REMEMBERANCES
OF THE LONG ISLAND
RAIL
ROAD CLASS N52 CABIN CARS
by Bob Kaelin
LINGO
First off, please excuse my Long Island
vernacular. On the LIRR, for instance, a cabin car was known as a
"hack,"
and even when we made
reference to the Pennsylvania Railroad, it was usually "Penn" instead
of "Pennsy." So, if
you notice a sprinkling
of odd vocabulary in this story, it's because I'm telling it in my own dialect.
My tale deals
mostly with the N52
"hacks" and the men who worked them (and literally lived in them)
back in the 1940s. At that
time, the LIRR was still a
part of the' Pennsylvania system, although it retained a lot of its own
individual
characteristics.
When faced with the task of writing
another celebration of the "glorious hardware of 'Pennsy'
past," it was hard to
keep from meandering into
the memories of the men who made those old "hacks" what they were.
They were all
unforgettable characters from a
vanished way of life. We'll get into some of that later on.
HOT COAL AND COLD BEER
Although these "hacks" were
originally well insulated, it's sad to note that they were allowed to
deteriorate toward
the end of their years of
service. It was a whole different ball game then. In desperation, freight crews
nailed sheets
of corrugated cardboard
to the inside walls to keep the wind from whistling through. Prior to that, the
main gripe
always seemed to be with the
N5 steel "hacks," two of which were bought by the LIRR in 1932. (I
also seem to
recall having been in one or
two others that may have come over on loan off of the "Penn" during
the War.) Some
LIRR men disliked them and claimed they
were hard to heat. One known remedy would be to steal the canvas
weather curtain off of the
engine and lash it up across the passageway between the lockers in hopes of
keeping
some heat in the end where
the stove was. This usually resulted in the engine crew having to pull up
alongside the
"hack"
in order to cast aspersions on the ancestry and moral fiber of the creatures
within who perpetrated such a
dastardly act of self preservation.
Nevertheless, you had to make the best
of it with the wooden "hacks," too. The Eastern End of Long Island
always
had unpredictable
weather; it could be unusually warm in January and we could get a blizzard on
the first day of
Spring. We've seen
temperatures in the 70's in January and snow on Easter Sundays in mid-April.
It's the Gulf
Stream 'that warms us,
stuck out in the Atlantic as we are. But it's the northwest wind that makes
temperatures
come down. On the LIRR,
everything runs pretty much either east or west, and if a "hack" was
newly assigned to a
freight job and the stove
happened to be on the east end, some conductors or flagmen would want to get it
turned
as soon as possible so
that the stove was in the other corner in order to provide better protection
against the cold
nor'westers. After that, the
"hack" was never turned again unless it got so by mistake through a
wrong move on a
wye or something like
that. Greenport, for instance, had an air-operated turntable, and it was still
possible to turn a
car there by using a long
"walk-around" hose that was there for that purpose, especially for
turning snowplows.
You wanted to have good coal for the
stove, too. Real good coal. Therefore, the lower bunk
across the aisle from
the stove served a dual
purpose in some cases. The case in point here would be someone with a little
larceny in his
heart who would spot a nice
load of "Blue" coal or good pea coal. Some of this would be
"liberated" and would end
up under that bunk which
made a perfect coal box right near the stove and kept the booty discreetly
hidden as well.
So much for winter. In the summertime, it
was S.O.P. for the LI RR to outfit these "hacks" with window and door
screens. An early version of
screening included only small covers for the windows in the doors. Later on,
provisions
were made for full screen
doors that could be put on the outsides in summer; they swung out onto the end
platforms.
There was some beer drinking going on
in the summer, too. There's no denying it; it was a fact of life and we knew
that God put that icebox
in the "hack" for a divine purpose. A lot of funny things happened,
but the funniest thing of
all is a story that has
spread around the Long Island Rail Road for so many years that each successive
person that
tells it wants to claim
that he himself is indeed the silent "hero." This is the story of...
