(The following story by Tom Lochner appeared on the Contra Costa Times website on April 19. Brothers E.B. Ohman and Vern Moore are members of BLET Division 283 in Oakland, Calif.)
CASTRO VALLEY, Calif. — A bunch of old rails met at Dino’s Restaurant on Sunday to swap old railroad stories, keep up on new developments in the industry and mark the passage of time, welcoming new members and noting old ones who passed away in the past year.
It was the annual dinner of the Oakland Old Rails Club, a group of retired and still-active railroaders, most of whom worked for the old Southern Pacific railroad.
Some continued on with the Union Pacific railroad after it acquired the Southern Pacific in 1996. Others worked for Amtrak. And one, W.E. Muntis, 74, a Hayward resident and Ohio native, worked for the New York Central and Penn Central railroads before retiring from Conrail.
Some said they loved the rails; others said they were just a job. But all agreed railroaders are some of the nicest people you could ever hang around with.
“My family’s been with railroads for over 100 years,” said Errol Ohman, 61, of Pinole, echoing a history shared by several other railroaders Sunday. What attracted Ohman to railroading, besides family tradition, was “the people, the atmosphere, the freedom, the sense of accomplishment and knowing I was performing a useful service.”
“When I was a child, a locomotive engineer was like a knight,” said Ohman, a locomotive engineer who retired last year and is today chief mechanical officer for the Niles Canyon Railway in Sunol.
For Vern Moore, 90, of Pleasant Hill, who signed on with the Southern Pacific in 1941 and retired in 1974, railroading was less about rails and trains than about the people who made them work.
“I was never a railroad fan,” said Moore, whose tenure with the SP was interrupted by three years in the military. “The best part of the job was retiring. The best years of my life have been the last 30 years. The only thing I miss about the railroad is the people I worked with.”
Bob Paulson, 60, of Pleasant Hill, a switchman who retired from Union Pacific three weeks ago, jocularly noted how members of his trade distinguished themselves from brakemen.
“We’re the guys who worked five-day weeks, went home and slept with our wives,” Paulson said. Brakemen on the other hand often worked six- or seven-day weeks, 12 or more hours a day and were out of town a lot of the time.
“Most of them were divorced, once or twice,” Paulson quipped.
Moore, a former engineer, bucked that rule. He and his wife have been married 55 years and have a daughter.
“My wife was very good,” Moore said. “I was gone a lot. I always felt a little guilty but she understood. She never complained.”
And ironically, one legendary railroader known as Marrying Sam — “He was married seven times, at least,” Paulson said — was an Oakland switchman. Who knows how many times Sam would have been married had he been a brakeman, Paulson mused.
“There’s a million railroad stories,” Paulson said, adding he has pondered doing an oral history project but found the retirees are too busy.
Members shared some stories at the dinner. Others, including Ron “R.R.” Johnson of Nevada, told jokes.
Club president Joe Milliken said brief eulogies to recently deceased members. Bill Cotton, an Amtrak conductor, spoke about late club member Dick Murdock, 86, of Ross, whose likeness stands in the San Francisco Wax Museum as the prototype of the railroad engineer.
Festivities were briefly interrupted when club member Fred Roberts of Concord collapsed. Roberts, who members said is in his late 70s, was revived by Alameda County paramedics, who said they would transport him to Eden Medical Center.
His condition was unclear later Sunday.