded in the home port so to speak. But the other car got stranded up in Philadelphia. Well, PTC took over the whole thing shortly thereafter, and they started investigating everybody that was running cars and they found out about my age so come back when you're 21. Well, I never did cause from there I went to a news butcher on the Pennsylvania Reading Seashore Lines. And, that was kind of a sad story too. It was fun, selling newspapers, magazines, salt water taffy, sandwiches, soda pop, stuff like that to peoples on the shore. And the trains to the shore in them days were steam powered and they ran just like a rapid transit line in Chicago. You know like the elevated train, every five minutes so to speak. That's how heavily they were traveled. Fourteen cars was the average of the train. So I had a train to Wildwood and a, late in the summer. And we worked just the one season as a news butcher on there, but we had a mixture of Pennsylvania P-70 cars, which had the diaphragms between the cars. That's that rubber bumper plate that you see.

Gustafson: Oh right.

Roth: And old running commuter coaches were, was steel cars, they only had chains between the cars. And if the train had a slack in it when it took, if you wasn't holdin on it would throw you. Well, unfortunately this was a Sunday we were packed to the gills. There was standing room only. And a, I was working the Ocean City cars, which happened to be this running equipment. And I had one PRSL car and then the running equipment to go through. So we got down to, oh lets see, it was North Philadelphia, Frankford Junction, Hadenfield, we left Hadenfield New Jersey and a, I got back into the running equipment and I didn't see the flagman anywhere on the train cause I could see back through the cars, we were on a straight track there. So I went up to Mr. Thomas which was a conductor on the train and I said Jack do you know we don't have a flagman on this train. He says, we what? I said, you don't have a flagman on this train. He said well we sure do, he gave me the highball from the rear end at North Philadelphia when we stopped there. I said, well he's not on the train now. And he said somethin's wrong. He says do you know how to collect tickets? I said sure. He says here's an extra ticket punch. Go back there and start lifting those tickets cause these cars will be cut off in about 30 minutes at Tuckahoe New Jersey. So I got all the tickets on there and a, he went into the station when we got to Tuckahoe and he called back. And here, we found out when we left the station, the lurch of the train threw him between the last car and the car just ahead of it and we ran over him on there.

