Tales of the Rocky Mountain Division Tom Bennett and Dave MacInnes
By J. A. Phillips, III, James M. Fredrickson
Originally Published in The Mainstreeter
The Quarterly Publication of the Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association
Tom Bennett and Dave MacInnes, Roundhouse Foremen
Tom Bennett, save for a lay-off in the late 'fifties, spent his working career in the Missoula Roundhouse. Hiring out as machinist's apprentice in '40, he made machinist in '43. When he retired from BN in 1980, he was the number one man on the seniority roster. Dave MacInnes worked in most of the roundhouses on the Division at one time or another. He apprenticed in Helena in '35, finished at Livingston, and was laid off by '39. By 1940 he was in Missoula, staying there less than a month before moving on to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Returning to Helena a decade after he'd started, he was back in Missoula by 1953, this time as a Foreman. He retired from BN in 1976, not quite number one in seniority.
You Always Knew What Time It Was In Missoula
What was Missoula roundhouse like during the war? Bennett: Busy. Worked nine hours a day. At that time there was about 140 men workin' there. It never increased at all during the war, that's the reason we went on nine hours, with three shifts. The NP had a big machine shop in Missoula, too. I worked the machine shop for ten years doing nothing but run lathes. Steady. Six days a week? Bennett: Six and seven. (Chuckles) We had a 35-stall roundhouse. How many stalls did you have for the Mallets here? Bennett: Twenty-nine to 35. One, two, three, four, ten, 11, 12... Isn't 12 the one where we went into the office, through the 12 door? MacInnes: He fell in the pit one night, in 25. We were coming in, well there was planks to walk across, and in the dark, it wasn't very brightly lighted, we come in and he was going over to his toolbox in the next pit and somebody had taken the planks out. He lit on both knees. I thought he'd broken both his legs, he was screaming "Mac! Mac!" down in the pit there. Bennett: It was pretty deep. What other sort of industrial hazards were there? The Auburn guys were known to make snowballs out of asbestos coating, or the lagging, and pelt each other. Did you ever see that happen out here? Bennett: Yeah, it was handy. We used to grind all the asbestos in the roundhouse . The one guy that did it, that hauled all of it, he died from it of the lung cancer. But sometimes you'd go past it you couldn't hardly breathe, the asbestos would be flying around. All the blocks that couldn't be used would be ground up and then mixed with water to make the paste-up to paste the other ones in. MacInnes: It was dangerous after the diesels came, with all that diesel fuel. Now Tom, he couldn't stand the diesel fuel, he wore rubber gloves and one thing or another, and I could take a bath in it. In fact, I did take a bath in it one time. In the wintertime a train come in and there was two EMD men on it. They were up in the cab and I heard this fuel tank crackin' up, and I couldn't figure out what was goin' on. I couldn't see any fuel in the glass, so I shut it off and pulled it all. There was a check valve that didn't check, and I got about a thousand gallons of fuel oil over me. I always wore eight inch top coats and my boots were full of fuel oil. I looked up there and I knew those two guys wanted to laugh in the worst way, and I thought "You bastards! You laugh and I'll come up there and kill you!" That was exactly the way I felt! But in the wintertime, the vent pipe on there, snow and ice had gotten in there and it came out of there full force. But it never bothered me. When did the roundhouse start to get scaled back? MacInnes: Well, it was just prior to when I came over here in '53. The old passenger house wasn't being used. Then in '55 a whole section of it got made it into the stationary plant. Then a few years later the officials decided to tear that out. In fact, after the changed the stationary, Herb Schmontz and I built a whistle. You could hear it all over town. Bennett: They used to blow it at seven-thirty and four-thirty, for years and years and years you always knew what time it was in Missoula.
You'll Never Work On The NP Again!
Were the staffing levels here at Missoula just a downward slide through the 'fifties and 'sixties, or did they level at any point? Bennett: Oh, oh, oh, they was tough, because the NP started laying off the men like crazy. I finally got laid off in 1958 and I was off for two, three years. I went to work for a lumber company and then I went to work on missile jobs. MacInnes: It leveled off at one-fifth the original size. Which trades suffered the most from dieselization? Bennett: The boilermakers were the ones that took the beating, right off the bat.
