The view from High View tunnel Ron Britzke THE New York, Ontario & Western Railway was mortally ill in the summer of 1954 when I went to work with the High View track gang. The Old & Weary had less than three years of its poverty-stricken history remaining. The handwriting was on the wall near the door. I spent a grueling but happy six months in that golden summer and lingering autumn, wielding a shovel with a handful of dedicated veterans as we tried to keep the deteriorating track in a semblance of operating shape for the few freights that rattled past. They talked often about the railroads increasingly bleak future. Would the Government step in and save the 0&W? Could fresh business or capital be found? Theyll never let it die, they assured each other. As their world crumbled around them, they looked the other way and worked harder. * Something of the love those longtime employees felt for the rickety railroad rubbed off on me, and I shared their disappointment heartbreak for many when the rusty old line went under in 1957. Life was bittersweet in 1954. I had a freshly minted college degree, but the looming military draft made the future uncertain. I needed temporary employment and found it at 0&W headquarters in Middletown, N.Y. A summer track laborer was needed at High View on the Orange-Sullivan county border in southeastern New York near my home. I reported to the section shanty on a bright, hot June Monday, meeting a reserved - even dubious - reception from Jim, the grizzled veteran foreman, and Bill, one of two laborers on regular duty. The other hand, Jerry, was ill that day. Jim and Bill both had been with the O&W about four decades, and the railroad was the central force of their lives. Jerry was younger and had been on the gang 10 years. * Jim, Bill, and I wheeled out our ancient motorcar in a ritual that was to become familiar as the weeks passed. Jim would start the engine with a crank - an uncertain procedure, particularly in cooler weather. I never looked underneath at the power plant, but it obviously had few cylinders (perhaps only one) and fired at about every other milepost. The exhaust was deafening; and at every tenth revolution, a shattering backfire disturbed the tranquility of the weed-cloaked right of way. Once this temperamental conveyance had warmed up, to the accompaniment of much fiddling with choke and throttle, we boarded and were off after Jim had called the dispatcher to get the whereabouts of the morning south- bound freight. Past the Manor at 5:23, hed announce gravely to us. This meant the train had gone through Livingston Manor on schedule and we had time to run from High View down to Winterton, the southern end of our section. At Winterton, we took to an unused siding next to a boarded-up creamery - symbol of a vanished source of O&W business. * Eventually, the train would appear, usually with two or three F3 units trailed by too few revenue cars. With the main clear, wed proceed to the site of that days work. It was mostly the same - raising joints. Since the O&W was not ballasted on our section (or on most others), the procedure was simple. Bill inserted our big jack under a rail - one of several tasks he guarded with a jealous passion - and raised the track, exposing cavities under 10 or 12 ties on each side of the joint. The foreman knelt about 50 yards up the right of way and sighted down the rail, gesturing until the jack was high enough. We filled in under each raised tie with cinders from trackside, tamping the fresh material with a downward stroke of foot on shovel. Then it was on to the next joint to repeat the task. One day, as I watched a train approach and a line of empty Buffalo Creek flour box cars dancing like drunken sailors over a section wed just raised, I remarked cynically to Jerry that I saw no visible improvement from our labor. He just grinned and I got a sour look from Bill. We went on raising joints and the trains stayed on the crooked, wavering rails, so maybe we were doing something productive after all. * It was sweaty, dirty work. The cinders raised clouds of sooty dust. The right of way was carpeted with a deep blanket of the black stuff - a legacy from countless passages of Consolidations, Ten-Wheelers, Camelbacks, and other steamers which preceded the O&Ws small fleet of diesels. The High View station’s guarded & sunken, rusting, sidetrack was all but hidden in weeds. I was surprised one morning to see a gondola parked there, I hadnt even been sure the switch worked. I peered over the side at a half load of new ties, fragrant with creosote. It took Jim hours of amortizing just to decide which of the crumbling ties on our section needed replacing most. We could have used up the whole allotment within sight of our shanty. This led to my only attempt at spiking. Bill was adept at it, smashing the spikes home