It was really tragic. And that's how I got into train service. So I worked it the rest of the summer and then three summers thereafter. But I got laid off every winter because it was only a summertime only railroad so to speak and the guys with the whiskers a mile long held on to the winter runs but there was um oh about five runs I would say. Well, in this category yet while working in train service there was a funny experience. This was a, the second year that I was working there. We operated out of the old Broad Street Station in Philadelphia. We were on Track Thirteen and the New York Express was on Track Twelve and there was a platform between the two tracks. Well, the station master come running over and said hold your train we've got some people for you and he also give the same message to the New York train. Even coming by bus to make the connection, in those days the railroads waited for you. They didn't, you know, look at their stopwatch and peep peep and go. But I had all my signs down, cause a, we had Ocean City, Wildwood and Cape May. Our train was in three sections. As it went down the track we cut off cars, you know, we split (undecipherable) destinations. So I had my signs down, but I'm standing at the rear of my car. And a, the flagman for the New York train is standing at the rear of his train. And I'm saying Ocean City, Wildwood Cape May, please enter here and walk to your proper cars and he was saying the same thing for the New York train cause we wanted to get underway. Well, that was fine and good, we got everybody on and away we went. I'd say about ten minutes late, all told. Thirtieth Street we had the same situation. Tracks are still parallel. There is a center platform. And we went through the cars purposely saying, this is the Wildwood Express. If you're on the wrong train please change at Thirtieth Street. And no charge for you to change, you just cross the platform. North Philadelphia, we repeated the operation. So, we left North Philadelphia and the next stop was a, Tuckahoe. We didn't stop at Hadenfield cause we didn't have room for em. And our engineer was Blacky Denton a little short fellow, no Thomas was a short fellow, Blacky Denton was a tall skinny six footer. About six foot one. And a, I'm going through my cars, Ocean City cars again naturally, what else, this is where all the trouble always happens. I got through a, 1 1/2 cars and a little old lady in the third car of the Ocean City section says, can you tell me what time we get to Penn Station, and I muttered somethin to her because I was in a hurry to get the tickets. And in those days you didn't bother to look at the tickets, you just grabbed em, punched em, slammed em into your pocket. Got to the end of the car, Penn Station, who's got Penn Station in Ocean City? So I goes back to her and says pardon me madam, what did you say? She says can you tell me what time we get to Penn Station, I've got to make a connection for Boston. I said Boston, you're not even on the right train. You're headed for Wildwood and Ocean City. And she was getting all upset about it and I pulled a handful of tickets out of my pocket and my god I had canceled a whole bunch of interline tickets for Boston and beyond for the New Haven Railroad. So a, I said hang on just a minute, I'll see what we can do. I went up to the front and said to Dick there, I says, Tom, I've got a baaad news for you. He says, what now? I said, I got a carload of people for New York City, New Haven, Boston, Providence, you name it, I've got it. And he said, you what? He said, did you make the announcement back there? I says, I sure did, all three stations. He says, well, I'll try stopping the train with the emergency brake. He says I don't want to slam the train into the emergency. I'll pull on it a little bit. And you lean out the door and wave the engineer down. Give him a washout with your flag. So I'm doing that, and the more he was pulling on the cord, and the harder I was waving that flag, the faster we went. At one point I think we were hitting 95 on there. We were rolling. So he got mad and yanked that emergency cord and we come to a screeching halt. He didn't say nothing. He jumped out of the car where he was at and he went up along the side of the train and I'm watching. Said somethin to the engineer and engineer come sliding down the aisle of the cab and all of a sudden all I could see was Tom there with his fist like this shooting right straight up and them bammm right on the engineer's chin. For a little bit, he was only five foot four I believe, and the engineer was six foot two or somethin like that. But the engineer's excuse was well I didn't know that was you trying to stop the train. These things leak like a teakettle anyhow and I thought it was just steam leaking out. But this engineer always was independent. He wanted to run the train his way and him and the conductor never seen eye to eye. That was one of the funny experiences there. And during the war, I did work for the Pennsylvania Railroad which was part of the Pennsylvania Reading Seashore Line and vice versa. Pennsylvania was the main company. So they put me in a tower operator for awhile. Oh I worked that for a year there, helping out in that department and I was working the tower in 30th Street Station The date was oh in June I believe when the Broad Street Station caught fire for the second time. And this is another funny experience a, when Broad Street Station, now we also had another station called Broad Street Suburban Station which was underground like a subway station. Had about thirteen tracks in it. And I called the operator down there and I told him I had an Atlantic City Express up here and no way of getting him out of the station. I says I'm going to run him down your lead Do not let him in Suburban Station because I said it's a steam engine. Well, I don't know if that guy couldn't understand english or what, but I lined my train out to get him down on the lead and the tower operator down there must have lined him right into the station, sequels (?) and all. Cause all I could see when I looked out of my tower window was seeing the rear markers on that P70 going on down the hill instead of stopping where he should of stopped and disappearing into this black cave known as the subway. Next thing I knew the fire department was over there trying to put the fire out in the Suburban Station which wasn't a fire at all. It was just a steam engine smoking everybody out of there. So that was a little bit more fun. Then, oh time on a little bit further, and they put me out at Walwart Tower and I was working there one night, and a, during a rush hour I had a troop train went up over the ferryboat ramps. It went to a what the heck was the name of that there base where (undecipherable) took his training. It was just outside Terigo anyhow.

Gustafson: (undecipherable)

