Walker Transcript

Interview with with Ron Walker, Retired CN/VIA engineer

Date of Interview: October 30th, 2001 in Prince George, BC

Interviewer: Shiloh Durkee
Transcriber: Shiloh Durkee

BEGIN SIDE ONE, TAPE ONE

S. Durkee: We’re at the Prince George Railway Museum with Ron Walker. It is October 30^th today and we’re going to be talking to Ron a bit about what it was like when he worked at the CN and also, as well, some changes that he noticed in the community of Prince George as he went along. So we’ll just start out with some of your personal background if you could tell us when and when you were born and when you came to Prince George.

R.Walker:  Well, I wasn’t born in Prince George; I was born in Victoria, BC in 1930 and lived there for about sixteen years and then I moved over to New Westminister with my family and I hired on the railway when I was sixteen years old in the car department at Port Mann.  I worked there for…until 1949 and then I got laid off and I had the first chance to move to the first opening that was available and it happened to be that Prince George was about the second place I tried and I came up here in 1949 and I’ve been here ever since. And I transferred over from the car department over to engine service in 1951 and qualified as an engineer in 1956 and I worked until 1992 as an engineer but I transferred over to VIA rail for the last three and a half years.

S.Durkee:  What were your, or can you describe Prince George when you first came here? What your thoughts were…

R.Walker: Well, it’s a good thing I’d spent about six weeks in Blue River before I came up here because there was approximately five thousand people in Prince George at that time, wooden sidewalks, gravel roads and I thought “What am I getting’ into?” But I would never come back, or, never refuse to come back up again now because I’ve always liked it here.

S.Durkee: You just told me when you started working up here and you were talking about your actual job; did you have any training when you first started in New West or when you came up here?

R.Walker: No, no I started out just as a common labourer down there and just learned everything the hard way; brute strength and ignorance (laughing) and I transferred over to engine service; you had to have a three year stint as a fireman on steam engines; I worked on steam engines for seven years altogether but after the third year, I qualified as an engineer and worked that biggest part of the time after that.

S.Durkee: Mmm…okay. Can you describe a typical day, well, I guess we’ll go as an engineer because that’s what you were the longest, a typical day when you would’ve started when you got there to the end of the day.

R.Walker: Well, lots of them were pretty darn rough cause just on, say, a regular freight job, you’d be sittin’ around half of the day waitin’ for a call to go to work cause they could never really get things running exactly the way you like them to so anyway, you sit around all day long and maybe just about the time you’re ready to go to bed, then you get called to go to work and you’ve got about a twelve hour trip ahead of you so you had it pretty rough sometimes. And there was lots of good trips too of course but you always remember the bad ones and you can’t remember the good ones (laughing).  So…

S.Durkee: So what time would you have started?

R.Walker: Well, it was twenty-four hour call, you never know - whenever they decided to run a train. You couldn’t plan anything cause lots of times you’d have a maybe a day or so lined up with the family to go somewhere and all of a sudden you get called to go to work and you’d have to cancel it so… Lots of disappointment but that’s part of the job.

S.Durkee: Did it you find that hard to raise a family?

R.Walker: Ah, it was in a way; but I don’t know. I enjoyed that more than I did when I was working the eight-to-five cause eight-to-five, you’re tied up all the time, everyday of the week and you get the weekends off the same as everybody else did and this way here, working twenty-four call, you can at least go out on the weekends, or during the week, when it wasn’t busy on the lake or something like that.  There was lots of good benefits but there was lots of bad ones too of course!

(Laughing). 

S.Durkee: Right, as with any. Do recall how much you were paid from all your jobs, like when you started when you were sixteen to when you retired?

R.Walker: Well, I started out at $0.67 an hour and then after that I got paid by the mile so over the years it progressed better and better, naturally, cause everything’s being going better and better all the time. I was making good wage, especially for a fellow that only had a Grade 10 education. Actually, Grade 9! (Laughing) I think I spent about a month in Grade 10 and I couldn’t stand it so I went lookin’ for a job and got one so…

S.Durkee: So that was $0.67 when you first started and then you were paid by the mile when you got to be…?

R.Walker: Up to the engine service, yeah.

