In memory of those who graduated before us...

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Comment by Tom Abbott on August 6, 2009 at 2:21am

One of the best friends I ever had. And one of the few guys who could beat me at chess, much to my chagrin.

I once got him a job working on the Katy Railroad with me. We worked as station agents/dispatcher/clerks, and worked for guys who went on vacation or were sick or otherwise were unable to work. So we ended up working all over the place.

One time he and I had stayed out rather late partying and were both scheduled to work for some vacationing station agents, he in McAlester and me in Pryor. Neither of us had much rest and it so happened that a train was traveling from Denison Texas to Parsons, Kansas, that night.

Our principle job in handling the train was to report the time of its passage by our particular location to the dispatcher in Denison along with redirecting the train to meet other trains if there happened to be any.

Anyway, that night as the train was nearing McAlester station, Jim dozed off while sitting in his chair and the train passed by him without him even knowing it had passed. This did not pose any safety issues since the train already had its "train orders" and unless they were changed by the Dispatcher, the train would continue on under its original orders and if the Dispatcher had wanted to change the trains movement orders he would have rung Jim up (which would naturally cause him to wake up from his sleep) and given him the orders to pass onto the train. Since the train was given no new orders, it just kept on rolling north.

Well, about three hours later, this same train was nearing the Pryor train station, and I had fallen asleep just as Jim had done, and the train went roaring right through Pryor still headed north. I never heard a thing, which just goes to show how tired I was since the train depot is located just a few feet from the tracks.

The next thing I knew, the dispatchers phone in the depot was ringing and I answered it and a dispatcher wanted to know what time the train has passed my station. Having completely missed the trains passing, I wasn't sure when the train had passed by, but I had enough experience by then, to compensate for my lack of knowledge, so I got on the radio and called the train and asked him what his current location was, and knowing his speed, I calculated how long it would take him to get from here to there and that's the time I gave the dispatcher.

As far as Jim and I were concerned, that train never even existed. Neither of us ever saw or heard it. That must be a unique experience in railroading. Not our proudest moment, but nobody got hurt or was ever in any danger.

Jim died one foggy morning while he was driving to Pryor, and checking on railcars on sidetracks at Chouteau and Mazie. He was due to be at work at 7am that morning, but was killed by a cement truck that appeared out of the fog at Mazie about 630am. Since the accident happened before Jim was officially on duty, even though he was actually doing work for the railroad, the railroad refused to pay the insurance his family deserved, instead screwing them out of tens of thousands of dollars by claiming he was on his own time when the accident happened.

God Bless you, Jim. And let God win some of those chess matches every now and then.

Till we meet again.

TA