Roth: No

Gustafson: Rockford

Roth: No, the Navy base down there. Well anyhow, I forget the name of that Navy base but anyhow I let a troop train up there and I didn't realign the crossover after I let him through. The electric track went straight and the steam track took off to the right, but I pulled the signal for the (undecipherable) train which come right behind him. It was an express for West Chester, didn't even stop at Walwart. Needless to say he stopped this night. But the signal somehow or another give him the same indication that he was going to go straight instead of through the crossover. Next thing I knew here he is shooting through the crossovers doing about forty miles an hour. The panagraph going up in the air and a wire coming down. You know how you seen a trolley wire, how it's broke up here. Well, that' s what happened. He got a bad panagraph on it. This was a case of the thing going out, and the panagraph shooting up and catching the guy wire and it yanked the whole thing down. And we had a power board and all I could see was red lights. I was sick after that. But they said, oh accidents will be accidents. That's the way they looked at things at that time. Just be sure and watch what you're doing the next time. He said this is expensive. Well it was a fourteen car train. We ripped every panagraph off of the thing. The train stayed on the track but it tied up the railroad beautifully for a day. And, a, oh lets see, this takes us towards the end of the war there. I did work a few trains in between. Didn't have anything too exciting, except I went back to the Seashore Lines On the last season I worked there and we were hauling these here Navy trainees from Cape May to and from Cape May. I was a flagman on the train coming out of a, Wildwood. We left Wildwood about 7:00 and picked up the Cape May cars, oh about 20 minutes later. Well, these sailors, who in those days were a bunch of practical jokers. And on the last car I had all my flagging equipment on the last seat. Well this one sailor, when I was collecting the tickets, decided he was going to have some fun and hide all my stuff, except one red lantern which was sitting by the tailgate. So, it was uneventful until we got to Winslow. There we joined the Atlantic City Mainline and there was no block signals on the line at the time. It was all train operated, but like I said they ran like streetcars. So, we're whizzing along after leaving Winslow, I guess we had got up to about 80 miles an hour and all of a sudden we went into emergency. Around a curve slight curve going out of Winslow. So I went back there to grab my torpedoes and flag equipment to go back and protect cause I knew it was a very busy track. Well all I had was this dam red lantern. And I heard this train coming up behind us, and he was balling. So I flew over the gate. I didn't go down the steps. I just literally leaped over the end gate with that lantern and ran. And I don't know if the sailor actually realized what had happened or not. But I think he kinda turned white. And I got back, managed to make about ten telegraph poles back and I don't know what the engineer on the Atlantic City Express was doing. He was probably talking to his fireman or looking at a gauge or somethin but he wasn't watching us. I had no track torpedoes. Was no way of warning him that we were right around the corner. So fortunately, I don't know, the things you can do when you're scared. I just wound up that lantern and fired and fortunately it went right through the cab.

Gustafson: Wow

Roth: And it shattered in there and he threw the train in emergency. He stopped just right like that from our rear car. I was just petrified there, I couldn't move for awhile, cause all I could see was these here hundreds of people being killed in somethin like that cause these cars would have split wide open being hit at 80 miles an hour while standing still. Which is another little story about an automobile. Doesn't fit into railroading but it fits into the same situation. It's when your automatic drives first come out. This guy broke down on the New Jersey Turnpike. A little old lady comes up behind him and wants to know if she can help. He says yes, you can give me a push. But I got to get it up to 35 miles an hour to get it started. She obliged. She got back in her car. Backed up, I guess she went back a mile. And she come forward at 35 miles an hour and wham. That made all the headlines back then. So, I finally got back on the train. And the sailor says, here is your equipment. He said you've just taught me a very good lesson. I'm never going to touch anything that belongs to a trainman again. He said, you've saved our lives and I don't know how you did it and we don't deserve it. But I never did have any more trouble with anybody on those trains after that incident. Well from there, I got out of the railroad business for a while. Worked various jobs until I found out the South Shore was hiring. And I wrote to em, believe it or not, about getting a job on the South Shore. And sure if you come out, we'll hire you. And I got hired as a car cleaner in oh April of 69. I worked that job for about 3 months, become a carman helper. From a carman helper I went to a carman. Stayed with em up until oh all this cutback on the South Shore service. And a, I probably still would have been there if I would have stayed on. But I was next to be layed off and I went to the CTA about two weeks before I was to be laid off. And I would have stayed with them, as rapid transit conductor, out on 61st Street on the Howard Jackson Line, worked the nightliner. They moved me to Evanston and that is just like workin on the railroad when you're working for the CTA. Had a little trouble with the people on there. The ones I did have trouble with, well I showed them who was boss first. The niggers, you know on their pot, and pick pockets and what have you. But they moved me to Evanston and I noticed when I got home that phone would ring and I would have to go back to work again. I wasn't getting any sleep so I quit. It was the only alternative I had. And finally wound up as a guard down here at the NIPSCO generating station. In the future I hope to be up here at, have you ever heard of the House of David?

Gustafson: Uh, no

Roth: Just outside of Benton Harbor. It's a religious place and a, they have a railroad running around their grounds. About a mile long, got two 60 foot high trestles on the thing. And I was talking to a fellow oh late this fall summer. He said, boy I wished you had come up here this spring. We could have used you. He said beings you know a little about trains you could have operated the railroad for us. So, we hope to reopen it this coming spring up there again. It's 14 inch gauge live steam with three engines on the thing. So I'll be back in heaven again, back on rails where I belong. I think I know where.

Mrs. Roth: Excuse me. Albert. I have a picture of you here.

