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“Each morning, I would ride one of the trains to work and back again at night,” McGrath said. “Of course, sometimes some of the trains would leave early, but I'd just catch the next one that came along-:t -s’;? ;; V tMcGrath explained that when he was working at the Lehigh Valley Railroad, he alternated jobs with other engineers and firemen.“You went to a train you were needed on,” McGrath remembers. “I could be working on one train in the morning and work another at night. Getting the job you wanted, like being an engineer, depended on seniority. You had to work your way up. I worked all hours of the day and quite a few years to get the job I wanted. I had to pass tests to be able to qualify to be an engineer.”If you ask McGrath what period of time he recalls most vividly from the railroad, he responds that World War II is what he remembers first and foremost.“During the war, while I was working on the Lehigh. Sayre used to be a dirty town,” McGrath said. “People would paint their houses dark colors because there was so much smoke that came through town from the locomotives. During the war, we had a train leaving Sayre every 15 minutes, it was so busy.”McGrath remembers the trains he worked on picking up bodies of soldiers during the war.“A few times, the trains would be carrying boxcars of dead soldiers’ bodies,” McGrath said. “Some of the workers would remove the coach seats and the space would be piled up with the bodies. We took them to various places for burial.”Working on the railroad could offer long hours and hard conditions, according to McGrath.“We got paid by mileage in those days,” McGrath said. “We could be gone as long as 40 hours at a time. We would often work 16 hours at a time, getting no food or rest. It could be hard on your health. During the war, if you were sick, you had to have a doctor's excuse, and you were lucky to get off work even with that. Whenever the phone rang, with the railroad telling you to come to work, you went, whether you felt good or bad. ”Winters were another hardship on the railroad. McGrath said.Snowstorms would pile snow so heavily on the tracks that it wouldn't be able to move much,” McGrath said. “You had to plow the snow off the tracks first. There were days it was snowing so much you couldn’tsee two inches in front of your face. It was so cold, you had to breathe into one of your gloves just to have air to inhale.”McGrath is grateful that during his years of service to the railroad, he never had any accidents with the trains.“I’ve come to accidents that were on the tracks,” McGrath said. “I’ve had problems running the trains, like broken hoses, but never any wrecks. I was working in the train yard in Sayre one night when one of the boxcars backed into the locomotive I was on. It was the yardmaster’s fault because he didn’t send the car where it was supposed to go to. 1 fell onto the floor and the fireman that was working with me fell on the floor, too. I hurt my knee, but luckily, it wasn’t a bigaccident.”When he was working on theSusquehanna-New York Railroad, McGrath recalls one time when he was on a boxcar and an accident happened.“I was on the car that was put on the track,” McGrath said. “It was going around a curve when I saw smoke from an engine up the track. : It was coming toward us. I jumped ; off and the engine hit the boxcar. : The car wrecked into pieces. That was the closest I’ve come to an accident. I’ve never caused any accidents, though.” ;Even though the railroad offered hard times for McGrath, he said he enjoyed working there.“I liked it,” McGrath said. “The work gets in your blood. I wasn’t ; sorry when it was time to quit, because I wasn’t so young anymore. It; could be tough work but it was still a *challenge. I really enjoyed it.” ’►■ mv'.ifmmLotto America drawing numbersDES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The winning numbers in Saturday night’s $5.6 million Lotto America drawing were six, eight. 13,27,33, 35 and 39.BEN FRANKLINUnited Parcel Pack ShipRinse Vac$1.00 per hourOpen Thurs. Fri. Nights
Newspaper Details
The Daily Review
Towanda, Pennsylvania, US
Sun, Oct 16, 1988
Page 25
Full Page
Clipped by
Indiana U.
PA, USA 29 Aug 2021
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