Fifteen years later, living in Belleville, IL working for the CM&W I received a call at 2 AM….hurry, an AMTRAK accident.  It was a multiple fatality crossing accident only 15 miles from home.  I rushed to the scene.  An Amtrak train going over 80 mph struck a black Firebird when the Firebird ran the blinking flashers and drove around the gates.  All three men in the car were killed.  Police were scouring the woods in the area for body parts.  The coroner wouldn’t allow the train to leave until their major body parts were found.

I did the investigation for AMTRAK.  The evidence was quite clear.  I had the train back up and had the Police note the condition of the engine lights, the crossing lights and arms.  All worked as intended.  The engineer blew the whistle for them.  (I always had the engineers do this because it is simply so loud and unforgettable.  As part of the investigation, I had to go into the woods with a flashlight to photograph some of the debris.  My foot kicked something that sounded like it was a watermelon…wrong…it was a head.  I didn’t find any more body parts, but I stayed until I was satisfied there would be no surprises.  The last thing found was an arm lying on top of a passenger car a few cars down from the locomotive.

Don’t worry and don’t be sad.  These guys were dirtheads in the truest sense.  They were drunk and fleeing the scene after all three raped a girl at a bar.  No claim, no lawsuit, no bad feelings.

The Webster City Turn train crew got wind that the Trainmaster was going to do some testing on their train.  He was going   to check their speed and see if the whistle was blown at crossings, etc.  Ever the prankster, Sherwood decided to play a little game with their boss.

Sherwood stopped the train.  He climbed the engine steps and threw the engineer, 6’6”, 260, maybe 290 pound engineer, over his shoulder and carried him off the engine and over to a telephone pole and told him to just stand there. You do what Sherwood tells you to do.  He did…he stood there as Sherwood surrounded him with dry brush.  Sherwood lit it when he saw the Trainmaster’s car coming their way on the highway.

What the TM didn’t know and was too far away to quite see was that the brush surrounding the Engineer was too far from him to actually burn him, but from the road it looked like Sherwood got carried away and burnt his engineer at the stake.     Classic….simply classic!

We were all in a bar in Ft. Dodge.  Sherwood, was taking on all comers in arm wrestling.  It was time for the big match.  Could Sherwood who was pushing 60 take on 20 something Jim?  Sherwood beat him and beat him again. Then it was my turn.  I’m no tough guy and certainly was no match for Sherwood.

I put my arm up on the bar and jokingly pled with him, “don’t break my arm.”  He laughed and I knew he had no intention of hurting me.  We squared up and got ready.  I jumped up and kissed him on the cheek and pushed his arm down.  I won.  I never really knew if he was mad about that or not because I left in a hurry…I really think he was angry, but he had a great sense of humor.  He got over it.  Sense of humor….later the story about Sherwood burning a guy at the stake.

Twenty-five miles east of Ft. Dodge is Webster City.  Sherwood was a conductor on the Webster City Turn, a local that left Ft. Dodge in the morning and switched the industries between the two cities and came back and tied up.  He was quite a character and used to barbeque steaks on the back platform of his caboose for the crew.

One of the industries switched in Webster City was a scrap yard.  The track going into the scrap yard cut across a trucking company’s lot near their parking area.  The tracks had been there long before a trucking company bought the land.  Evidently the truck guys didn’t want the railroad cutting across their parking lot.

I got involved when I received a claim from a guy at the trucking company who said his car was damaged by our railcars when we shoved them in.  He and other employees of this trucking company had parked on the tracks.  I didn’t pay.  Soon after that I heard that two mean dogs were chained up near the tracks and would attack anyone riding the cars into the junk yard.  I heard Sherwood was attacked by them and jumped off a gon being shoved into the yard and killed them with his bare hands.  That’s when the big boss at the trucking company came out and challenged Sherwood to a fist fight….bad move.  This trucking guy looked like a well built heavy weight…toughest guy in Webster City, but it didn’t take long…Sherwood bloodied him and we never had trouble from them again.