Roth: There was another incident relating to that street car operation in the city of Chester. This was on Christmas Eve. And it gets cold in the east just like it does out here. And it was subfreezing temperatures and why it happened nobody has been able to figure out. But I had the car westbound at Chester. I had airbrakes all the way in to Chester. In fact when I stopped at 4th and Upland I still had brakes. But when I left 4th and Upland somehow the pipe broke and it froze. Without the air gauge dropping it showed 90 pounds pressure on the gauge. So I eased down Crosby Street to go through the spring switch to go west on 3rd which was a single track line. I had the signal knowing the other car had gone out. That's the one that was in that collision. And it's a slight hill going up to 3rd and Market so I had to control her up against the post so we could make it without getting stuck in the snowdrift. Shut it off to make the curb, to pull over to the curb. The track went right over to the curb there, instead of stopping in the middle of the street like most streetcar companies did. Applied the air and nothin. And there was about 10 other people on the car. I said how duck, we're goin hit, right off the end of the track, across Market Street and into Stoddard's Department Store. And after all the bricks and glass and stuff stopped falling, the windows breaking on the trolley. Here we are with a great big Christmas wreath around the car. But, a, they didn't give me any time off for it. Cause they inspected the car right then and we found the cause of the accident and it's not your fault. The air pipe had broke right outside of the compressor there.

Gustafson: How did your interest in trains begin?

Roth: How did my interest in trains begin? That's something from your side of the family.

Mrs. Roth: The first word he said, believe it or not, when he started to talk was choo choo. It was not mama, and he couldn't even walk then, he was just a baby. So I'd taken him to see trains. Well, I think that's where he gets it from. If I had been born a man, because I grew up in the steam era, I would have been on the train long ago. I love them as much as he does. We're always running around looking at trains someplace.

Gustafson: So I see, it was an early age then.

Roth: Yea, the year zero, from the year zero. Well I take it somebody in the family was a railroader and they, you know you kind of inherit that kind of stuff. Of course, I had one day of glory just this past summer, on June 10th when we took the C & 0 Special from Michigan City to Hartford. Normally they do not stop at places like Michigan City. You board the train in Chicago, go to the end of the line and back to Chicago. But I decide, well I was involved in what was to be known as the Kankakee Valley Railway at the time. We wanted to buy this here Wabash Line over here and turn it into a tourist road. But we run into quite a few problems, and trying to get the financing for it is murder. So that's more or less going down the drain being that I'm going to go up to Benton Harbor. But I talked to the C & 0 about it, and well if you can sell a car out we'll stop and pick you up. He says we can't give you a discount on the tickets. So, I sold the car. We had about sixty passengers out of Michigan City here on June 10th. And I just wish you could have seen some of the faces down there.

Mrs. Roth: It stopped right there by Jewel.

Roth: The motorists that wanted to know what all the people were doing crowded around there. You know, what happened, is there an accident. But when the train come and stopped, that was even more yet. With the coach where we got on stopping right in the middle of Franklin Street for people to get on and off. And to hear that train leave town, well that's the way a railroad should have been. It was telling the world that it was a train. Not some diesel going blurb, blurb along the way. But we had a ball on that thing, and it was the same reaction when the train come back into Michigan City that night. And still the motorists were sittin there honking at it to move and you know its takes awhile to unload 60 people when you only got the one doorway to come out of there. They did, they just sat there patiently with that look of awe on their face, which made it all worthwhile for me. But we had a very nice trip on that. Whether I'll be involved with that again this year or not I don't know. I think the Chessie system's going to run it but like I said a lot depends on me being up in Benton Harbor, which could change a lot of this.

Mrs. Roth: That was my birthday present this year. A trip on that train.

Roth: Yea, I didn't tell her she had a ticket on there. I just said come on. We're going to go train watchin. But when the conductor seen me in my conductor's uniform which I had from the Pennsylvania Redding Seashore Line days, he says well I'm not going to collect your ticket, you do it yourself. So I worked that car up and back on there. Had charge of the whole thing. They didn't bother me at all.

Gustafson: What are some of the positions that you've worked on trains? And can you describe what the various duties of the positions on the trains are?

Roth: Well, yea, the news division , the news butcher version which I give you the start with there, selling the magazines and newspapers etc. etc.. And a little bit of sideline, you could make money on the side by making your own sandwiches, but you had to be sure you sold the Union News sandwiches first before you sold your stuff. But that was no problem cause I never took too much Union News stuff because that was yuck. It was two pieces of bread with maybe a couple pieces of ham slapped between that, and they called it a sandwich. I added a little butter and a piece of lettuce.