S.Durkee: So your shifts would’ve been the twelve-hour…

R.Walker: There was no standard shifts by the hour unless you get on a regular job, say a passenger train or something like that. But you see, what happened was that the railways, people would be, say like the lumber right in Prince George; they’d be loadin’ lumber all day long and then they’d ship it at nighttime so most of the trains run at night.

S.Durkee: So, when you were an engineer, where was your…

R.Walker: From here to McBride or from here to Endako, just a long subdivision and that took long enough most of the time, especially the steam engines because you’d have to stop every twenty-five miles or so for water and service the engine. When the diesels came, it was just a straight shot. It was hard to get use to in fact!

S.Durkee: The diesels came in the…

R.Walker: Diesels came in fifty…late ’57, early ’58.

S.Durkee: Can you tell me what that was like when the diesels came in?

R.Walker: Well, just like getting out of a Model-T into a Cadillac so… (Laughing). We’re so used to stopping, like I say every twenty-five/thirty miles, to take water in the tender on the steam engines and then the engineer would grease up the engine, check it out and the firemen would take the water. But on a diesel engine, you got on there and just sat in the seat and rode; you didn’t have to stop. Not unless you met another train or something like that but there was nothin’ to stop for as far the train there. Well, you used to have to make an inspection every so many miles but other than that, it was a straight shot.

S.Durkee: So did you prefer the diesel then?

R.Walker: Well, in some ways but steam is nice but they weren’t too practical that’s the only thing wrong. A lot of bull work; they weren’t…they were hot in the summertime, cold in the winter – half the time you couldn’t see where you were goin’ in the wintertime because steam blowing around (laughing). Oh, it’s fun, it’s fun.

S.Durkee: When you were working down south and as well up, who were you mostly working with? Was it middle-aged men, Caucasian – what sort of groups of people?

R.Walker: Oh, down on the coast, in the car department, there was a mixture of everything.  There was Hungarian, let’s see, I think there was East Indian, or Indo-Canadian I guess you call em, Ukrainian, Italian, whites or English so a little bit of everything.

S.Durkee: And when you came up here?

R.Walker: Ah, quite a bit the same. Mostly they’re Ukrainian, Italian, English, the odd Frenchman, or French-Canadian but there was very few East Indians, or Indo-Canadians, here at that time. In fact today, I don’t think there’s very many on the railway.

S.Durkee: Do you recall any incidences at work? Did everyone get along?

R.Walker: Oh, yeah…pretty well.  A few little arguments once in awhile but nothing that you’d wanna punch anybody out for (laughing).

S.Durkee: If there was ever a problem at work who would have gone to and do you recall any major problems that you had when you were working?

R.Walker: Well, we had supervisors, we’d have to go to the supervisor or what do they call them? A trainmaster, like an engine service and like when I first hired on it was called the car foreman (indecipherable due to background noise). Most of the time there was not much of any problems.

(Short pause in tape due to noise from a meeting next door to our interview)

S.Durkee: So can you tell me some of your or all your best memories of working for the railway. Any or everything!

(Laughing)

R.Walker: That’s quite a bundleful in almost 50 years!

S.Durkee: We’ve got lots of tape!

R.Walker: Ummm…I don’t really know where to start because basically I think I enjoyed the biggest part of it because I was working steady. I remember 1948 when they had the big flood down on the Coast there and there was water running through boxcar doors and so from the ground level. I was fortunate enough to be called back to work about a month or month and a half ahead of most other people there – made a difference there. I don’t know. There’s been lots and lots of rough bum trips on steam engines. There was that one time when the track was in such poor shape that we’d be lucky to get over the subdivision in the time without having a derailment of some sort (indecipherable)… injured… (indecipherable due to background noise). But by and large the best part of it really was after I transferred to VIA rail; I really enjoyed that because it was strictly passenger work and it was just straight shot…you know you didn’t have to fool around switchin’ or meeting other…well, you met other trains but there was very seldom any delay and another feature of it; it was nice in one way was that we only worked one way cause we worked one way and then dead-head back or else dead-head out and work back.

S.Durkee: Dead-head out?

R.Walker: Yeah, because the train only ran three days a week so rather than have us layover in a hotel or motel either in Smithers or Jasper, they’d just send us back home with a cab or a bus whatever.

S.Durkee: And sorry, when did you go over to VIA rail?

