Overview

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.

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9781634995870

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William J. Brotherton hopped freights as a youth into downtown Atlanta and beyond. He parlayed that into jobs with the Burlington Northern Railroad as a brakeman, conductor, and trainmaster. He worked freight trains as a ""boomer"" in some of the most beautiful areas of the country, with vistas only available to those sitting in a locomotive or caboose. He operated trains with some of the most interesting people you could ever meet and survived 35- and 40-below temperatures hanging on boxcars and worrying about frostbite. A promotion to trainmaster made him reevaluate his railroad career. Today, he is a lawyer.

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