| Notes |
- General Notes: Ibid. D-from Bertram Lammon
Doyle served in the Army Air Force during WWII.
((the following article appeared in The Montgomery Advertiser on Friday, May 4, 1984)
Retirees Meet Once A Month To Reminisce
By GINNY SMITH, Advertiser Staff Writer
"I've been working on the railroad all the livelong day... " If Doyle Lammon were to sing this old, familiar song, it would be no lie. The 64-year-old Montgomery native not only worked for the railroad all of one day, but for all of more than 40 years - and he just wasn't passing the time away.
In February of 1941, the 21-year-old began training as a fireman on a steam engine for L&N Railroad. The training ended after a series of OKs from the engineers under whom the firemen worked. "You had to do a 100 percent job for those old gentlemen in that day, too," Lammon said.
Lammon, who retired last August, said a strong back was a requirement for firing - scooping coal into a firebox through a door operated by the foot. "Burning coal was an art that you had to learn how to do. You had so many different types of coal," he said. For instance, some coal left hardly any ashes while other coal would leave much more residue after burning. Lammon's division was Montgomery and Mobile with stops including Fort Deposit, Brewton, Atmore and Flomaton.
Career Cut Short
His career was cut short by enlistment in the service for World War II. When he returned, he was promoted to engineer, a goal he had harbored as a child and the reason he entered the railroad business. "I just always wanted to be an engineer on a train," he said. But with the promotion came added responsibility. "It's almost impossible to sit up there and relax," he said. Lammon said he has driven trailer trucks and motorcycles and flown airplanes, but none of these vehicles put as much pressure on him as running a train. He said he feels pulling a train is more of an art than people realize.
Railroad crossings, speed regulations and brake applications are a few of the many things that cause the engineer worry. In addition, errors can cause equipment damage. "You can make just one little goof, and it can run up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars," he added.
Experience is a plus in engineering, he said. "I think the big secret of being a successful engineer is familiarity with the terrain that you run over," he said. One place where knowledge of route comes in handy is in the case of hog backs - the railroad term for knolls - and hills. Lammon said the train will stretch out as it passes over a hill, and then the cars will push against the engine on the way down. The engineer must adjust the power on the locomotive to compensate for these changes. No two trains will handle alike, Lammon said. "They're never made up alike. Your loads are distributed differently in them, and no two trains are the same."
Most Frightening Experience
The most frightening experience he could recall was a wreck at Wilcox caused by some faulty equipment on one of the boxcars. Some of the cars, including one carrying hazardous oil, turned over, and the entire crew was hospitalized for observation regarding the exposure to the oil. Engineers prefer to run passenger to freight, and those with the most seniority get passenger assignments.
Though Lammon never had a regular passenger train assignment, he did fill in for engineers on occasion when he brought his wife and son along for the ride in the car, even though family members were unauthorized passengers on the engine, he explained. "I worked all my life to get to run a passenger train, and they pulled them off-" Lammon said with a laugh. Lammon's friend Fred Rea, was a Montgomery engineer who did run a passenger train for four years for Western Railway before these trains stopped. Although he knew Rea before he went to work on the railroad, Lammon has acquired a number of friends from his years with the industry. " Railroad people are real clannish. They stick together," he said. On the first Wednesday of every month, Lammon meets with other retirees of the railroad industry for lunch.
Lammon said his biggest regret of his career is not being able to be with his children as much as he wanted and have the relationship he wanted with them. Of all the train stops on his route, Lammon said his favorite was home. "I was away from my family so much, sometimes the dog would bite me when I came home," he added.
Career Hard On Family
He said the railroad career is hard on the wife because the husband is "gone from home all the time and when he comes home, he's so grouchy he can't look in the mirror without fussing at [himself.]'' Train schedules, said Lammon, are inconsistent. Holidays and weekends are common workdays . For Ron Owens, an engineer for Seaboard System Railroad for the past nine years, the most traumatic experience in his railroad work was not being at home for the first 10 Christmases.
When Lammon married in 1949, he was assigned to work on a round trip run from Pensacola Fla., to Opp and would only be in Montgomery on Sundays. "That didn't make much of a honeymoon," he said. Living arrangements on the road depended on which crew a man worked. "For years and years," said Lammon, "train crews stayed on the cabooses in the yards." The engine crews had to find and finance a place to stay. In the 40s and 50s, boarding-type houses were common choices for stays since some stops, such as Graceville, Fla., and Georgiana, Fla., had no motels. One woman in Flomaton lent two or three bedrooms for 50 cents per night to the engine crew. Lammon described it as "one of the shoddiest places we had to stay in. All of us remember it. There wasn't any air conditioning; it was rough."
The engineers said the conductors and flagmen on the cabooses served as crew cooks who prepared such dishes as pork chops, steaks and biscuits. However, conditions have changed since the earlier years of Lammon's train career. Owens , who has worked with the railroad since 1963, said the company now furnishes the motel and a portion of the meals, and the caboose is mainly used as an office.
Owens agrees with Lammon that the engineer has a stressful job and cites two reasons: he must be alert at all times , even during the night and he must prepare to stop far in advance. Owens travels to schools to give information such as this figure in programs on railroad safety. He once asked a group of children what engineers did. One child replied, "All I've ever seen him do is wave at people when he goes by."
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1920 - 1987 (67 years)