R.Walker: Ah, let’s see…three and half years…fifty…’92…it’d be ’89 I guess.

S.Durkee: That was your main draw to working for the passenger or did you like working for freight? It was with the freight trains before wasn’t it?

R.Walker: Basically, yeah. I worked everything; yard engines, freight train, passenger trains. But the passenger train with VIA rail was a real good job, passenger train on the CN when CN had it was a very poor job cause I’d worked three days a week or three trips a week but I’d only spend sixteen hours a day, three times here a week in Prince George. The rest of the time was in McBride or on the road so I didn’t have much of a family life. I’d get home at say, 6’o clock in the morning from the train at night time out of McBride, and then I’d have to sleep til maybe about noon and then go to work again at 9’o clock that night – didn’t leave too much time.

S.Durkee: Not at all. So what would be some of, I don’t want to say worse memories, but what are some of the….well, I guess some of the worst memories you have of working for the railway?

R.Walker: Well, it’s kind of hard to categorize it. One of the worst things was having wrecks or something like that like that one I had out at Bednesti there when I was telling you there in 1976. I thought I had met my waterloo there because I was laying on the floor of the engine when we hit and I had my eyes open and all of a sudden everything went black in there and a thought went through my mind that “this could be it”. So, fortunately, I’m still here.

S.Durkee: What happened?

R.Walker: Well, a section foreman that was responsible for it, he was so engrossed in a leaky gas can on his motorcar than instead of just putting the thing off to the side of the track and forgettin’ about it – he was kind of an eccentric type in a way because he’d been hit too many times when he was an amateur boxer in the airforce and he was a little bit on the punchdrunk side I guess – he was concentrating so much on this gas can that when we went for lunch at the next siding from where I had this derailment, he left a switch open and I went in on top of thirty-five empty boxcars there at about forty miles an hour with forty-five cars of lumber so…

S.Durkee: I can’t imagine what that would’ve been like.

R.Walker: Well, it wasn’t pretty (chuckling) but it didn’t bother me that much really. I mean you know a lot of people, they get all shook up and that sort of thing but the only injury I got was a bit of a whiplash in my neck which bothered me for quite a few years because working a switcher job, I had to keep on twisting my neck around to look backwards for signals and that but the only thing I got was a little bruise on my thigh about the size of a quarter. Other than that, there was nothing. And it didn’t bother me mentally. I guess I had my mind made up before that if I was going to get it, I was going to get it.

S.Durkee: When you were in accidents, like we have Workers Comp today, was there anything back then that compensated…

R.Walker: Oh yeah, but there was nothing to be compensated because I wasn’t injured. I was even willing to go to work right away because they sent the wrecking crew out and they only had one engineer on that train and you were suppose to have two because they worked around the clock and I was quite willing to go to work but they wouldn’t let me until I went to have a medical so there you go (chuckling).

S.Durkee: Was that the only wreck you were involved in?

R.Walker: Ah, with another train yeah or with other cars but a couple of times I hit vehicles at crossings. One fellow going to work at 8 o’clock in the morning at Aleza Lake; that’s about forty miles east of here and he was going to work, sun was shining, it was just before 8 o’clock in the morning, and he looks to the left to see if there’s any traffic and well, I was coming from the right. That’s what I said to him after we hit the truck, the half-ton truck that he had there and slewed it around and threw him up the side of the track and banged his head up against the window so cut a little bit but nothing serious. But anyway, I knew him because I had been around that way before and I said to him, “What’s the matter John? Why didn’t you see us comin’?” Oh, he said, “I looked to the left, I no looked to the right!” And I said, “Well, we were coming from the right” (chuckling).  But…we’ve had all kinds of derailments. Oh man, oh man. For years there were the tracks being so poor and they weren’t keeping it up and we’d be lucky to get over the roads lots of times without having a derailment of some sort either with on one car or maybe several cars. So, after they got it fixed up, it wasn’t bad.

S.Durkee: So the main causes of accidents would’ve just been poor track?

R.Walker: Oh yeah, yeah. Well, there was some speed involved. With some fellas, there was just no end to how fast they wanted to go but I guess we all did some of that.

S.Durkee: Right. What would’ve been the procedures of…that you would’ve had to have gone through after…for example this section foreman who was the cause of this accident. What would be some of the things that would happen after…paperwork?