with a few well-directed blows. Jerry wasnt bad either. I did most of the tie-shifting with, a huge pair of tongs while they hammered. One day I demanded to try it. Jim handed me our oldest hammer, worn with years of use and probably twice as old as I was. * My first blow across the rail (I shunned the more cautious same-side approach) was a direct hit. I smirked as they giggled. The second shot hit the rail. The hammer head and half of the handle whizzed away into the woods like a scared pheasant, and my spiking career was spiked. IN RETROSPECT, those days may not have been as enjoyable as they now seem through the mist of more than 20 years. But I can summon pleasant memories in abundance today . . . long-spanned gliders from the airport at Wurtsboro wheeling silently above us in the cloudless sky; the riotous racket of mating chipmunks racing through the dry leaves; the suns first glow piercing the ground mist on a damp September morning. And things were seldom dull on the O& W. There came a day when Jim, who was somewhat hard of hearing, knelt to resight a joint after we had raised it and removed the jack. A freight rounded the curve behind him. We called a warning. Engrossed in his calculations, he missed it. * We waved with increasing vigor. He finally looked back. By this time, the train was fairly close. He retreated in haste and jerked his arm up and down twice as the engine passed a signal for the engineer to blow the air horn next time. The crew grinned down at us, but I gave the hogger a middle-finger salute, thinking that he damn well should have hit the horn as a courtesy to an aging man whose knees had long since lost youths agility. I was laid off briefly in August, collecting a graduation present from my parents a - British-built Triumph motorcycle. That transformed the 8-mile trip to and from work. I swooped joyously over the undulating back roads between home and High View, lunchbox slung over my shoulder with a rope. I parked my shiny new beast in an empty shack which still stands at the mouth of the tunnel. The tunnel was also Jims rainy-day work backup. We occasionally sharpened tools in the shanty during storms, but most of our implements were worn beyond a fine hone anyway. * We cleared rock from the tunnel ditches when it rained. The bore was only partially lined, and the brittle slate of the roof crumbled with monotonous regularity. The yearly rockfall was substantial enough to require attention from the Scranton extra gang every winter. I met this crew once, when we changed a rail early in my stay. Most of the extras were young, and of Polish or Slavic extraction, I judged. They did their work with insolent expertise, drank Finkles Tavern dry of beer during their overnight stay at Summitville, then moved on. On the weekend before Thanksgiving, I was laid off for good and said farewell to my companions. Jerry and I had developed a warm friendship, and the taciturn reserve of Jim and Bill had thawed Occasionally. Now it was over. I was 3000 miles away in ‘Los Angeles, savoring trips to the Tehachapi Loop and working in the motorcycle industry when the O&W went under. But even before that, the High View gang had broken up. * Jerry quit soon after I left and went on to other things. Mercifully, Jim did not see the end of his lifes work. He retired and died quietly six months later as the O&W swayed on the brink of oblivion. Bill - fierce, square-jawed, touchy - stayed to the finish. Forty years a track laborer, he was proud, of his many skills as only a man of little education and limited horizons could be. When the O&W died Bills light went out. A year or two later, firemen were called to High View one night and found the section shanty aflame. They put out the blaze and discovered Bills body in the ashes. WHAT did it all mean? I stand at the gaunt, silent tunnel portal today and find no answer. More than 20 years have fled since I drove away from High View on that last icy November afternoon, and the past is as irretrievable as the future is unknown. The weeds finally won and the forgotten right of way is vanishing. * My thoughts are far away as a distant rumble intrudes. The morning southbound at the far portal? A change in engine pitch breaks the spell as a twin-stacked International Transtar heads down old Route 17 with a load that might have gone l.c.l. if the Old & Weary had survived. There is a small ache in my throat as I straddle the motorcycle which brought me to High View once more. A throb of power beckons me back to today, and the shadows of another time fade in the shimmer of heat waves along the highway. Trains Magazine 1975 Abridged version of original larger article © 2009 TRAINS Magazine. Reprinted with permission
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 13:45:29 +0000
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