Durham Facilities & Personnel

[NW Mailing List]

Gordon,

You'll appreciate knowing that "Uncle Joe" brought my Dad from Durham to 
Lynchburg in the spring of '54 for his first interview with the Motive 
Power Dept. in Roanoke. This was his senior year at N.C. State on the GI 
Bill, and he specifically remembered being amazed at the age and 
reputation of the engineer.

John Garner


Regarding crew's eating, they sometimes cooked something on a small coal 
stove in what I believe was the crew register room next door to the shop 
office.  Passenger engineer "Uncle" Joe Richardson regularly dumped a 
can of spam into a skillet along with a sliced onion and cooked it on 
the stove.  This led some of the railroaders there to maintain that 
onions were healthful because of his advances age. "Uncle" Joe was in 
his eighty's but still ran the steam (Class K1) powered passenger train 
every day between Durham and Lynchburg.  I was told that the BLE stated 
that he was the oldest active engineer in the USA.  Even on the hottest 
North Carolina summer day he wore heavy clothes, maintaining that 
whatever kept the cold out likewise kept the heat out!

Gordon Hamilton