Mrs. Roth: Mayonnaise

Roth: It's more than what they could, she's going to go investigating.

Mrs. Roth: She's going to get up and (undecipherable)

Roth: The trainman's job usually consisted helping the conductor collect the fares, people on and off the cars at the stations. Towerman was more or less in charge of the junctions on the railroad, controlling the interlochen which I did a poor job that one day. But you more or less control the movement of all trains through your interlocking plant and issue the train orders as issued to you by the dispatcher. They hooped them up on a big order hoop. Nowadays they got these stationary ones at the trackside. They just hang em on there and they grab them off of there. You don't have to stand beside the track. There's nothing like standing right close to a track with a train barreling down on you at 50 miles an hour trying to give em a train order. On more than once I stopped a commuter train giving them a clearance card because we never put it on the hoop. We just used to fold it and hold it between two fingers and it would be standing up. And at the last minute you'd think the train is going to hit your finger, you pull away and he misses it. So they got to stop and come back and get it. That happened quite a few times before I got the art of doing it and not being scared of em. And then there's the South Shore. That's a nice place to work. I kind of regret that I resigned from em but then I would have got laid off anyhow, within a month after I went to the CTA. But I started out as a car cleaner there. And that was the days when they kept the cars clean. They were washed, swept and mopped every night. It was no problem. They were perfectly clean cars. Windows got dirty on the outside, but that was normal road dirt and rainstorms and snow what have you. From there they promoted me to carman helper. And that was to assist the carman in making repairs to the cars and making up trains in the termininals. South Bend, Michigan City, Gary, Randolph Street. From there, I got promoted to carman because I picked up everything real fast. And this is probably in count of my relation to railroads and liking trains. And there you operated the cars, moved em back and forth. And also still repair work. and all, climbing up on top replacing panagraph shoes and things like that and making sure they were in good working order. In fact, a little story on that was, just before they took Train 40 off, we were going into Chicago and we broke down on the IC Main. We lost all of our air. And Dick Liebig was the engineer on there. And I was chewing bubble gum, believe it or not. And I says, Dick have you got anything strong as some bailing wire on this thing. He said, yes I do. He had a piece of wire in his satchel and a piece of I think it was emery cloth at the time. I says well I don't know if this is going to work or not, but I thought I'm going to try to fix it for us. I said we can't sit here cause we got the IC tied up. And I said bailing wire and chewing gum is what we're reported to being using on fixing this thing so let's do it. So, I pushed a wad of gum into the hole in the pipe, put the emery cloth over that and wrapped it as tight as I could with the baling wire and twisted the ends. I says see if that brings your air pressure up. And we put the panagraph against the wire again. And the air pressure did come up. It got up to about 70 pounds. I said, think you can run this on about 70 pounds without going to the full 90. I says I don't want to trust the pressure on there. I said this is just a temporary thing. He says we'll try it. And we limped into Randolph Street without that thing busting. But just as we pulled into the bumping post, bam, that let go again. Chewing gum left. But don't let people tell you they did hold them together with bailing wire and chewing gum. That was not the case. They did their best to keep these old cars running. They still are as far as I'm concerned. But it takes an awful lot of work in a day when you cannot get parts for these cars. They've really seen their lifespan. And one of the major problems that a lot of people don't realize is like this rock salt getting to your car in the winter time. If you don't get it off there it's going to rot the body. Well electricity has the same effect on steel. And a lot of those underframes have been affected by a cancerous type electrical reaction. And that's what getting costly to repair. And some of the frames they've been like that. Well, the cars just done when that happens. You know they get so weak they can't take it anymore. So that was, well that's my railroad career.

Gustafson: What are some of the real dangers that railroad men face working on cars?

Roth: Well, on the South Shore Cars it's a case of respecting electricity. That is the major problem. That overhead trolley wire has 1500 volts DC in it, direct current. Needless to say you make the right connection and it's so long just forget everything. We had a couple guys who were electrocuted out there at the shop. Just for being careless, you know not making sure the panagraphs were down, and whatnot. In fact, I think I was partially instrumental in helping the South Shore to come to the decision to drill a hole through the switches that held the panagraphs down. If you was working on a car you could pull that switch out and drop a key into it so it would not go in and let the panagraph go out. That happened the second year I was a carman there. I had suggested to the office and shortly thereafter all the cars were equipped that ...