THE BIG RAID
It seems that one day some bosses were
"spotting" a job because they heard that there was some drinking
going
on. At one point, they
decided it was time to move in, and they actually boarded the "hack"
for a raid. One boss
came in one end door and a
couple more swarmed in the other. One of the crew was still in the
"hack" (we'll just
call him "R" for
short) and he was sitting on a box by the sink. He took slow drags on his
cigarette and didn't say a
damned word. In the
meantime, the bosses ransacked that place from top to bottom, going through all
the lockers,
lifting up all the cushions
and bunk lids and prying into anything else they could think of. But they never
thought of
asking "R" to
stand up. They finally left, empty -handed. Throughout the entire raid,
"R" calmly sat on that box and
literally kept his
"cool," because that box was chock full of ice cold beers.
NEWT
For the most part, the old-timers on
the LIRR were indeed very clever and resourceful men, who worked under a
wide variety of conditions
ranging from the Railroad dock at Greenport through the boondocks of Manorville
and
from the boat docks at
Montauk to the car docks in Bay Ridge. No question about it - we were on an
island.
Trainman N. B. "Newt" Gotcher was a colorful example. As I recall, he was said to
have been part Indian and came
from out west someplace,
having worked on many railroads before winding up on the Long Island. That may
or may
not be so, but Newt was
nevertheless a qualified conductor and he knew his trade well. However, for
many years
during the '40's, he held
down the job of flagman on train No. L-87, which was one of
the Greenport freights. And
for several years on end,
Newt kept one "hack" the No. 39 - on his job. This was unusual,
because regular freight
jobs would ordinarily get
a newly shopped and repainted "hack" once a year. Not so with this
one. That was HIS
"hack"
and Newt hung onto it for so long that the paint faded and you could just
barely read the lettering. If the roof
started to leak, he would tar
it himself. Newt was a clever mechanic and could do just about anything once he
put
his mind to it.
That "hack" was his home; he
had a lot of his belongings in it and he even had it wired for lights. His
lighting scheme was ingenious.
First, he wired it for 110 volts. When they had layovers in Greenport, his
"hack"
would be spotted by the old
Greenport bunkhouse and he could hook up his lights. Back in those days, the
Main
Line of the LIRR actually terminated on
the aforementioned dock at Greenport. It was originally built so that the
trains could make
connections with steamboats in the old days, and later the tracks on the dock
were still in use.
During the War, there was a Coast Guard
cutter tied to that dock and in the Summer when it was
hot, it was always
seen to it that Newt's
"hack" would be kicked onto the dock when they finished up. There he
could have a nice
breeze off of the Bay, and
the men on the Coast Guard cutter would throw a wire over to Newt so he could
run his
lights on whatever voltage
they had. While out on the road, he had a different setup. It seems that the
electric
hand lanterns had just
started to appear on the LIRR about that time and Newt would go to the supply
stores at Holban and draw several of the six-volt lantern batteries,
which he would hook up in parallel and
feed them through a maze
of bell wire to clusters of lantern bulbs that came from the same place.
Newt loved to hunt. He had a collection
of pistols, shotguns, and Lord only knows what else stuffed inside
that "hack."
Number 39 was also one of the few that still had the original PRR-style flag
box up on the
cupola end wall. This too
was stuffed full of shells and ammo, and was duly padlocked. If that
"hack" had
ever caught fire, it would
have made such an explosion that there probably wouldn't have been a window
pane left in town.
Newt would often get up at the crack of
dawn and go out to bag something or other that would wind up as a
tasty treat for the crew
later on. He also liked to fish. He would often catch the last passenger job
out of
Greenport in the morning and they would
drop him and his fishing gear off near the trestle at Mill Creek,
about 2 1/2 miles up the
line. The freight crew would come along a few hours later and pick up their
flagman
and their dinner.