R.Walker: Well, for me there was nothing. I had to make a statement with my superior officer like the trainmaster; I had to go up and explain what happened there but it was quite obvious that the switch was open. I couldn’t have seen it any sooner than I did. I just happened to be in the position I was in; I was talkin’ to the conductor on the radio and looking at the nice, bright sunny day and I saw that red target – looked the size of a boxcar when I saw it but it’s only about that big around (chuckling).  After they asked about what happened, that was all it was for me there but then they… the section foreman, he was demoted to a sectionman and the fella that actually left the switch open, the fellow that was actually like his second-in-command there, he got uh…I’m not sure what happened to him. He got fired or if he got demoted himself but…

S.Durkee: So there were definitely consequences.

R.Walker: Oh yeah. You can’t do things like that without getting something. Well, they cause quite a bit of damage because, just an example, the second engine I had on the train, like the first one that got smashed up…well, they both got banged up by a flatcar of lumber, loaded lumber, hit the centre of the engine, the second engine and bent the frame, punctured the fuel tank and it caught fire. The fire burnt right up there and ruined the main generator and it bent the frame and took all the tensile strength out of it so they had to write that engine off and it had just come out of the back shop from a fleet refurbishment; it was just like a brand new engine. It had less than five thousand miles on and it was gonna…. I guess it was just one of those things.

S.Durkee:  When you working do you recall any important achievements, what were your strengths working there? Were you ever recognized for anything that you did?

R.Walker: Well, yeah, to a certain degree. In some respects, I was a little bit more mechanically inclined to do things mechanically on both the steam and the diesels and a lot of fellows just got on there and opened the throttle up. If it went, it went. If it didn’t, it didn’t. Myself, I’d make an effort to try to find out what was the matter and it seemed I got a little acknowledgement for that.

S.Durkee: You were saying that you pretty much just learned it on the job. Were you ever put through any training whatsoever?

R.Walker: Yeah, I took a test to find out if I was going to be, what I guess they class that as “management material”, and I was so cheesed off with it, with that whole test and everything else, I never ever did inquire as to how I made out. But apparently I must’ve been satisfactory because a few years later…a couple of years later, they asked me if I was interested in a job as a master mechanic. I said, “Only if I can be here in Prince George”, well the master mechanic at the time, him and I were good friends, but he says, “We don’t like to have officials in the company from our home terminal”. Well, it’s kind of ridiculous in a way because a master mechanic, you know your equipment, you know the track, you know the men…what could be better?  So I said, “No, if I have to go, I don’t want it” so I just stayed.

S.Durkee: Right. What were the reasons why they didn’t want the officials?

R.Walker: Oh, I don’t know. They figured there’s too much camaraderie between the men and the officials. You’re supposed to be harder than most I guess. I don’t know! Kinda strange but I can see with some of the other jobs maybe like the trainmaster but for a master mechanic, the ideal thing is to know your territory, how the trains operate, how the engines operate, how you handle your train, all this sorta thing. You get a strange guy in there and he doesn’t know the first thing about it.

S.Durkee:  Where would they have wanted you to go then?

R.Walker: Oh, I don’t know, wherever.  I have no idea. No, I could’ve cared less.

S.Durkee:  If it wasn’t Prince George, you didn’t want it.

R.Walker: Well, I was old enough then; I was around forty or forty-five I guess and I wasn’t willing to move around anymore.

S.Durkee: Just talking about changes over time during your job and in the community, do you remember significant changes at work as you went through? Technology…well, I guess the diesels coming in would be one. Are there any others?

R.Walker:  Well, even right from the steamers when we first started out, we had small engines and small trains and we just gradually got bigger and bigger and we had a limit on the steam trains because we didn’t have all the radios and that sort of thing so we had a limit to fifty-nine cars. If they had over fifty-nine cars, they had to put an extra trainman on to…if they needed to, they could relay signals around a curve or that sort of thing. But after we got the radios and communication from the head-end and tail-end, that ah…trains just got progressively longer and longer and now they’re getting longer and longer and they’re getting heavier and heavier. It’s like the average person doesn’t realize, like these coal trains that you see out of here, would you have any idea yourself how much they weigh?

S.Durkee:  None.