---- end of first side of tape ----

Roth: ...put your foot on there. You could be underneath repairing the grids which is a very important part to the electric car to keep it in operation. That's the bank of medal things that you see hanging from the car. And there is oh, 7 or 8 of them in each grid. Well, the rock would fly up and would break em, and you'd lose your power on there because it breaks the circuit. And the usual way of doing that was to get in there and put some piece of scrap medal or even an old track spike between the broken one and the next good one and put your pan against the wire and give it one point of power and fuse it in there. That way you can get the car to the shop. But you didn't dare leave it in there cause the car would catch fire and burn. The electrical switch is underneath which is also do with a control. And they freeze up in the wintertime and all. You can't see a panagraph when you're underneath that car, so if you was underneath and that thing went up and you touch one of them things, you've had it. That was just it, right then and there. So they eliminated a good deal of the hazard with that. Another hazard they had, and I was involved in this too. This happened at Randolph Street, was a lot of the carmen did not believe in changing ends. They would back the train from the end they were operating from and I was involved in a collision with a 6 car train and a 1 car train. I had the 1 car and I was in charge of the movements for the day. And Leonard was the other carman who was working with me and I told him you take the 6 car train and go down to the bumper and wait. Cause I got to get Car 6 off Track 10 and I'm going to put it over on 9 and go out on the local. So he says ok I'll do it. Well he went down there and I had Car 6 and I was following him down and just as we got to the switch, well he stopped short without going all the way down. So I stopped but I was still following the track where he was. And his helper, I can't remember his name now, threw the switch and give him a backup sign. Well all I could do was lean on the horn. He rammed right into me. It badly damaged the car I had but I seen him coming and I ran to the back of the car so as not to get caught in case the cab caved in on there. But that was the end of the backup movements at Randolph Street. It's learned the hard way usually. That's what the whole thing is. So now everybody has to change ends. Operate from the end that the train is moving or the car Either way, even if it's a one car affair. You've got to change ends. And that should have been done years ago.

Gustafson: On a train where you’re running around the clock and you're doing a lot of night runs, are there very many accidents caused by fatigue or just being tired on the job? Does that play any role in causing accidents?

Roth: No, not really. I think most of the accidents that have been involved -- Well, the CTA, we'll take that one last, but the railroads very few accidents at night and the operating for em. Most of your wrecks that you're having nowadays is bad wear equipment. The railways have laid inspectors and bad conditions and stuff like that. I think the Federal Railroad Administration has just pinned down the fact that a lot of these cars have bad wheels on em. Which is not the railroads fault. It's the mill that turned the wheels out. And if you look at a freight car quite a few of em you'll see a big yellow dot on a black background. That means the wheels on that car have to be changed (undecipherable) as soon as possible. Cause they are the bad group that got out of the mill. And that's whats been causin an awful lot of these wrecks, including these here gas tank cars which have been exploding, chemical cars. And then in other cases plain sabotage like down in Louisiana. That wreck that they had down there. Somebody just had a gripe against the railroad so they quietly took the bolts off of a track joint and removed a few spikes and when the train hit it, that was it. It went on the ground.

Gustafson: Is that a big problem?

Roth: It's not really a big one. It can happen. The worse case of that was when the FEC was on strike the Florida East Coast. I think you remember that. You know, they were out for a heck of a long time. And Oh they were doing everything to wreck that railroad. Blow up bridges and everything just like you'd see in a movie. And they more or less got on top of it though and now the FEC is one of the money making roads in the country. But you'll see a freight train go whizzing along there. No caboose on the end of it. They did away with the extra crew member. They just got a little box on the end which picks up the signal relays on there. You know to protect the train. I think they run with a two or three man crew. I'm not sure. I think it's an engineer and a brakeman. And that's it, but no cabooses on em. Sabotage, practical purposes, no, it's not existent. There's a few nuts running around loose that will try. But as a rule, no.

Gustafson: What would you say is the biggest technological change in the roads since you've been working? Going from steam to diesel?

