William Brotherton 224 pages softcover
Burlington Northern Adventures relates the personal experiences of the
author William J. Brotherton, who went "railroading" as a brakeman,
conductor, and trainmaster for the Burlington Northern Railroad system
from 1979 to 1982. Through his many interesting short stories,
Brotherton illustrates what it was like to work for a major railroad
company before branch lines, vintage diesel locomotives, and cabooses
were phased out. His accounts show what has changed within the railroad
industry since then--and what has not.
Brotherton, who grew up around trains in Georgia, takes the reader
along on his personal encounters with a railroader's life in North
Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Minnesota, and Colorado. Now a
lawyer, nothing in the courtroom compares to hanging on a boxcar in
thirty-five-below weather working a local in North Dakota. He truly
believed he would put in his thirty years with the railroad once he
received his promotion to trainmaster with the Colorado & Southern
Railway, a part of the Burlington Northern Railroad system--but he soon
found that being a trainmaster was a special kind of hell.