More to come about Sherwood that shows what a character he was.  At this point, think of him like the guy in the Clint Eastwood movie that took on all comers….only Sherwood, normally sporting an impish smile, liked practical jokes, too.  More about Sherwood to follow.

The Damage Prevention Managers and the Cargo Claim Managers met yearly to discuss and make their goals for the upcoming year.  At one meeting I was telling one of the field managers the story of an accident I had investigated when one of the Engineers overheard and said, “I know that guy.”

This guy is well known in his Iowa town.  He is an albino with a laughingly funny name that I won’t advise.  Anyway, the albino was the driver.  He and his friends were on the main street of town.  It was snowing.  Our train was coming through town at about 25 mph and the albino was also going about 25.  We had a gondola-type snow plow in the lead.  The albino didn’t see it and drove right up the blade of the plow. The train went into emergency.  The car rolled backward off the plow right onto the next street… without even a dent in the car.

The Fireman jumped off the engine and ran to the car.  The police were just arriving, too.  The driver was yelling to the other three people in the car to get dressed.  The girl in the back seat was naked and frantically trying to get dressed.  The driver opened his door and took off running as a crowd gathered around the car.  He came running back and in front of everyone yelled, “quick, throw out your beer.”  The others got out of the car and began throwing beer cans over the heads of the onlookers including the cops.

The albino turned around and was nose-to-nose with a city cop.  This drunk driver fell over backward like a board….cartoonish.  No injuries, no damage….dang, I wish I could tell you the rest, but….

I had the engineer blow the whistle to prove to the troopers that the whistle was working and was very loud.  I also had the engineer ring the bell, back up a little, come forward a few feet and put the train into emergency to they could see the lights go red and rotate.  There were no skid marks.  I asked the trooper to pull the brake bulbs from the car.  They sometimes indicate whether the car’s brakes were applied at the time of the collision.  The filaments were not bent or broken.

The crew and I were talking when we saw the trooper run to the car and start prying open the trunk.  The trooper had been talking to the driver.  I was told that the driver asked the trooper, “What about my friend in the trunk?”  A bar was used to open it and inside was the driver’s best friend….dead.

In taking the driver’s statement I learned that the driver had a rattle coming from his trunk so his friend got in to listen for it as he drove around.  He had heard the whistle and saw the train and simply misjudged the situation and almost beat it.  No claim or lawsuit followed.

Our attorney began, “Sir, we know little about your case.  Please just tell us what happened and I’m sorry, but I will probably interrupt at times with questions.”

The Plaintiff started, “I had to use the restroom.”

Attorney, “Not to be indelicate, but let’s put it this way, would you have been sitting or standing?”

Plaintiff, “That’s the problem.”

Attorney, “I’m lost…what?”

Plaitiff “ I would have sat, but someone had urinated on the seat so I stood on the seat, squatted down right when the train lurched and I shot through the door and woke up in the hospital.”

The young court reported began laughing so hard that she fell off her seat.  The whole room burst into laughter.  The man, who I must say was quite nice, said, “I’m dropping the suit so I never have to tell this story again.”  He dropped the matter.

Stories got back to me about how his foreman was treating him.  That guy was a young brute and the son of the Track Supervisor I had written about earlier.  This jerk would kick K.T. in the pants and yell at him to get a move on.  K. T. was too old for that stuff.

About a year after that settlement K.T. had been a passenger in the gang truck that turned over in the ditch.  K. T.’s neck was strained.  I sent him to the company doctor who examined him.  The doc called me as asked one very simple question, “How old is he?”  The records showed he was in his late 50’s, but that didn’t seem right to either of us. K. T. was off work a few days with a sore neck then came to my office.  He wanted to retire, but his records said he wasn’t old enough.  I asked him about his age.  He didn’t know when he was born or how old he was.