R.Walker:  The average coal train was close to 15,000 tons. Like I’ve talked to fellas driving logging trucks – “Oh, I grossed 45,000 pounds there last trip!” – the smallest locomotive we had there was about four times that, just the engine itself (laughing).

S.Durkee: Right, 15,000 tons. Now, was that was when you were working; you had to experience them getting bigger and bigger.

R.Walker:  Oh yeah. Bigger and longer.

S.Durkee:  What challenges did that present to you?

R.Walker: It just got progressively more demanding you might say because you couldn’t yank the throttle open on a long heavy train otherwise you’d have more than one train into several pieces so you had to be more careful that way because you still had the same coupling even though you’re gonna haul twice as much weight with it so you had to be more careful.  Then the engines for diesels, they put more together; start out with one, then you have two, then you have three, sometimes you even have five and you just have to be awful careful with them because you’ve got a heck of a lot of power there. Like now, diesels are now up five thousand horsepower each. They put two or three of those together; you got twenty/twenty-five thousand horsepower.

S.Durkee: As I’ve gone along, I’ve learned…I did not know this but I learned that the caboose was now gone. What did you think of that?

R.Walker: Well, it never did bother me but they sure raised heck with Charlie MacDonald! (Laughing) I’d say it was just part of technology and modern day things like when they went after the…take the firemen off the diesel engines in 1958, they have this Kellogg Commission…

S.Durkee:  The what?

R.Walker:  The Kellogg Commission…

S.Durkee: Mmm…kay.

R.Walker: It was the first time, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that labour, or railway labour, went to court over any matter and they went to the court procedure with us here and they had this Kellogg Commission and they, you know, the companies fought that they wanted to get the firemen off cause the job was redundant, which it was. What happened was, instead of the firemen’s union fighting to keeping the firemen on and taking the head-end brakemen’s job, they let the job go and they end up with a brakeman and a fireman on the head-end so, or brakeman engineer on the head-end and a fireman. So they end up that they had to open up a training centre then to start training engineers because they had no training for engineers anymore because they used to come up through the ranks as a fireman so… I kind of lost my train of though there now… (Laughing)

S.Durkee: Where did this take place, the court battle?

R.Walker: I’m not really sure. I don’t know if it was down east in Montreal or… I think it was actually all across the country if I’m not mistaken but the company said at that time when they took that fireman off…I’ve got my train back now! With no caboose! (Laughing) But anyway, what they said in that Royal Commission they had there was that their aim within ten years was a two-man crew, and that two-men on the head-end; no caboose. That was in 1958. Well, it just happened to be about maybe the last five, six, seven years that they finally got away with the caboose and they have what they call a “Japanese conductor” now; it’s a black box that they put in the tail-end and it’s electronic and I guess it was made in Japan so that’s why they call it a “Japanese conductor” so… But BC Rail’s got them now too, and CP and all the railways.

S.Durkee: Just having the two men now, does that increase their workload?

R.Walker: Ah, not really, not that much cause most of the time the biggest part of the work was done by the crew on the head-end anyway unless you’re getting a major switching job or something like that then they’d have to use the conductor in the tail-end in the caboose but like nowadays, they don’t have the same amount of switching anymore.

S.Durkee:  The same amount of switching?

R.Walker:  Yeah, well they don’t have that anymore like they used to; they’ve gotten away from a lot of it now. They marshal (line up the cars in order) [1] trains a little differently and then they have, more or less, unit trains - like the coal trains, unless there’s something wrong with the car, they just come in here and go right out, keep on going.

S.Durkee: When did they switch from doing it manually to having signals and whatnot?

R.Walker:  Oh, that’s a good question. I forget what year that was now. Must have been around the early 90s. No, late 80s I guess. Late 80s and early 90s.

S.Durkee: So what did you like to do when you weren’t working?

R.Walker: Oh! That’s hard to say now…what the heck? I used to enjoy fishing, which I haven’t done for so many years now I forget how to put a worm on a hook anymore but… Oh, I don’t know.  I used to make the odd little trip once in awhile and then, let’s see, since 1978 I’ve been involved with this little train in the park there, that Fort George railway and that takes up quite a bit of my time.