MacInnes: They became body and fender men. Did any of them get re-trained into a craft that would work on the diesels? Bennett: No. When you got laid off did you keep paying up your dues so that you'd keep your seniority? Bennett: I didn't lose my seniority, I wasn't laid off, I was furloughed, so I kept my seniority, see? When I retired I was the oldest man on the seniority list. MacInnes: I started before he did but he was number one. (Laughs) Furlough, you're considered, well, in a lay-off you held your seniority too. I never held any because I quit. Bennett: I can remember when I got laid off, we had a great big safety meeting. Won all the awards, best safety record the NP ever had. There were big speeches and the ol' Carlson's sittin' there and he was swearing at the... Who was giving the speech there? Do you remember? MacInnes: Carl... He was Vice-President of Operations. Fredrickson: Burgess? MacInnes: Carl Burgess! Bennett: Carlson set there and says "They oughta hit that son of a bitch on the head with a hammer!" He told us all this and we went in the roundhouse the next day and we were given four days notice that you were laid off. He told us what good a fellas we was and then we were laid off. (Chuckles) MacInnes: Before I came to Missoula in '40, I'd been laid off in Helena. When I told Fitzgerald, the Foreman here, that I was quittin' after just a few weeks in Missoula, he said "We want ten days notice." I says "I got laid off last fall, I'd liked ten days notice, too." He says "You got your four days notice." I said "No, I didn't. I was notified at the end of the shift, and that was classed as a day, and three days later I didn't have a job." "Well," he says "We want ten days notice!" And I said "You can go to Hell!" That's when he was going to blackball me, tellin' me I'd never work on the NP again. Fredrickson: G.G. Fitzgerald? He was a Master Mechanic in Seattle a lot later. MacInnes: He was the Roundhouse Foreman here when I went to work in 1940. The day that I told him I was quitting' after three weeks of working. Oh, he was... He pounded his desk and he was going to blackball me and he said "You'll never work on the NP again!" I told him where he could put his roundhouse and I told him I'd never work for him again anyway. After I came back here as Foreman, why, one of the callers one night had been working in the Superintendent's Office and he said, "Would you like to see your personnel record?" I said sure, 'cause I though probably Fitzgerald had... There was nothing on it! It was a complete blank! When did you come back as Foreman? MacInnes: In '53. I came back to Helena in '45 and I worked there until I came over here on nights in March of '53.
You're Going To Get A Workout
Before you guys became Foremen, who were the best Foremen to work for? Bennett: Well, I liked old Elmer Smoak. He was at Livingston, then Missoula. Fredrickson: Yeah, he's been to my house looking at my stuff. He was at South Tacoma at one time. MacInnes: The best Foreman that I worked for on the railroad was a Boiler Foreman. Everybody thought he was a meany, but he knew his business and that was why a lot of people didn't like him, because he demanded that you do your work. Another one of the Foremen here in Missoula was a guy that everybody used to say "He'd pat you on the back, to find the soft spot to poke the knife in." Then we had a Machine Foreman... In our machine shop we had a lathe which had a tap wrench on it that stuck out several feet. One time I reached over real quick, it was a belt driven lathe, to flip it to idle, but it went clear over to reverse. I got caught on it and it picked me off my feet, of course it was only at low speed. I couldn't get off the damn thing, I couldn't reach the clutch. Phil Morely, Machine Foreman, come walkin' by. He just walked on by and here I was, like a frog on a stick. When it got up far enough that I could reach the shifter why I shut it off. Later he was in the hospital and I went up to see him one day. We got to talkin' and I said "How come you never said anything that time I was on the end of that tap wrench?" "I thought you looked silly enough."
When I was Apprentice I was buddies with another Apprentice named Radke. It was August and Oh, it was hot one afternoon and another fellow was washin' down the roundhouse. And this Radke come in and he said "Gimme the hose and I'll show you how to wash it down." I was workin' on an engine over there and boy he had about a hundred and twenty pounds of pressure on that washout and he pretty near washed me off my feet, then he run. Oh, I'll get you! In the old roundhouses there were what we called fire buckets. They were cone shaped so you couldn't set them down or anything, they had to be hangin'. I went down to the next house and I saw this Radke and the box packer coming, and I thought, when you come through that door, I'm going to put this right over your head, and I filled a fire bucket and was standing inside the door, and as he came through the door, I set that on Radke's head. There was water all over. But the box packer wasn't with him. It was the Assistant Foreman, Charlie Purdy. He never said a word! Years later when I saw him out in Tacoma, I said, "Boy, you haven't got any more gray hair then when you left." And he said "Well, after I got shut of you and Radke, I never got any more gray hairs."