Roth: Yea, and I have mixed feelings on that. I think the change was made too quick because you know the energy crunch we're getting in now. And well Amtrak has more or less solved the problem with their passenger trains. You only see one diesel on a four or five car train now. But the bigger roads before Amtrak come along, were running, two, three diesels on a fourteen car train. Why it's not necessary. But the problem is that the diesel loses tractive effort as it builds speed. That's why they had more than one engine on it, to hold that tractive effort on there. Where as a steam engine, it was slow in getting started but once you got started you went. And I think steam, particularly modern steam should have been oh, mixed in with the diesel so to speak. Where you could run a oh, twenty five, thirty car train with one engine. The steam should have been left and assigned to it. Course there was the expense of maintaining dual facilities for something like that, but the Norfolk and Western I think had the answer to that. Cause they ran steam all the way up till 58 I believe on there. And there answer was four or five

classes of steam power. Everything was almost the same wheel arrangement and everything was set up that they could be turned as fast if not faster than the diesel and sent on their way back the other way again. And the diesel I think should have been reserved for hilly territory. Or where you had to have more than one engine on the train. Cause there you had the advantage of one engine crew and all the traction behind it. You could have five, six, seven of those things together. The mountains were a good place for the diesel. Cause there you could find in the days of a steam a train with maybe as many as five or six steam engines on there. And that meant five or six crews. You see that would boost the payroll. CTC is another great advancement in it. But I think in some cases it's been the downfall of some of our traffic problems because everybody’s ripped out that second track. Cause they figured CTC was the answer.

Gustafson: What is CTC?

Roth: Centralized Train Control. It's oh, well, now take the B & 0. They are controlled from Chicago to a, Garret, Akron Ohio I believe the dispatcher is in there. He controls the whole railroad all the way into Chicago. He's just got a big board in front of him showing the entire railroad and he just pushes buttons where he wants the trains to go. But they have a lot of double track to do this on. Now a lot of these other roads that went CTC made it single track with a pathing sighting here and there. Well, the way railroads are going fine, that worked beautiful. But if we go to war again, what's going to happen? Take like the Erie Lakawana, which is out of business. All these other roads have been tore up. I think we're going to be in one hell of a shape. Cause we're just not going to have the capacity to move it. Same way with the Michigan Central down here which was the New York Central. That used to be double tracked. I think Amtrak is talking about double tracking again because business is building on that line believe it or not even though when we see the trains here we don't see hardly anybody on except certain ones. But apparently in Michigan they are riding. But there is a time comin when people are going to have to leave their automobile home and use the train. That station used to be busy. It was when I first come to town here. Why they don't stop there I don't know.

Gustafson: What would you say are the reasons that trains have kind of fallen on hard times. You don't see as much passenger traffic.

Roth: Our highways and our love with the automobile. Cause you don't have to wait for a certain time to go and when you want to leave you can come back when you want. You've got the car. You can jump in the car and and go. But the, that's the same way it's cooled off freight service on some of these railroads. They've got what other people don't want to haul so to speak. And that's all that's left on the rails. They are gaining some back on these piggy back trains that they're running now. But it's the interstate highways, and the regular highways that's generally killed off the rail service. And another problem would be the unions, which keep insisting on higher rates and working conditions and whatnot. Which they are working to the disadvantage of the railroad itself too. And upping the operating costs. And that's driving business away. A good example of that, if I had anything to do with the Pennsylvania Railroad or the New York Central. Back when they were running the Broadway and the 20th Century as their flagship trains, I would have had a crew on that train from Chicago to about 8 hours out. However far eight hours would take it, cause the train was a sixteen hour train to New York. Eight hours day for eight hours pay. That's the kind of rule I would try to put in effect on the passenger train. I think if the unions were smart, when the railroads first started pulling these trains off, on account of that, you know in losing patronage on it, that they would have come to this kind of arrangement. Cause they really don't work that hard collecting tickets and stuff like that. Freight train crew members have it a little bit harder but a passenger train which is strictly moving people from here to there and getting them there as fast as you can, well, you can cover quite a distance like that. I think even today the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers has a limit of a hundred miles division where they get a days pay. And if they go beyond that they get a day and a half. If they stop to set out a car they get a days pay. This is all ridiculous. It shouldn't be that way. So the unions are just as much to blame as management itself with some of the policies that they've had. They'd probably shoot me if I ever got in there and started somethin like that. But if I had charge of a railroad I'd sure as heck try to correct a lot of those conditions. I'd bring on the biggest strike you've ever seen. But I'd sit down with those union chiefs and this is the way it is. Now if you want your jobs you're going to have to do somethin about it. If you give on this point, well maybe we can add another train. And business would pick up. People want service. And they don't want to be all day getting from here to there. I think that's what Amtrak is trying prove, course they've run into the same roadblock, the unionism.

If they had a free hand on that I think you'd see a lot of people back on trains.

Gustafson: Do you think trains will come back as price of gasoline goes up?