S.Durkee: Tell me how you got involved with that working at the…it’s at the Fort George…

R.Walker: Fort George Park, yeah. Well, I was…I knew all the people that worked on it and restored it and I knew the train cause it used to sit in front of the station over here on First Avenue. Then the city referred it from the CN when they wanted to put the new station in and I became involved in that; not the actual re-building of it but just shortly after it started running so since 1978 except for a couple of years I took off when my youngest son was around ten years old so…he was kind of an afterthought in the family so…(chuckling) I missed out on the first kids I had there because I was workin’ all the time. I had more time to spend with him so I took a couple of years off of running that train down at the park there but I’ve been at it now, well this would be my twenty-fourth year comin’ up.

S.Durkee: Is your official title the “conductor” now?

R.Walker:  No, no, no. That’s a swear word conductor! Engineer, engineer!

(Laughing)

S.Durkee: Engineer! Sorry!

R.Walker: But I’m also self-appointed president, the head flunky. There’s only three of us in the society, the Fort George Railway society. One is a chartered accountant; he looks after the finances and the other fella, he used to run the engine with me but he’s given up now so that’s all there is. I scrounge up a little bit of help once in awhile but I do most of it myself. I’m trying to get others involved in it but you get too many kinda oddball types. They wanna get down there and monkeywrench this and monkeywrench that and you can’t you do that with that thing cause its gotta be left the way it is right now unless something does break and there’s only been one little thing break ever since its been there so…

S.Durkee: What kind of engine is it, or sorry, what kind of train is it?

R.Walker: It’s a steam engine, wood-fired steam engine, two-foot gauge. It was used on construction of the present day CN line out here when it was being built in 1913-1914.

S.Durkee:  It’s seems like you’re one of the few people that I’ve talked to that once retired, is still involved in trains.

R.Walker:  Oh yeah.

S.Durkee:  Have trains always been a passion for you or it did it just start out as a job?

R.Walker: Well, it started out as a job but I remember when I was going to school, the CN trains in Victoria there, they used to turn the engine around just a mile, about two miles out of Victoria because they had no place to turn in Victoria itself so they had to come up to a Y.

END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE ONE, BEGIN SIDE TWO

(A couple of minutes lost here talking about changes in Prince George)

S.Durkee: We’re just continuing talking about some of the changes in Prince George…

R.Walker: Like I say, after the pulp mills came in, well then everything just seemed to get better and better and more population just got bigger and bigger.

S.Durkee: Before the sixties, did you ever have to travel outside of town to acquire any of your needs or did Prince George always provide what you…

R.Walker: Ah, pretty well everything you needed. It was always a little bit cheaper if you went someplace else if you have to be going but it’s kind of pointless to make a special trip cause you go to Edmonton or something like that to buy you something unless it was something pretty major. But you just had to pretty well grin and bear with prices they were charging. And then you didn’t have the variety either of course but then everything just kept getting better and better every year.

S.Durkee: So they’ve been positive changes.

R.Walker: Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I wouldn’t leave here now like a lot of people retire and move down to the Okanagen or something like that and that’s the last place I want to go. Just as happy here. I don’t mind shovelling a bit of snow and family’s all here so…everybody I know. If I move down there, I gotta meet knew people and when you get older, that’s kind of hard to do. You know, you don’t have the same contact with people as you do…unless they’re a bunch of old cronies (laughing). I still can’t picture myself as being a senior citizen but I’m there I guess.

S.Durkee: (Laughing) Oh…well, age is relative.  Lots of people, when they talk about the railway, they sort of have a romantic vision of the railroad, much more so than they do of driving cars. Why do you think that is?

R.Walker: Well, it’s not so much now but years ago with the steamers; there was a certain romance to it like there was no two engineers that would run the engine the same way. You know they’d…basically you think they’d be doing the same thing but just the combination of the throttle position and the reverse lever position just made it different. There was something to it; you were doing something and like on the diesel engine, you just sit there and ride. If it goes, it goes. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. With a steam engine, there was many different things you could do like even if you broke some of the parts on one side of the engine, you have basically two steam engines underneath the same boiler, one on each side and they work together. Well, it’s theoretically possible to work with just one side. If something breaks on one side, you can -not haul the train - but you can move it, at least you wouldn’t be stuck anyway. With a diesel engine, if something goes haywire, just one little diode burns out you’re finished.