When Fitzgerald was Foreman here a fellow by the name of Radford, wasn't that his name, the Assistant Foreman? Fredrickson: Radford? OK, I knew him at Spokane. MacInnes: He went to Spokane from here, and I always remembered him. When I got through with a job I'd come up and look for a slip or ask the Foreman for the next job and Radford said "When you get through with a job you stay on the job until I come down and relieve you!" OK. I always remembered, Walter Bilke was my helper and we had to put the hat on the steam dome on the passenger engines. So when we got done, we just sat there. Radford went by, four or five times. We sat there all morning after we put it on. At One O'clock he says "Well, you two fellows didn't do much this morning. You're going to get a workout this afternoon."
The Hot Man
Actually, maybe you guys could clear this up, we've been hearing stories about the locomotives would come in from a run, and somebody would hop into the firebox and clean it and get it ready for the next run. MacInnes: That's no myth. That's no myth. Bennett: Oh you bet, the engines'd just run the over the pits, drop all the ashes out and run into the roundhouse. Them boilermakers would go in the firebox and see if there was any leaks, pound around in there... It was so hot, they'd come out just soaking wet. MacInnes: We had what we called a "Hot Man," he looked like a prune he was so wrinkled up, he had been doing that for so many years... As soon as the engines got in the house, well shoot, the heat was unbearable in there for most people, but he'd climb in the firebox and look it over and clean the soot or one thing or another out. Of course the blower was on all the time. One time, when he was in the firebox, the Master Mechanic came through, he was trying to talk to the roundhouse Foreman, so he turned the blower off. I think George came out of the firebox and I tell you, you never heard a Master Mechanic get a dressing down like he did. He didn't have a word to say, either. Now was this standard operating procedure even before the war? Bennett: Oh yes, and after the war too, 'till we got the diesels. MacInnes: It was standard procedure on all steam locomotives. As long as the engines were being used you had to keep 'em going. I had always just thought that was something that the extra strain of the war they had started doing. Bennett: Oh, no, no, no, no. That was something that was standard. When it was real hot they used to use a bandanna, just a regular old red handkerchief. Boy, those guys would come out of the firebox just sweating and go stand by the windows.
Fredrickson: Any extra pay for doing that, or a higher rate of pay? Bennett: Nada. Well, boilermaker's pay, about the same as machinists.
The Shopmen's Strike And The Other Side Of The NP
Bennett: My dad worked as a machinist in Missoula, and my brother worked as a machinist there, he used to work in Helena too, my brother. When did your dad hire on? Prior to World War One? Bennett: Oh yeah, 1921, '22? He was on strike during '21, so it must have been before '18. MacInnes: 'Twenty-two was when the strike was on. My dad went to work in the roundhouse down here in 1902. And then he went on the road in 1904. Do you guys remember hearing stories about the '22 strike? MacInnes: I had an uncle who was treasurer of the Union at the time, and the NP blackballed him, that was 1922. In 1942 the NP called him said that everything was forgiven and he could come back to work. He says "I wonder how the Hell they thought I'd lived for twenty years?" Bennett: We used to have women. We had women that wiped engines down and everything in the steam engine days, in World War One. They stayed there after the war, but the NP never hired women again, after they retired and left. The railroad never hired women again until the late 'seventies. BN started hiring, you know, as a discrimination deal. MacInnes: I never worked with any women in the roundhouse in Helena or here. Bennett: Well, there was some working here. Mrs. McFarland, she was an old gal, widow woman. We got to know her, my dad used to give her a ride home every day because she was on the way, he'd let her off, then he'd come home. I thought it was pretty good that during the First World War that women got jobs like that you know. At that time they figured women couldn't do nothin'. Were prisoners of war were used as labor around the roundhouse? Bennett: These prisoners of war was turned loose! MacInnes: They weren't prisoners of war, they were internees. The internees were off the merchant marine of ships that were in harbor when the United States declared war. We had lots of internees working on the railroad. There was probably of dozen of 'em in the roundhouse. They replaced the Japanese that had been run out and a lot of them stayed after the war and became citizens. One poor fellow, I felt so sorry for him, he had a family in Italy, seven or nine children, and he wanted to stay in the worst way. He was a good man and I was talkin' to him the day the government officials told him he would have to go back to Italy. Tears were just runnin' down his face. It wasn't for him, it was for his kids. He says "My kids will have no advantages over there." You know, he was hopin' that he could stay here and bring his family over. But there was a lot of them that did stay and became citizens.
