Kudos and happy holidays to our rail union brothers and sisters

By BERRY CRAIG

AFT Local 1360

More than a few of us amateur train photographers pack union cards.

So we appreciate the fact that railroading is one of our most unionized industries, including the men and women who crew trains, dispatch trains, build and repair locomotives and train cars and maintain tracks and signals. 

We “railfans” mostly photograph trains, notably locomotives. But my photo files include shots of maintenance crews at work on tracks or heading to work along the tracks in those trucks with retractable metal train-type wheels. 

To railfans, train crews—especially engineers—have the glamour jobs in railroading. Okay, maybe they don't view their jobs as glamorous in weather we’ve just had here in deepest western Kentucky.

On Thursday night, we got hit by part of that big “bomb cyclone” which brought us three or so inches of wind-blasted, subzero temperatures and even lower wind chill numbers. But snug inside our house in Arlington, about a quarter-mile away, we heard, through the howling wind,freight trains rumbling along our stretch of the Canadian National’s busy Chicago-to-New Orleans line. (We're having a heat wave on Christmas Eve Day. It's sunny and 23 this afternoon.)

So kudos and happy holidays to the thousands of workers who belong to rail unions.