BMWED-IBT crews help keep the trains rolling safely through my town
By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
Like more than a few Kentuckians who pack union cards, I’m a railfan.
Many railfans are in railroad unions. I've never met a railroader--active or retired--who didn't see his or her vocation as a way of life, not just a job. (Others of us belong to unions unrelated to railroading. I’m a charter member of American Federation of Teachers Local 1360.)
Anyway, all of us, including railfans who aren't in unions, share a love of trains. Some of us love photographing trains.
I’m known in Arlington and its environs as the old retired guy who takes train pictures in snow, rain and heat but not "gloom of night." (Two Amtraks pass through Arlington in the pitch-dark wee morning hours, which is not an optimum time for photography.)
I'm in a great spot for train photos. The Canadian National’s busy, main north-south line bisects our Carlisle County town, which is almost as far west as Kentucky goes.
I was surprised not to see any trains Tuesday morning. Mornings are usually prime time for freight traffic.
But way up the tracks north of town, I learned why nothing was moving on the shiny steel rails. I spotted a big white CN repair truck, its yellow warning lights flashing, parked next to the tracks. I drove up to investigate and saw two guys working on the rails just north of County Road 1235.
The glamour jobs in railroading—at least to me—are engineers and firemen. They perch high in the cabs of massive diesel locomotives that shake the ground when they rumble by. All of the engines I photograph are pulling freight trains.
To me, track crews are a lot like most airline ground crews. Pilots—many of them union members--fly planes, but mechanics – many of them in unions, too--keep planes safely in the air.
Likewise, many railroad engineers, firemen and track maintenance crews belong to unions—the latter group at CN is represented by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. (CN bought out the Illinois Central in 1998).
The two guys were bent over the rails but I had no idea what they were doing. So I texted my photo to a friend who's an expert: Hayward Granier of Mayfield, retired general chairman of the BMWED’s Illinois Central Gulf Federation. (Melinda and I have known the Graniers for years; Hayward's wife, Anita, and my spouse, Melinda, were on the faculty at Mayfield High School for a long time.)
He replied: “This appears to be a welder and his helper who are in the process of fusing together the ends of two rails, thus eliminating a joint. A mixture of steel and gunpowder is ignited in that brown cylinder behind the man on his knees, then the liquified steel is poured into the space between the two rails and fuses them together. The process was called a thermo-weld in my area.”
That's way cool to this septuagenarian and former history teacher.
Anyway, Melinda and I fly occasionally. We always marvel at the skill of pilots and co-pilots, but we are also grateful for the skill of ground crews back in the hangar.
At the same time, I don't know a railfan who doesn't appreciate the skill of men and women who keep the tracks in good shape in fair weather and foul. If ground crews are the unsung heroes of commercial aviation, BMWED crews deserve the same appellation in railroading.
The BMWED's Daniel Inclima agrees. "Our guys and gals build and maintain the tracks, bridges, buildings and other structures on the railroads of the United States by the sweat of their brow," said Inclima, an assistant in the union's communications department.