WILLARD, Ohio — Tom Boylan’s great-great-grandfather, George Boylan, came to this country in 1862 looking for a life better than the one he had in Ireland, the Mansfield News Journal reported.
Three years later, George Boylan went to work for a railroad in Pennsylvania. His descendants have worked in that industry ever since.
One of them was Tom Boylan’s grandfather, Meredith Boylan.
“He retired from the railroad after working for them for 56 years,” Tom Boylan said. “He started out as a water carrier when he was about 9 years old.”
When he retired, Meredith Boylan was the general foreman of the locomotive shop.
Meredith’s brother, Cyril Boylan, also worked for the railroad for more than 50 years.
Tom Boylan’s father, Kenneth Boylan, worked as a railroad dispatcher starting in 1946. He stayed for 27 years before retiring with a disability.
Even Tom Boylan’s mother, Bernita Boylan, worked in the industry for eight years. She calculated miles, coal and tonnage for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad accounting department. She left the company when Tom Boylan was born.
Tom Boylan, 56, never seriously considered doing anything except following in his family’s footsteps. His ambition was to become a railroad fireman and eventually move up to engineer.
But by the time he graduated from high school in West Virginia in the early 1960s, the railroads largely had changed from coal-fired steam locomotives to diesel locomotives. Since a fireman’s main job was to shovel coal into the engine’s furnace, the position became superfluous and was being phased out.
“Firemen did other things like helping out with signaling, so there were protests about it being a safety issue,” Boylan said. The companies didn’t buy it.
So Boylan began studying electrical work, hoping to become an electrician for the railroad. But when he was ready for a job in 1967, there were no openings in his state.
But there was an opening with what is now CSX in Willard. Boylan took it and is still with the company today.
During the 36 years since, jobs at the railroad have changed. Mostly, they decreased.
“They began phasing out cabooses in the ’80s,” Boylan said. “There used to be a brakeman and a conductor in (each caboose). There was a lot more hand signaling in the old days, and they were important in that. Now, it’s mostly done with an electronic box on the rear of the train.”
In the days of steam engines and hand signals, a typical freight train had a crew consisting of an engineer; a head brakeman and fireman in the front; and a brakeman and conductor in the back. These days, the crew normally consists of just the engineer and the brakeman in the front.
“Sometimes a train will have an extra brakeman on it if there’s a lot of switching,” Boylan said.
The trend to lower labor requirements started long before Boylan did.
“Up to the 1940s, it was common to have about a thousand men working in a roundhouse. But those days are gone forever,” he said.
A lot of yard work was consolidated in just a few places in the 1970s, Boylan said. He remembers when he worked with 14 electricians, doing maintenance on the locomotives. Now he works with four. The number of machinists he works with has dwindled from 20 to 10.
“Overall, I’d say the number of workers has gone down probably 60 percent,” Boylan said.
The drop in employment isn’t because railroads have fallen on hard times. In fact, the freight tonnage moving on railroads goes up each year.
The jobs are lost to technology.
“A typical freight train used to have two engines, but not anymore. One new diesel engine will pull the same load as two did years ago,” Boylan said. “And the freight cars are bigger, too.”
Fewer pieces of equipment means fewer repairs requiring workmen. Nonetheless, Boylan said he would encourage anyone who wants to work for the railroad to do so.
“It’s a good industry to get into. It’s a good working environment with good wages, normally,” Boylan said. “It’s a lot better than working in a factory.” Boylan’s opinion might be colored by childhood memories.
“Back in the 1940s and 1950s, (sports) teams traveled by train, not airplanes. Since my father was a dispatcher, he always knew who was coming through the station,” Boyland said.
That’s how Tom Boylan met people like the NBA’s Jerry West and the NFL’s Sam Huff.
“Sam liked to play golf in Grafton,” he said. Grafton is Boylan’s hometown.
One of the men Boylan works with today is engineer Albert Workman. The 29-year-old Shelby resident doesn’t come from a long line of railroaders, but the career always appealed to him. (Brother Workman is a member of BLE Division 526 in Willard, Ohio.)
“As a kid, I always thought it would be neat to work for the railroad,” Workman said.
The reality, though, was a little different.
“But once I got into it, the ‘mystique’ of it all went away. There is a lot you are responsible for and may be held accountable for if something goes wrong. It can get stressful sometimes,” he said.
Ashland Railway hired Workman out of high school in 1992. He started in maintenance but transferred to conducting for a couple of years. In 1995, he went to CSX and was promoted a year later to engineer.
“The general public just assumes all we do is sit up in the cab and blow the whistle,” he said.
Being an engineer is much more than that. Workman inspects the locomotive and conducts brake tests, monitors wayside signals and signs, checks the train’s speed and monitors all the gauges to make sure everything is operating normally. He must be re-certified by the Federal Railroad Administration every three years.
Workman said the best aspect of working for the railroad is the people he works with.
“There are a few grumpy fellows out there that can make it miserable, but the majority of the guys are great to work with,” he said.
The downside of the industry is that for people who don’t work in the yard permanently, or have a permanent local run, the traveling can be tough.
“It’s hard for a family man or woman when they are away from home,” Workman said. “It doesn’t bother me too much, but there are some guys that want nothing to do with working the road.”
Like Boylan, Workman can’t really envision himself doing any other kind of work.
“I don’t know what I would do if I left the railroad,” he said.