76 CLASSIC TRAINS FALL 2019
yardman whose only duty was to uncou-
ple blocks of cars on two trains a day was
not an efficient use of resources. When I
started talking about abolishing the job,
the yardman’s union local chairman ex-
plained that the arrangement had been
negotiated in return for permitting road
crews to do interchange work, which was
“yard crew work.” We talked it over, and
the result was that instead of the cut-off
man we’d have one of the yard crews stop
what they were doing when a train with
Reading cars arrived and make the cut.
Speaking of the employees — and rat-
tlesnakes — one day shortly after I ar-
rived at Newberry Junction, a couple of
communications linemen came to my of-
fice. They were carrying a big box, which
they said was a welcome and wedding
present. When they put it on the desk, I
could tell it was heavy and got suspicious
when a bunch of other employees crowd-
ed the doorway. Nevertheless, I wasn’t re-
ally prepared when, upon opening it, I
found two large, but thankfully dead, rat-
tlers. I jumped, and everyone laughed,
but I always remembered those two
snakes when I was walking around the
railroad, especially up in the canyon.DON’T IGNORE THE PAPERWORK
I’ve encountered a lot of “role models”
on the railroad. One of the earliest was
my boss when I was at Newberry Junc-
tion, Assistant Superintendent W. R.
“Bob” Foster, whom I’d met a year or two
previously aboard the 20th Century Lim-
ited. He was a great guy to work for, and
he took a real interest in helping young
officers like me. I never forgot him telling
me, “There’s a lot of guys like you who
can run locomotives and switch boxcars,
but if you want to get ahead, pay atten-
tion to the paperwork too.” He was a for-
mer Big Four locomotive engineer and,
like all good operating officers, a stickler
for rules and safety. That said, he once
told me of a letter of reprimand he’d re-
ceived as an engineer for running one of
the S-2 Niagaras over 100 mph with a
mail-and-express train. I told him I en-
vied him the experience.Most of the coal from Clearfield and
Cherry Tree was set out in what had once
been a large yard at Avis; it then moved
north in the symbol freights. They left
Newberry Junction with the manifest
traffic and stopped at Avis to make the
pickup. Juggling power to handle the coal
from the west as well as the symbol
freights was a big part of my job. I’d start
each day on the phone with Clearfield
Trainmaster H. R. “Obie” Oblemann to
coordinate his needs with the symbol
freights’. All we usually had to work with
was first-generation EMDs and Alcos,
and it seemed as if there was never
enough. Despite that we did a pretty
good job of keeping things moving. One
time a set of SD45 demonstrator units
came in on one of the southbounds. With
no published tonnage ratings for the
units, we loaded them to more than twice
what an equal number of F7s was goodWellsville, Addison & Galeton No. 1700, one of the short line’s seven streamlined center-cab
diesels built by GE in 1937–40 for Ford Motor Co., works at Elkland, Pa., in mid-1967.
Four railroads served Newberry Junction in
the mid-1960s. An Erie Lackawanna GP7 idles
outside the EL enginehouse in summer 1967.