Years ago, conductor Pete Cafarelli told me a story about the time he was in the
"hack" with Newt as they
bounced along through the
woods down in "Manor" (Manorville). Pete started to hear this loud
banging,
which made him wonder if
they'd dropped a brake rigging or if a car up ahead was on the ground. He
looked, but there was no
sign of any such trouble. He looked some more and there was no sign of old
Newt,
either. Just about then, he
saw a shadow of something moving outside one of the cupola windows. He
walked outside and crawled
up the ladder just far enough to peek over the runners and there was old Newt,
sitting on the cupola roof
with his feet planted on the catwalk ... he had a big old repeater shotgun,
blasting
away at crows, rabbits, squirrels, and
anything else that flew, crawled, or skittered as the freight bored its
way through the woods.
"Jist gittin' in a leetle targit practice" was
the answer.
Some of those freights would really
move out in those days. Sometimes it was a case of dire necessity,
especially if old Tom Hemblo was in charge. Tom was a real old-time conductor who
always went by the
book. The engine crew
would have to go like hell and run for the quit so that they could get on home
before
old Tom could get the
chance to outlaw them. Tom's son, Eddie, was in the "hack" with Newt
one day when
3
they were moving along at
a pretty good clip and he was dumbfounded to see old Newt shaving with a
straight razor while peering into a
little mirror that hung on the wall and danced back and forth, while the
"hack"
was bouncing and swaying as they barreled along like a shot out of hell. The
odd thing about it was
that Newt never missed a
lick and never got a nick.
DUCKS AND TURKEYS
Another one of Tom Hemblo's
regular crew at one point was a character by the name of Anderson, who -
one way or another - got
hold of some duck eggs one day at Yaphank. These were put into a little wire
milk
crate and stashed behind
the stove with the half-baked idea they might someday hatch. The eggs weren’t
half-baked, by any means. After
a few days, it was obvious that they were beyond hatching. A couple of
them exploded and the rest
of the mess unceremoniously heaved out the door.
After another stop at Yaphank one day,
there appeared two turkeys in the “hack”. It looked as if they had
formerly made there home at the farm on the county poorhouse grounds
nearby. Now it probably would
have been a little hard to
do very much with two turkeys on that little stove, anyway, they never got that
far.
After turning the inside of “hack"
into a madhouse with feathers flying all over the place and droppings
spattered all over hell, the
turkeys met the same fate as the duck eggs, except they never did get cooked
as well as the eggs did.
CHOW TIME
Getting back to that little stove, all sort of things could be gotten together, depending upon the
cleverness
of the cook. When
freight jobs were up for bids, the most important thing was to get a flagman
who was a
good cook. The men would
then chip in to get what was needed and they’d be set for the day. Sometimes
it didn’t even cost
anything except a little extra effort. They would do a favor for the operator
of a potato
packing shed, such as shoving
an extra cut or spotting empties, for instance, and they had all the potatoes
they wanted. Soups and
stews were always a favorite, especially one of Long Island's staple foods,
clam
chowder. Sam Dawson, one of
the old time engineers, was an ace at making this concoction. The trick was
to make it a day ahead. This
was easy, because it could be done at home. It could then be simmered up
the next day.
Sam was one of my very best friends; he
was like a father to me. In later years, I came
across a recipe for a heavy
soup made with Polish kielbasa (another local staple on Long Island), red
beans, cabbage, and an
assortment of vegetables and condiments; this also became a favorite of caboose
cookery. Like clam chowder,
it too, was always better the second day. Squirrel stew was another LIRR
“delicacy” and
it wasn't too bad - quite tasty in fact - as long as you could keep your mind
off of what you
were eating. The best
thing of all was the coffee. There is nothing else in the world like the smell
and taste
of coffee inside a
"hack" on a snowy winter day.
When the N52's were still around,
another trick of "cookery" was not on the stove itself, but rather in
the large
overhead heat shield where the
stovepipe went through the ceiling. That shield could get pretty hot, and when
frozen TV dinners started to
appear on the market, some "wag" discovered that several of these
could be slipped
inside the shield and done
almost to perfection. It took a while, but that didn't make any difference. If
you were out
switching for a couple of
hours, they'd be ready when you were. No fuss, no muss, no bother.