In an attempt to locate any records I asked him a series of questions.  He was born in Memphis in a shack behind the depot…wet nurse only.  He left home at age 7 and found his way to Waterproof, LA where he got a job delivering groceries in a donkey cart.  He said the man at the store sent him to school one day, but he didn’t like it so he never went back.  K. T., said, “Ize wok fo Ayejooe Grocery.”  I couldn’t understand, but I called the long distance Louisiana information and repeated what he had said.  She said, “Okay, A-Joe Grocery in Waterproof.”  They were still in operation, but they had no record of K.T. since their store burned down in the 50’s and he must have worked there many years before.  At a dead end we called the Railroad Retirement Board and got instructions how to proceed.  It took examinations from a few doctors who together estimated his age at 85.  We got him his retirement and I paid him something for his neck injury.  It appears his wife took off with his eye injury settlement after he cashed the check.

Then we had a chance to talk as friends so I asked him about his life…first, what did K.T. stand for?  He said his mamma didn’t really know his daddy, just that he drank Kentucky Tabby Whiskey so that was his name.  He had one tough life.  He hired out on the IC as a Trackman in his teens and was an exceptional worker.  He worked a whole career there then his foreman was transferred to Iowa and took K.T. with him.  He was in his 50’s then so when the foreman filled out his papers, he put his age back to 20 so he was working a whole new career.  K.T. lived in the flats and drove an old hand painted Chevy.  He preached Sundays at a little church.  In summing up his life he said, “Yep, it was tough, but there ain’t nothin’ like being a n%$#@$ on Saturday night.”  He shook my hand and said he would always keep me in his prayers.  God bless K.T.

All we had to do was take our engines to Rockwell City and pick up loads of grain at the elevator, make up a grain train and bring it to Ft. Dodge.  The problem, it was dark…very dark and I had never been there before.

I coupled a few air hoses and made a few joints.  As I said…it was dark.  I was riding a cut of cars being pulled out of the elevator.  Standing on the stirrup holding onto the ladder I felt someone grab my jacket in the front.  I was pulled off the ladder and under the slope sheet of the covered hopper just as the ladder rubbed the building adjacent to the track.  Rick Mabe, Switchman, Brakeman, Yardmaster and friend had pulled me right onto the deck under the slope sheet and saved my life.  I would have been dead having been squeezed between the car and the building with no clearance and no warning.

That’s not the last time that elevator almost killed me.  More on that later.

My Friend, Rick Mabe

The rail was elevated about a foot higher than Main Street so the railroad in its wisdom used asphalt to abruptly raise the elevation over the rail.  That meant the asphalt was tapered down a foot in height in only three feet of length on each side.  The guard rail was broken and its end was sticking up about 2 ½ inches over the ball of the rail.  I could see that if a car slowed down when its tires were on the first rail the car springs would be compressed lowering the car’s frame right down to the guard rail where it could be snagged.  It was a dangerous situation.

The lady was quite nice and did have a knot on her head so I paid for the windshield and gave her a decent settlement for her injury.  I then went back to the office and left a note for the Track Supervisor telling him what happened so he could get the guard rail repaired.

A week later I received a call from a man whose car did the same thing.  He feared the snag damaged his frame and he wanted me to pay for frame testing and straightening if needed.  I was happy he was uninjured and paid him for the testing.  I gave the Track Supervisor another, but more formal note.

Then it happened again a couple weeks later.  We had been lucky before.  This time a girl was thrown through her windshield and she was hurt.  This time I wrote the Division Superintendent and sent him copies of the notes I had earlier given to the Track Supervisor.  I put a copy in the Track Supervisor’s mailbox.  The next day he came storming into the yard office and saw me talking to the Yardmaster.  He grabbed me by throat and picked me off the floor yelling at me.  I calmly called the Superintendent and advised him of the incident.  (I knew I could have him arrested for assault, but it would have ended my career.)

A few days later this IDIOT, the very highly paid Division Superintendent, left me a message saying that I had exaggerated the situation because he drove over the crossing and nothing happened to him so the crossing was fine.  WHAT A BLASTED IDIOT.  The crossing was, however, repaired.  More about this Superintendent and his successor in future blogs.  (Writing this is rather therapeutic.)