S.Durkee: One little…

R.Walker: …diode. There electronic now and everything and there all computerized and everything else nowadays - they’ve advanced quite a bit since I retired.

S.Durkee: Would you still be able to drive one today?

R.Walker:  Oh, I’d be able to drive it alright but I mean the thing is if things go wrong, there’s nothing you can do about it because like I say, if these diodes go or something like that or something mechanical or electrical, there’s nothing you can do. You’d have to be a qualified electrician so…

S.Durkee: Mm..hmm…right.

R.Walker: When we first got the diesel engines, we had a master mechanic but he was capable of teaching us, or capable of learning, some of the basics of the diesel engine and when they first come out, with the first models we ever had, I knew the electrical system on them inside and out and if something went wrong, I could pretty well fix it.  And very seldom I got stuck on the road where as lots of other people would.  Cause I did take the interest in learning it and then of course the company, they didn’t want you knowing too much about it because “monkeyitis” is one of the worst things there is.

(Laughing)

S.Durkee: Monkeyitis?

R.Walker: Well, if you don’t know exactly what’s goin’ on and you think that this is going to do that, you’re going to cause more trouble than it’s worth.

S.Durkee: You learned a lot while you went along just through self-interest.

R.Walker: Yeah, well I’m still doing it. I mean like now I’ve gotta pretty well look after the maintenance of this train down here now because what I have my old ICS course I got when I first hired on as a fireman and there’s a lot of stuff in there that I can adapt to this train here, it doesn’t cover it exactly like but the basics are there.

S.Durkee: What is an ISC course exactly? I’ve heard that term before.

R.Walker:  International Correspondence.

S.Durkee: Okay.

R.Walker: No, it’s a big outfit; it’s still going. You’ve never seen it in the mail; you get the flyer from ICS?

S.Durkee: Well…yeah.

R.Walker: Well, different courses you can take? I took the one that was a steam locomotive engineer so…  I had everything at that time from steam and diesel.

S.Durkee: What kind of training do they have to go through nowadays as opposed to what you had to do with not as much training?

R.Walker: Oh, I had training alright – three years of working with an engineer and even though theoretically you weren’t supposed to do it, the firemen was supposed to just strictly fire the engine, and you’re suppose to watch the engineer and then all of a sudden the magic day three years later, you’re supposed to go from this side to that side and be able to do it all. It didn’t work quite that way but like I say, I just seemed to be a bit more mechanically inclined than a lot of the fellas and when I was running an engine, even when I first started out, I guess I did a good enough job that the fellas would trust me enough and I’d be running the engine less times just a year or so as a fireman.  In fact, I ran the engine the first shift I worked as a fireman (chuckling). It was just a yard engine but the fella I worked with there, we were on duty for I think it was seventeen hours at a derailment in the yard. We weren’t working all the time but we were on duty and we split the shift between us there so it was on the first shift I worked. But I mean I had some experience by hostling engines around before that but not actually switching…

S.Durkee: Sorry, hossing?

R.Walker: Hostling. That’s moving steam engines in and out of the roundhouse and spotting them for water and (indecipherable) for oil. Yeah, lots of experience! (Laughing)

S.Durkee: Oh yeah! (Laughing)

R.Walker: Gone by the wayside now though.

S.Durkee: When you were working, I recall that there were, what was it? A couple of strikes? Did you ever feel in danger of losing your job or was it always a very secure form of employment?

R.Walker: Oh, yeah at times we kind of stuck our neck out a couple of times there because we had to use a threat a violence to save our hide, you might say, cause like around here in the yard here, there was eleven sawmills and planing mills here at one time. Well, that was quite a bit of work; you spend about four hours switchin’ the mills pulling all the loads out and then another four hours to put the empties back in again. (Background noise –short pause). Anyway, when the IWA, one year in particular I remember when they had strike there, we had kind of a joint meeting with them and they said, “If you see a fellow standing with a rock in his hand” like that (gesturing) “it’s just a threat” he says. “They’re not going to throw it”.  We didn’t know for sure whether he would or not because you get a few of the radicals there you know. Actually, I didn’t receive any penalty but I had to make a… I think I made eleven statements – made out eleven statements one day on account of different events while this one strike was on. Just one day there, I did that. I sat down facing the typewriter (laughing), top of the typewriter, all day. 