THE BRAT
My own personal experience with the
"hacks" dates back to when I was a brat in the 1940's. By the time I
had
gotten out of the Service in
1960, most of them were all gone. But I'd spent many happy hours on them over
the
years, riding through some
of the most beautiful country in the Northeast, along the marshlands, over the
creeks,
down through the woods and
across the farm fields. Back in those days, the train crews were generally very
good
to kids who took an
interest, and when I wasn't working or in school, I'd spend hours on end, day
in and day out,
riding the engines and
"hacks." Even in my small home town on the Eastern End of Long
Island, there were freights
coming and going at all
hours of the day and night, especially during the War and in the years
following, up until
about 1949. We were
wheeling potatoes all summer and cauliflower throughout the fall, as late as
into December in
some years.
On the freights, we had H10s engines
for the most part. But the LIRR had only 19 of them, so every once in a while
the freight would show up
with a H9s or a H6sb. Sometimes they'd be stuck with a G5s. So, I got my turns
at firing
a variety of engines,
as well as an occasional crack at the throttle, too. The men were very good to
me; some of
them were actually family
friends.
As much as I enjoyed being on the
engines, I loved those old "hacks" just as much. One good friend was
Dick
Carey, a Greenport
man, who flagged the other freight (L-86) for many, many years. One of my jobs was to
clean
Mr. Carey's
"hack" for him, which I did with pleasure. Hell, I even did
windows. The courtesy was extended to other
flagmen as well. It's too bad
that a lot of kids today don't have the opportunities that that we had back
then.
OTHER
"HACKS"
In the summer of 1947, an N6b "Mae
West" showed up on one job. I had never seen one before and immediately
fell in love with it. We
called them "Middle Division 'hacks,' " which was probably a
misnomer, because these cabins
actually originated on Lines
West and didn't show up east of Pittsburgh until later on. All I knew is that
this cabin
was from Pennsylvania; it had come over
on "lend loose" from the "Penn" and was just out of the
shops with a fresh
paint job, I thought to
myself, "Jeez, only the Quakers down in Pennsylvania could make something
that looked like
that!" I recall the
inside of it as having been quite "bare" in comparison to the LIRR
N52's, especially with its seats in
the cupola boarded over
straight across with no cushions on them. In a way, it did remind you of the
inside of a
kitchen that you might find
in a farmhouse down in Amish country. But for all its spartan
and pristine simplicity, I
loved it nonetheless. I
still wonder why the N6b cabins (at least the several that I have ever been in)
had their
cupola seats boarded over
straight across, whereas it looks as if they were originally intended to be
facing seats in
which you sat upright, like
the New York Central had. In later years, I came by a set of PRR prints for
both the
center cupola and offset cupola
versions of the N6b, and they did indeed show both versions with and without
upright seats, with notations
about boarding over but no reasons why. Well, that's another story. All in all,
they must
have been excellent cabins
and I'm sure that one on a regular job could be fixed up quite snazzy.
They sure as hell
had plenty of locker
space in them.
REAL RAILROAD MEN
Some other good things that came over
"off of the 'Penn' " in those days were the bosses. They were real
men,
those "Penn" men.
They knew their business and you could do business with them. In general, the
LIRR men had a
great deal of respect and
admiration for them. E. L. "Gene" Hoffmann was the General
Superintendent at the time.