In Helena for years they had a Japanese camp out behind the roundhouse. There was about eight Japanese that worked in the roundhouse there, then when the war came along, they wouldn't let 'em work in there, and the NP tore up the camp and burned the buildings and one thing and another. And one of the guys had been in World War One in the American Army!
From Steam to Diesel, or 20 Years on the Night Shift
Now, what were the easiest locomotives to work on back in the steam days? Bennett: Wasn't any of them hard, really. It was just nice working on steam engines. I loved steam engines. We fixed everything, made everything. We got diesels and all we turned out to be was parts changers. I don't like that. Oh, I liked them old engines. You felt like you done something when you fixed them. 'Cause on the diesels, they're fine, they're a nice engine and everything, but you didn't feel like you done what you should. Everything comes and you just put 'em in, that's the way it is. MacInnes: It was the passenger engines I liked the best. Any particular class? Bennett: The A's. MacInnes: The bigger Qs and the A engines. Not the A-1, the 2626, we never had that here, but they were all fairly easy to work on. All we had mostly was the freight and helper power. We had Mallets and stuff, a lot of motors that were ready to fall apart or one thing or another. Then the NP got the 5000s in. The 5010, when we got that engine in from Livingston, you couldn't shut off the manifold steam valve on it so one day the Foreman said "Fix that thing up so we can!" We found a die nut in there and the first thing the Foreman said "Is it one of ours?!?" Well sure, it had 'NP' on it! The Z-6s,-7s and -8s were the biggest engines the NP had. And they were tough to work on. Everything on them was heavy. What was about the biggest job Missoula was equipped to handle? MacInnes: Overhauls, we drop all the wheels out. We had one job where we had to put a cylinder in and we also had to, and this is not done very often in a roundhouse, put a new course in a boiler. Boilers were made in what they called courses, sections and they were riveted, with each one being a little bit tapered. We had a switch engine, a small engine, but it was still a big job. The center course of the boiler was removed and we replaced it.
One of the smaller repairs I ever did was on the 2164. 'Irish' Kelly, Arthur Kelly, an engineer, well, the whistle lever on the 2164 was right straight in front of him and there was a little window up there. You had to reach through the window and pull the whistle lever towards you. He says "I'll give a carton of the finest cigarettes ever made if someone will fix that whistle so it'll blow conveniently." So after we got that all fixed up so he could 'blow conveniently' with his left hand, and he had the boilerhead all polished and the brass polished and everything looked nice, two weeks later they took the engine, and oh, was he upset! It's in the park down there at Bismarck or Mandan now. What else would be made here on-site by the machinists? Bennett: Anything that they needed. Any bolts that held anything together, anything. MacInnes: That's the difference between then and now. After we got the diesels, there was a test train running and it had come in from the east, with two Electro-Motive men and all the officials on the railroad, and was turned to go right back. I had a young fella working for me, Cooper was his name, and I sent him out to change bearings. Well, he came in and said "I couldn't turn that bearing," he said "I broke it." It was the cut-off valve. Oh, that EMD man, you never heard anybody carry on! "We'll be here for three days now!" I said "Why?" "Well," he said, "We'll have to send for parts." I said "Hey, you're gonna be out of here on time." "We can't get out of here on time!" I'll make you a bet. I told Cooper "You broke it, now you make it." He made it in steel and had it going and they were out of here on time, and that's the difference between then and now. The difference between making something and putting in something that somebody else made. That's when it got to be just a placer of parts.