Roth: I think so, especially when they can eliminate all these here derailment problems that they have been having. But on the whole I think Amtrak has been doing real good with that. A, the worst trains that they have on the system I think is the Floridian. And it derails more times than you can shake a stick at. Fortunately they don't kill anybody. You might get a few bruises or bumps. But it's bad order track that they've run into this thing. It takes forever and a day to go from here to there. It's one of the trains up for discontinuance or at least you know they keep talking about discontinuance. Congress has run it so there we go. But if I was them, I would do the same as the Pennsylvania did with it. It was known as the Southwind in those days if you remember that name. And it ran every other day out of Chicago south bound. Every other day north bound, instead of running daily. That's the way they should that train. There's probably enough business to support it that way. But when you run it every day, the business just isn't there. But if the people knew definitely the train was going south on say Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or the odd dates of the month and north on the even dates, they would arrange their travel plans accordingly they would ride the train again. To me it's a marvelous way of traveling. The dome cars, I don't know if the new Amtrak cars are going to have domes on them or not, but like I said, the North Coast Hiawatha, we rode that up to Wisconsin Dells and that's a ride I'll never forget. I've seen a different view from riding a train, usually you know I ride in the coach seat or a pulman car but never up in the dome car, but when you're up there it's a completely different world. To see the thing.

Gustafson: I don't think we have anymore questions. Do you have a question?

Jankowski: No

Gustafson: Do you have any last story or anything you'd like to leave us with?

Roth: Well, the last thing I think I'd like to leave you with on there is that people would think twice you know when they try to condemn a railroad. It's, well, NIPSCO Generating Station where I'm at now. People complain because soot gets down in their boat from the smokestack, or because the blower fan is making too much noise. Well, we're getting so, we're so picky anymore. It's frightening. And, what would they do if NIPSCO decided to get it's hair up on it's back and just shut the electric off for a day. Where would we be? I mean, just everything,

Gustafson: You might not mind a little soot in your boat then. I suppose.

Roth: It might open up a few eyebrows. Well, the same thing should apply to the railroads, too. And when you jump in your car to go on a luxury trip. Is this trip really necessary? Do I have to take my car? Or could I take the train and rent a car when I get there? Which is just as easy. We're planning a trip to Detroit very soon on Amtrak. I don't want to drive into Chicago and I don't want to drive to Niles to catch the train. I'd like to catch the train right where I live, in Michigan City. There's a station down there doin nothin. I hear there's plans about stopping here and if they ever do that, I would do that. I'd just take pleasure trips somewhere.

Mrs. Roth: And he would use it.

Roth: It doesn't cost that much to rent a car for a day when you get to your destination. It would save you wear and tear on your car and your nerves and the automobile is the most dangerous thing to be driving. I just heard on the news, on WGN this morning, I take it it was raining in Chicago, but two cars collided there. Totally demolished. At a high rate of speed on Lake Shore Drive yet. I can't figure that out. But that's what happened and one car was cut completely in half. I haven't heard the fatalities yet but I imagine everybody is dead that was involved in the two But the train I would say is the safest way. And if you must get there in a hurry, there is always the airplane. But they are fuel guzzlers, too. And the train is efficient on fuel. I'll tell you that. And I think in the very near future you're going to see this line through Michigan City as one of the heaviest traveled rail lines in this part of the country. I don't know if you've looked at the track work they've been doin east of the bridge. But Amtrak has rebuilt that track all the way from Michigan down to here. And I think just about every time the line has been replaced I imagine when the new schedule comes out you're going to see trains going along there 80 90 miles an hour. If not faster, those turbo trains can do it. They're geared for 125. But there again we've got the problems with the grade crossings.

Gustafson: Too rough?

Roth: No, idiots like you and me driving around the gates cause we don't want to wait for a train to pass. That gate is just an obstacle.

Mrs. Roth: A lot of people do that.

Roth: In our way of driving and what's that darn thing doing there, zoom, go right around it.

Mrs. Roth: And get hit in the meantime.

Roth: But that's why this, word of parting. I would like to say this. I don't know how far this will get, but in every railroad grade crossing, in the Michigan City area, I would separate the road. Even make em a one way street with just one gate on the side that you're driving from so you can get off the track on the other side. If it's a two way street, some kind of an island on both sides where you cannot run around the gate. The gate would come down as far as that island to completely block the road. I think that would be the answer to some of it. The way they are now, take Franklin Street, or any of these other crossings actually, you can whiz right around the gates. No problem at all just cause the train isn't there yet.

Gustafson: Ok, thank you very much.

Roth: You're welcome, sure.