One of these bosses was a freight
representative by the name of Ed Sachse. He was a
terrific guy. Every year,
when I was a kid, Mr. Sachse would personally send me one of the big PRR
calendars with the Grif Teller paintings
on them. I never forgot
it. Another boss was a man named Jim Corcoran who was a sort of a "roving
yardmaster,"
as I recall, and it was
his job to keep things moving at several small but jam-packed yards when the
heavy potato
freights were running. Team
tracks and packing house sidings were jammed to the hilt. Some private sidings
had to
actually be extended, and the
loads had to be switched out and empties re-spotted on an hourly basis. If no
freight
crew was around to make
the moves for the packinghouses, the cars were usually towed with a farm
tractor, which
often ended up burying
itself down to the axle housings
The fact remains that there was a lot
of work to be done; and - by God - it GOT done, too. On the "East
End," it was
all single iron and it is
amazing when you realize how many trains and how many different kinds of trains
were
running out here day and
night without a single major accident or tie-up all during the War and the few
years after,
when our freight traffic
was still heavy. A potato "extra" would come east in the wee hours
with a hundred empty
"reefers,"
for instance, and by the end of the day those "reefers" were loaded
and headed back west.
One night, Sam Dawson had 110 such
loaded "reefers" strung out in Riverhead and was pumping them up with
one
H10s. Jim Corcoran came up and asked
Sam if they wanted another engine They'd already been
out more than
twelve hours. They were
tired and Sam was thirsty. Now, Sam would do anything for anybody. He had a
heart of
gold. And everybody liked
him, too, and would do most anything for him. Sam said they would do it with
what they
had as long as Jim would
buy him a nightcap and promise that once they broke their necks and got over
the hill at
Yaphank that the
conductor would not pull the air on them once he got it rolling, outlaw or not. The deal was struck
and off they went. They had
No. 115, which was an old Vandalia engine and was still hand- fired at the
time. There
was a big brakeman on the
job named John Knajdl; "big John" could
fire an engine better than most men in engine
service. He could keep an
engine hot when many others could not. So, with John helping the fireman, they
hauled
the 110 cars out of there
with the one H10s and went all the way to Holban
yard.
That's the kind of teamwork you had
back then. Another of the Cafarelli boys was named
Salvatore, but we always
called him "Soddor." Sometimes he would even go so far as to ride
between the cars of a freight, just so he'd be
right there on the spot to
make the cut as soon as they stopped at the next town.
When “Soddor”
ran a heavy freight as conductor, some men couldn't figure out why he would
order them to "Hold
onto eighteen and pick up
two," for instance, insisting that certain loads be situated in thus and
such a place in the
train. But they understood
when they finally wheezed into Holban Yard and the
yard crews had only to make a very
few cuts with the least
amount of switching out. You see, "Soddor"
had it already sorted out for them. That's the
way it was back then.
When the Long Island Rail Road was still a part of the Pennsylvania, it was a
time of pride
and achievement. But the
Long Island still retained its individuality, both in the geographical size of
the operation
and in the character of
the employees who operated it. That's why I couldn't help but drift off into
reminiscences of
some of the men who were there.
They're the ones who made the whole scene. Every time I see a picture of one of
the old
"hacks," I still see shades of all those old guys because - as was
said - they were indeed unforgettable characters
from a vanished way of
life.
Sometimes we tend to have more vivid
memories of the funny people and the funny things that happened and the
laughs that WE had. In
reality, a lot of that work was sheer drudgery, and while there were those who
needed to
bend the rules a little
bit in order to survive, the men I really remember the most were the quiet,
easy-going men
like the Cafarellis, the Frank Motts and the Herbie
Williamses who knew their business well and went
about it day
after day, year in and year
out.
All in all, they were some of the
greatest guys in the world. Most of them are all gone now, as is the
"Penn." But the
good memories remain. Those
were the days, my friend.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Ian Fischer for his review
and very useful comments, and to Ron Ziel, Ed Minden,
Dick Horn and Art
Huneke for
helping to get the photos together.
Most of all, my heartfelt thanks to
certain of the old-timers on the Long Island Rail Road, most of whom have now
passed away, for having
given to me the most precious treasure that a kid could have ever had - their
trust and
friendship.
© 1987, revised 2002, 2009, Robert “Ducky” Kaelin, used with permission.