When we first got the diesels the officials had the idea that all the unit numbers had to be kept together. Say the 6008A, B, C, D. So one night the Chief Dispatcher, Harold Cain was his name, did you know him? Fredrickson: Yeah, H. F. Cain. MacInnes: He called me, and there was two separate sets of set-ups coming in. The first one had say the 6008A and B, and the 6006C and D. Well, the second set-up had the 6006A and B, and the 8C and D, and he says "We want those broke up." I said "We're not going to do it." "Well, Mr. Johnson..." Fredrickson: Allan Johnson? I worked with him when he was a Dispatcher.
MacInnes: He says "Mr. Johnson in Saint Paul wants it that way!" "Then you tell Mr. Johnson to come out here and do it, because we're not doing it!" It was ridiculous, breaking 'em up just to keep the numbers together. Maybe it made it easier for the dispatchers, I don't know. Fredrickson: The beginning of that was because of the grievances. The engineers were claiming they were running four engines. MacInnes: The way their grievance was that they were operating our different outfits and the engineers were claiming pay on the weight of the drivers of each outfit. Fredrickson: After the diesels came, where did the electricians come from? Did the roundhouses train people that had been working? Bennett: We trained people that had been working on steam into the diesel outfit. Like Van Dodge, he was an electrician here and he worked on the steam engines. He got to be Diesel Supervisor. What were the big jobs for the diesel days? MacInnes: Mostly gettin' 'em outta here and getting 'em on the road. Bennett: We did a lot of work on the first ones that come because we changed pistons, ground the valves on these F-units, and on those little Alco switchers. We had to set up for that and grind all the valves, put in new sleeves and new pistons, new bearings, we used to overhaul them here. Did you ever have slow days, when there wasn't much happening in the roundhouse, or did they keep you pretty much constantly occupied? Bennett: There was slack time after dieselization 'cause you was waiting for engines most of the time. But when engines'd come, you had to get 'em done and out again. Let's see, I put 11 years on nights with you didn't I? Midnights. MacInnes: Yeah, 'bout that. I put in pretty near 24 years, just two months short of 24 years on the midnight shift, eleven to seven. That's the best shift in the house. Fredrickson: I was 22 years in a row on the midnight to eight, night dispatcher.
All Good Things
MacInnes: My son, Fred MacInnes, was apprentice out in Seattle and Auburn, then he transferred to Livingston in '79 I guess it was and he got laid off in '83. The thing he kind of gets a kick out of... He got a pretty good name as a trouble shooter down there, the Electrical Foreman was telling him what a good man he was, and he says "Do you suppose that'll keep my job?" And that night he got the notice that he was laid off. He was an Electrician. That's the last of four generations of MacInnes on the railroad. Bennett: I've still got a boy working for the BN as a conductor at Whitefish. He didn't stay here when the Rail Link bought out. That's all the railroads have got now, Engineer and a Conductor. BN is going to send each one to school and they won't be a full-fledged Engineer, they'll be a Card Engineer, so they can run the engines. MacInnes: The reason for that is right there, that if anything happens they've got a man that can do it. That engineer, Irish Kelly, he got highballed one day, and nothin' happened. He'd had a heart attack and died. He was hanging out the window. The union agreements wouldn't even let the fireman, and he was a promoted man, but they wouldn't let the fireman bring it in. So they had to send an extra man out to bring the train in. What was it like around here just prior to the big BN merger? I know Livingston put up quite a fight against that and so did Auburn. Bennett: We did here, too. MacInnes: But it didn't do any good. Did officials from Saint Paul come into Missoula prior to the merger and try and tell everybody things would stay the same? Fredrickson: Before merger, Menk went to the Auburn Chamber of Commerce and said "There will always be an Auburn." You should see it now. Did you guys expect that the roundhouse would eventually just wind up shut down like all the rest? MacInnes: After the merger, yes. I figured that was the end of things, really. Missoula was the last. Well, the one in Livingston, it was converted to a diesel house. But Missoula was probably about the last roundhouse on the division that was torn down. Bennett: Well, I retired in '80, four years after you, and then Elmer quit, what, six months after? I knew that BN'd tear it down. I'd been there so long I figured "When I quit they'll tear it down." And they did, six months later.
Author: John A. Phillips, III. Title: Tales of the Rocky Mountain Division -- Tom Bennett and Dave MacInnes.
URL: pw2.netcom.com/~whstlpnk/rmmacinnes.html.