Some years ago, while working as a qualified retirement plan regulatory analyst, I worked with an employee benefit attorney, who one day say a fan rag on my desk and asked me about it.

It turned out that after law school his first job was working in the ICC on abandonment issues and then he was hired by the late Jim Bistline, just prior to the NW/SOU merger, which eventually got him outside of railroading.

I was thinking about this fellow the other day and it occuured to me that there must be other people used railroading as a springboard to other careers or political office.

President Lincoln as a litigator for the Illinois Central is one obvious example.

Others?

Ronald Reagan early in his career was a spokesman for the Union Pacific RR helping promote their passenger trains between the West Coast and Chicago.

As you may recall he went on to bigger and better roles.

Ross Rowland

Successful and highly regarded NHL coach Barry Trotz's father worked as a mechanic for the CNR. His first full-time job during the time he played junior hockey was working the extra gangs for the railroad. He worked in the summer on MOW fixing tracks and bunkhouses, and other odd jobs. He has described his time sleeping in railcars in the middle of nowhere, working four in the morning until four in the afternoon - 12-hour days, seven days straight followed by four days off, as a character-building experience. He has said, " I had a pretty big upper body, because I pounded spikes and carried a 40-pound tamping bar all day. Hammer and a tamping bar. It was legit work. At the end of the day, it was good for your strength and fitness."

Interesting topic but it may be more of a "Railfanning" item.

Interesting topic but it may be more of a "Railfanning" item.

Unless I'm promoting the question because I think that railroads have an enormous influence on the cultural, economic and social makeup of the country, but it's largely overlooked.

The infamous John McAfee worked at Missouri Pacific for a few years, and helped the company transition to IBM computer systems to calibrate train schedules. MoPac was his first job in computers.

Col. Harland Sanders of KFC fame was a N&W fireman on mallets for about 6 months!

Country singer Gene Autry was a telegrapher on the Frisco. The story is Will Rogers happened to hear him singing and playing his guitar one night (while on duty!) and told him he should be on the radio rather than working for the railroad.

-Philip Marshall

Interesting. Autry was a Renaissance man. He was also a pilot; when WWII came along he volunteered to be a "Service Pilot," bypassing full pilot training ("Civilian Acquired Skill") flying USAAF non-combat aircraft to free up "real" USAAF pilots for combat missions.

So what non-combat aircraft did he fly, and where? C-109's in the CBI Theatre over "The Hump." These were converted B-24 bombers flying fuel over the Himalayas from India to China. They were more difficult to fly than real B-24's.

I'm sure after flying "The Hump" in a plane full of avgas, Autry was happy to come home and be "Back in the Saddle Again."

Phil Mulligan

Thomas Edison is a good one. Young Tom Edison used to work as a Newspaper boy for the Grand Trunk railway not yet the GTW. One day while out Thomas Edison noted that an oncoming train or runaway boxcar (varies from which source you choose) was about to barrel past Mt Clemens station while the stationmasters son was playing on the tracks. Edison saved the boys life by grabbing him from the platform and in return the stationmaster at taught him Morse code for the telegraph. While Edison continued selling newspaper in the GT baggage car he would also have his chemistry set with him and one day spilled acid while in the car setting it on fire. The crew of the train barrels into Smiths Creek MI Depot puts out the fire and throws Edison and his chemistry set on the ground and promptly losing his position selling newspapers. Its said that Edison went home and came back with his dad to pick up what was left of his chemistry set. As for Smiths Creek depot it became so significant that it was disassembled and moved piece by piece and reconstructed at Greenfield Village in Dearborn Michigan where it stands to this day.


As for some other people, Walt Disney worked on Mopac and would convince the crew with chewing tobacco to teach him how to be an engineer or fireman.

Johnny Cash I think was another one but I can’t recall well I do know his Lionel trainset locomotive ended up on Pawn Stars a while back

Johnny Cash briefly worked as a brakeman for the L&N. My wife was in train service with D&RGW, while I worked for BN. On one of the rare occasions we got to be off at the same time, we were watching a Johnny Cash special on TV, which featured a spiel about his railroading background as an intro. While he stood right on the ends of the ties, you could see a headlight coming up behind him VERY fast. It turned out to be AMTRAK making track speed. Just before he was splattered from there to Kansas, he took a step or two away from the track, but the wind nearly sucked his leather jacket off --- this while he was holding an acoustic guitar, with a big wide strap going over his shoulder and around his back.

We figured he must have been one HELL of a brakeman.

Yes, Johnny Cash was kind enough to shoot a PSA for the AFT in 1975 using the locomotive ( 576?) on display in the park in Nashville. They used a portable steam generator placed between the drivers on the opposite side of the engine to give the illusion that the engine was live under steam. It was one of our best PSA's.

I had a chance to visit with him and he shared that his brief railroad career was one of his fondest memories.

Ross Rowland

Walter Chrysler worked for several railroads before ending up in Oelwein, IA at the CGW shops. He quit to start some car company.

Clarence Darrow was a lawyer for the Chicago & North Western before he quite to represent Eugene Debbs in 1894.

Andrew Carnegie got his start on the PRR under Thomas Scott at the age of 18. One of the reasons Carnegie got into steel making was to produce rail for the PRR. As his steel empire grew he found himself at odds with the PRR over freight rates to haul the raw materials that he needed to make his steel; especially iron ore from ports on Lake Erie.

And as a result we got the Bessemer and Lake Erie, the final link in Carnegie plan to have a vertical integration of his Steel company.

Walter P. Chrysler's tube roller used to be on display in his tool chest at the Ford Museum. It's probably in a basement at Stellantis somewhere now.

Walter Owen Bentley started as a fitter at Doncaster on the Great Northern (of England). His biography describes his first job: "breaking" the edges of main rods by hand chiseling the corners and filing the radius. He did some firing before giving up fitting for motorcycles, aero engines, and high-performance cars, where there was no hand-filing.

Here in Michigan several family names recur from the days of logging and the earliest predecessors of the Michigan Central and Pere Marquette, into the auto age: Joy, Trowbridge, and Crapo come to mind from Paul Trap's lecture last week at the Michigan Railroad History Conference.

Also:
Jimmie Rodgers, the singing brakeman!
The entire Harriman family.

Aarne Frobom
Joy Road, Macomb County

Mily Balakiriv, after having risen to international fame as a concert pianist, conductor, composer, and recognized leader of the Russian Nationalist school of romantic symphonic composition in the second half of the 19th century, became so disillusioned with the world of music that he gave it all up from 1872 to 1876. During that time he was an RPO clerk for the Tran Siberian Railroad, before making his comeback.