S.Durkee: And when was this?

R.Walker: Oh, back in the fifties, late fifties.

S.Durkee: And how long did that go on for?

R.Walker: Hmmm… I don’t know. It was a couple or three weeks I think. Couple of weeks I think.

S.Durkee: And everything just sort of stopped?

R.Walker: All the mills, they shut down. They had picket lines up and everything else and we wouldn’t go in and cross the picket lines so we got penalized for that because they figured we should go in there and pull the mills because the company was suppose to pull the cars out of there so they could ship them on their way. But like when you got a guy standing there with a rock in his hand, no way!

(Pause in tape for a couple of seconds)

S.Durkee: So we were just talking about the strikes…one thing I wanted to ask you was you obviously had to stop along the east line as you went up to McBride in all these little communities and most of these communities don’t exist anymore. What do you remember of them when they were in their heydays? Places like Aleza Lake…

R.Walker: Well, being on the engine, we missed out on a lot of the meeting people and that sort of thing because like the conductor had to be doing the talking or if we were on a way-freight and way-freight to unload because like say at Sinclair Mills there, Upper Fraser and Sinclair Mills both, there was no highway through there at the time for them to be able to haul groceries and that so they all went out by railway and we’d sit there sometimes, forty-five minutes, hour, hour and a half, unloading groceries into half-ton trucks and they’d pull away and we’d be sittin’ on the engine looking for signals or something like that cause you never how long they were going to be but the conductor and the trainmen, they’d be right there talking to the people so if on the head-end, we never got a chance to talk to too many people so… We met a few people.

S.Durkee: Most them, they’re almost just like ghost towns now.

R.Walker: Oh yeah. It’s surprising what’s still around though. I mean, like Sinclair Mills there’s still a lot of people, Aleza Lake, Giscome and there’s other places like Penny; there’s a few people that live around Penny but you have access by road now so… Dome Creek… but there’s lots of places that are gone now too.

S.Durkee: What do you think of the loss of the old train stations and…. Those one’s were neat, with all their character like the Penny station.

R.Walker: Yeah, well once again, I never had too much to do with them because I was sittin’ on the engine all the time. That was our post (chuckling).  That’s where I stayed most of the time.

S.Durkee: Right.

R.Walker:  But there were pretty nice places there out…depending on the people of course. If there was a family, say like with a telegraph operator and his family and everything else, the station was generally in better shape but if it was a section foreman just himself, more or less living there by himself, well some of them were in pretty rough shape.

S.Durkee: Yeah, right.

R.Walker:  But like the Penny one there, most of the time they had families living there all the time.

S.Durkee: Thinking back then, how would you sum up your career with the railway?

R.Walker: Well, I don’t think I could’ve done any better financially or my own satisfaction than what I did with the railway. It had its good times, it had its bad times but all in all, I don’t think I could’ve done much better. Especially with a Grade 9 education making, well when I left there, around $60,000 a year so… Of course, as far as security and that with the railway now, it’s just like any other job; there’s just no security anymore. Your there for day by day almost.

S.Durkee: So you sum it up then as being mostly positive?

R.Walker: Oh yeah, yeah - with some rough spots.

(Laughing)

S.Durkee: As with everything! Do you today know any other people that might be interested in being interviewed or that might have different stories to tell?

R.Walker: Actually, I’m even getting’ out touch right now cause like myself, I’ve been off the railway now for coming up to ten years already.  Hmm…I don’t know, I just can’t think of anybody just off hand. There quite a few people that moved away; there’s one fella, Al Berg, he’s been up here since the fifties but ah…I can’t think of anybody else. I’m just thinking about engineers.

S.Durkee: Oh right. Ah, any other divisions too, like any other…

R.Walker: Let’s see…Hollis Wood; he’d be good.

S.Durkee: I got him!

R.Walker: You got him heh? He didn’t mention that; he phoned me up and told me that he’d given you my name so…

S.Durkee: Right. Well, that’s okay. So is there anything else you feel that we didn’t talk about? I’m sure you have so many stories…

R.Walker: Well, I don’t know; the old memory’s going and going. It does work out that you can usually remember things farther back than you can present day but I think we pretty well covered everything.

END OF INTERVIEW

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