The last ride

Longtime railroader passes torch to 4th generation

By LYNNETTE HINTZE/The Daily Inter Lake

Mark McManus' grandfather "hired out" to the railroad in 1922. His father followed suit in 1936. In 1967 it was Mark's turn to carry on the family legacy.

And during a slow trip across the Hi-Line from Havre to Whitefish last week - the last one he would take after 42 years on the job - he turned over the family's railroad reins to his son Keith.

There was a little celebrating during that final ride as a BNSF Railway Co. employee, a few handshakes, slaps on the back and well wishes as McManus reflected on more than four decades of working on the railroad.

Railroading has been a way of life so long that it's hard for McManus to imagine a life without being on call at all hours.

Not that he won't enjoy settling into retirement. There's a TV with a flat screen so big (65 inches) that McManus says he literally has to move his head to follow the action as his favorite football team's quarterback is running. And there are a few fish that need catching.

But on the afternoon following his last day of work - the train arrived in Whitefish on Wednesday at 2:30 a.m., some two hours late - McManus and his family reminisced about a career that was a way of life not only for him but also for his wife of 41 years, Karen, and grown sons Kevin and Keith.

"I always say that he made the living, but I tried to make the living worthwhile," Karen said.

Like most railroader wives of her day, she was able to stay home and raise her family because the railroad did and still does pay well.

"I had to be very flexible," she recalled. "There were lots of odd hours, get up at 3, go back to bed and get up at 6 to get the boys off to school. It becomes a way of life, but the whole family is a team. We worked together."

McManus, 65, said they celebrated lots of "railroad holidays" - Christmas a day late or a day early; the same with Thanksgiving and other holidays.

Before cell phones and computers, railroaders were more or less tethered to their land-line telephones, waiting to be called out. Even mowing the lawn was out of the question if there wasn't someone inside to answer the phone.

When the McManuses moved to Happy Valley in 1978, party-line telephones were still in place, and a neighbor had the bad habit of not completely hanging up the receiver after a conversation. It made life difficult for a railroader whose livelihood depended on those calls.

"I'd make four trips in a two-week period, so if I missed a call, it was a quarter of my paycheck," he said.

Pagers eventually made life a little easier, but once a railroader is paged, he has only 15 minutes to get to a phone or the assignment goes to the next crew member on the list.

McManus wasn't sure he wanted a life on the rails when he came back home to Laurel after serving two years in the Army's 82nd Airborne Signal Battalion in the mid-1960s. He considered being a heavy equipment operator, but his buddies were hiring on with Northern Pacific, so he followed. New recruits were at the bottom of the seniority totem pole; working nights was a rite of passage.

McManus spent the last 15 years of his career as a conductor, but his railroad work has run the gamut, from switching cars in the yard at Laurel to serving as a brakeman on the Spokane-to-Havre route in the days before portable radios essentially replaced that position by the early 1990s.

He's seen substantial changes in the railroad industry through the decades. Back in the day, "if we had 4,000 tons it was a pretty good-sized train," he recalled. The typical length of those trains was 4,500 to 4,800 feet. Nowadays, they're up to 16,000 tons and 7,000 feet long.

The amount of training for new recruits has changed, too, from three "student" trips when McManus first hired out to 14 weeks of solid training when his son joined the ranks. Keith has worked for BNSF for 4 1/2 years as a switchman, brakeman and conductor but is laid off at the moment.

"It affords a good life, even with an inconvenient schedule," Keith said. "And it's unique having an office that's going 55 to 70 miles per hour down the track."

The McManuses' other son owns his own computer company in Belgrade.

EVERY NOOK and cranny of the tracks between Spokane and Havre is forever etched in McManus' mind. Each segment is about 250 miles, and with a "real good train" it can be done in 5 1/2 to 6 hours.

"I had one trip coming out of Havre on a grain train that took 26 hours, though," he recalled.

Winter conditions are especially grueling for railroaders. When it's 25 below, "it'll snap metal like glass," McManus said.

The last derailment of a train he was on came seven years ago when a bad bearing caused a wheel to fall off 20 miles east of Shelby. When a train is carrying hazardous materials like that one was, "it's one big panic," he said.

McManus faithfully took calls at all hours, night or day, blizzard or blistering heat, his family attested. They published a tribute to him that McManus found in the Daily Inter Lake the morning after his last ride. There were sentiments that would make any family man proud:

"He has lived a life of discipline, example and sacrifice and he did it with never a work of complaint or regret," he family wrote. "He continues to live a life of dedication to his family and has provided for all in ways he is not even aware of."

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com