(The following article by James Warren was posted on the Chicago Tribune website on May 31.)
CHICAGO — If you spotted a guy walking through Baghdad these days with $1.4 million in cash, you’d figure it was A) a UN official benefiting from its untidily managed Oil For Food Program; B) Ahmad Chalabi, the discredited U.S. ally perhaps rushing to the airport with his final Defense Department payments; or C) a former prison guard at Abu Ghraib looking for a top-notch defense lawyer.
You wouldn’t figure it was an unassuming former Amtrak executive who’s plastering the rail system with Chicago Bears stickers (given the team’s recent record, those may serve as a metaphor for the uneven U.S. effort). But, yes, according to the July issue of Trains, it’s Northbrook native Rick Degman, whose business card reads Railway Advisor for the Coalition Provisional Authority and whose tasks include overseeing the railways system’s payroll in a country lacking electronic direct deposit.
“American Railroader With the Iraqi Republic Railways” is Degman’s utterly engaging and rollicking account of his post-Amtrak tenure as an aide to Gordon Mott, whom the American-led CPA put in charge of dealing with the mess of Iraq’s railway system.
“Iraqi flies are a little slow,” Degman opens. “If one sets down within range, you can move your closed fist toward the fly and flick it with your index fingers before it catches on. I did this on my first try, much to my surprise. Unfortunately, the fly projectile hit the Iraqi Republic Railways’ Finance Manager square in the chest.”
Amid the disarray of Iraq, Degman appears to have kept his cool and humor as he details the macabre reality around him, such as dealing with gangs, which attack container trains. One day a passenger train between Basra and Baghdad, no seeming lure to thieves because it generally offers only poor folks with nothing to steal, encountered bandits waving frantically for it to stop.
“Please do not go further! We thought you were going to be a container train and we sabotaged the tracks!” Degman recounts them as declaring. “Please wait while we fix the tracks so you can go. And please do not tell anybody so we can attack the next train!”
The railroad system was started by the British in 1921, now consists of 1,200 miles of track and, like much else, deteriorated during the Saddam Hussein years and was extensively looted after he fled. Still, even with loss of radio communication and signaling system, and damage to most of its locomotives, it was able to resume service after the war as the U.S. pledged more than $200 million to get it back in shape.
Austere operation
The IRR remains an austere operation. Its control center “consists of three rooms with one radio base station, one landline phone, several cell phones and two space heaters. Forget about computers,” writes Degman, who majored in transportation at Indiana University and began his career as assistant trainmaster for Burlington Northern in Aberdeen, S.D. in 1981. He later managed Chicago terminals for Soo Line, Norfolk Southern and several trucking companies before joining Amtrak to help run the Amtrak Crescent. This piece works on several levels. First, if you’re an unadulterated train buff, you’ll learn all you need to know about the system, such as a large chart of Iraq’s “veritable United Nations of locomotives,” namely 10 classes from 10 different countries. Those include the DEM2401-2454 series, built in Spain in 1981. In case you somehow forgot, these “closely resemble an SD38-2.”
Second, it will turn the heads of laymen with lines like this: “With no functioning signals, the IRR operates on train orders. There is a station about every 10 km [6 miles] and we stop at each one to get orders.” Imagine commuting from the burbs to work like that, with one station really not knowing what’s up ahead!
Then there’s the on-the-ground dilemmas and dangers that more resemble the war reporting to which we’re now accustomed. After flying in a chopper to Al Q’aim, a far western town with big fertilizer and cement plants, Degman realizes that “segments of the populace in Al Q’aim aren’t exactly warming to the American presence.”
At a meeting with locals, a U.S. Army colonel makes clear that these people are taking a risk merely by talking to the Americans. “It usually takes about three weeks, after a mayor or police chief takes office, before he is assassinated or his family threatened, forcing them to resign. It’s highly likely, says the colonel, that someone from the group I am looking at will be murdered before the month is out.”
Cheery.
All in all, he’s found that, yes, there are spots where coalition forces are welcomed and most of the railway employees, such as the ones who receive his Bears stickers, are most friendly and love a life on the rails. A train guy is apparently a train guy, whatever the country. And, just like American counterparts, they love freebies: “Put almost anything out on a table, tell them that it’s free, and it will disappear.” His examples include mugs, mouse pads, coloring books, rulers, pencil, pins and calendars.
Bandits leave radio
As for the railroad, Degman is generally amazed it does as well as it does, especially given the lack of resources and all those bandits, such as the gents who recently stole virtually everything off one locomotive (seats, horn, windows, driver’s clothes) — everything except a new Motorola radio on the dash.
“You cannot take the radio!” the driver exclaimed. “The IRR made me sign for it! I will be personally responsible for its cost.”
Degman also has discovered Saddam’s personal train, kept in a shed north of Baghdad’s Central Station. It’s got three German-made Henschel-EMD locomotives and 10 cars, was used just once and “are still without a doubt the cleanest locomotives I have ever seen, inside or out.”
Oh, as far as that $1.4 million in cash: Normally, of course, payrolls and reconstruction projects would be handled via wire transfers to the railway’s account in a local bank. But with all the wires destroyed, cash taken from Saddam’s various treasuries is physically transferred, explaining Degman’s hopping into a pickup truck and placing his jacket over a total of $1.7 million, mostly in bricks of U.S. $100 bills.
“My moment of wealth,” writes Degman, who says he plans to return home when his contract expires in June “and seek a new challenge in railroading.”
Lord, where does the guy go next for this level of excitement and stress? Build a railroad in southern Sudan? Haiti?
Trains, which made the Tribune’s list of top 50 magazines last year, is published by Kalmbach Publishing Co., 2107 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612, Waukesha, Wis., 53187-1612. It’s $4.95 per single copy and $42.95 for an annual subscription.