I’m not a professional railroader. The following memory is simply from the young railfan point of view. It is an anecdote which has stuck in my mind all my life and I’m sure will continue to be there until I die, or maybe even after!?!
I grew up In Erie, PA during NKP steam days with the mainline about 265 feet from the back of our house. Frequent trips on my bicycle to pester the railroad crews included going to NKP’s “Dean Yard” on Erie’s east side, adjacent to the GE locomotive plant. Eastbound NKP freights pulled by Berkshires would very often stop at Dean Yard to drop off cars. Engine crews were very friendly so often get up in the cab while they were doing the switching moves. It got so some of the crews recognized me.
So, on one such occasion, we had coupled back up to the train, the head brakeman climbs back up in the cab, the fireman is checking what is a good hot fire, and the engineer is charging the brake line. So here I am, I was 13 or 14 at the time, standing in the cab of a live NKP S3 Berkshire which is sizzling at the pops, when the engineer turns to me and says, “well Jimmie, unless you want to go to Buffalo, you better get off.” I looked at my bicycle leaning up against a fence and thought of my dad drop-kicking my butt halfway down the block as he explains to me how, “I scared the crap out of mom”, so I chuckled and climbed down from the cab. As I had done many times before, I watched the engineer yank that throttle out, once everything was moving, as he prepared for the race to Buffalo.
What haunts me to this day is if I said, “let’s go”, would he have taken me? The crew might have helped me throw my bicycle up on the tender deck?
In retrospect, dad worked for the NKP so the railroad could have contacted him and told him where I was. I know what dad would have said, “Well you got yourself up there, now get yourself back!”
Jim Kreider
