Stories from Etta Kempton's Journal, Part 3 - Will's day

According to his grandson Donald Thompson, Will Kempton began his life-long railroad career by working on a section gang based in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. At the time, this was a thriving mill town on a tributary of the Connecticut River adjacent to the city of Springfield, a railroad hub. Will later worked on a section gang of the Adirondack Division of the New York Central Railroad based in Childwold, NY., a short-lived station that opened in 1893. The exact dates of these jobs are unknown. Will may have tried farming first because by the time he went to work on the railroad he was probably already in his 20s.

Will married his N. Bangor, NY neighbor, Etta Wagner in 1897. Their child Gladys was born the next year. While Will was temporarily working away from home, his new wife and their infant daughter, Gladys, continued to live on the Wagner farm in N. Bangor. Then, about 1905 Will got the section foreman’s job at Beaver River Station and moved there with Etta and young Gladys. Will was 37 years old, a tested hard worker and already skilled at overseeing other employees.

 

Put simply, the job of a section foreman was to maintain the track for a few miles on either side of a station.Will was the section foreman of Section #16 of the Adirondack Division. His section was five miles long. The station at Beaver River was at milepost 77.68. Will worked as far south as milepost 75, and as far north as milepost 80. There was another section gang headquartered at the logging camp at Woods Lake to the south and another one at Brandreth to the north. There were many occasions when the Beaver River gang worked jointly with the adjoining gangs on larger projects.

 

The section foreman was responsible for directing the work of the three or four men in his section gang. More were men hired in the summer. In Will’s case, the members of his section gang were all of Italian descent. Most were recent immigrants. They lived together in a small house provided by the railroad that was nothing more than a bunk room with a kitchen. Beaver River locals referred to it as “the Italian Camp.” The composition of his section gang changed frequently, with men working for a few months, quitting or being fired, only to be replaced by others from a similar background. Will had the responsibility for and authority to hire and fire the men in his section gang.

 

Italian section gang gathering at Beaver River
Photo by Gladys Kempton, collection of Tim Mayers

Will’s Beaver River section gang worked year-round in all kinds of weather. They worked in the snow with the temperature below zero. They worked in the pouring rain and in clouds of biting insects. It was heavy work, done with hand tools. They usually worked six days a week for eight to ten hours a day. On occasion the railroad directed Will to reduce the hours worked by his gang on a temporary basis to save money. Section workers were paid by the hour. For most of the time covered by the journal they each made $1.50 for a ten-hour day. Will was paid a salary of about $60 per month, or about $2.00 per day. Etta recorded that the workers’ pay was raised to 18 cents per hour on March 16, 1916. Will’s salary was raised to $65.00 per month on the same date.

 

Will was a working foreman. He did the same heavy work as the members of his section gang. They used simple tools: sledge hammers, pry bars, jacks, shovels, wrenches and rail measuring devices. Many days they simply walked along the track carrying their tools to the location of the day’s work. If they were working more than a mile from the station they carried their dinner, often only a hunk of bread baked by Etta and a hard-boiled egg. If they had to carry a lot of equipment, they would use a hand car. On some occasions, or if working at a greater distance, they could use a small motorized car called a speeder.

 

Typical handcar and section gang, Wikimedia commons

Their primary job was maintaining a smooth and level track. Heavy passing trains exerted considerable force on the rails, constantly moving them out of alignment. Rails were sometimes even bent or broken by passing trains. The wooden ties wore out easily and had to occasionally be dug up and replaced. The train bed of gravel, cinders and sand was also inherently unstable. When the ground froze in winter the rails shifted irregularly.

 

One of Will’s most important jobs was to monitor the condition of the rails, known as walking track. When he discovered problems, he had to acquire any needed materials and organize his section gang to do whatever was necessary to assure the track was smooth, level and that the distance between the rails was correct. Poorly aligned tracks slowed trains and in the worst case caused derailments. 

 

In Etta’s journal we first meet Will in the winter of 1909-10. It snowed quite often, so much of his work had to do with clearing snow from around the station and from side-tracks nearby. Snow was cleared from the main line by a snow plow and a flanger. The flanger was a rail car equipped with machinery to clear ice and snow from the flanges of the rails that the plow couldn’t reach. The section gang cleared snow by hand from the station platform and other areas not reached by the plow and flanger. During that hard winter Etta’s journal repeatedly noted, “men shoveled snow.”

 

A many of Will’s winter days were also occupied by “shimming” track. As the rail bed froze parts of it contracted forcing the joints of the rails out of alignment. To compensate the section gangs would pound wooden or metal shims of the appropriate thickness under the joints in the rails. Etta’s journal records day after day of shimming during every winter. After the ground thawed in spring the section gang had to go back to remove the shims they had laboriously pounded in only a few months earlier.

 

All winter long, Will also was responsible for keeping the water from freezing in the water tank used to resupply the boilers in the steam engines. He did this by starting and maintaining fires in the coal stoves under the tank. This task also required him to unload the necessary coal from a train. The railroad also supplied coal to heat the station building, the section house where the Kemptons lived, and the Italian camp. Will and his section gang unloaded many tons of coal from freight cars every winter.

 

As soon as the weather warmed, major track repairs and adjustments commenced. Broken or bent rails were removed and replaced. Worn out ties were dug out by hand and replaced. Sections of tracks had to be realigned. Will had a “gauging” tool he used to determine whether the track needed adjustment. If the track had sunk, it was lifted. This was done by prying the track into position with a hand jack or a long straight pry bar with a chisel end. When the track was back in alignment, the roadbed ballast would be repositioned underneath and tamped down securely. If the track had shifted right or left, it would be forced laterally with a lining bar to form a smooth continuous line. In her journal Etta seems to have used the terms “gauging,” “lining,” “surfacing,” and “lifting” interchangeably.

 

Will and the men also were responsible for removing any trees that fell into the right-of-way as well as clearing brush and mowing grass by hand with a scythe. Downed trees were cut up and hauled back to the station to be used for firewood. Brush and grass were piled up to dry then burned during the winter.

 

In addition to all these ordinary tasks, the section men provided extra labor on a number of major projects. For example, during May 1910 they helped load sand and gravel onto train cars from the Beaver River gravel pit, a/k/a the sand bank. From the end of March 1912 until the middle of April they cleared land and laid track for the new station being built at Brandreth. In May 1912 they helped with the rebuilding of the Twitchell Creek railroad bridge. After a major derailment at Big Moose Station on Feb. 12, 1913 they worked around the clock to clear the wreck then rebuild the damaged track. It took them three days. Will slept for 24 hours after he finally returned home. 

 

Will’s work was regularly monitored by a regional supervisor and the New York Central conducted formal annual track inspections. Will was good at his work. In May of 1912 he was appointed assistant regional supervisor. On November 30, 1915 his section was named a “Prize Section.“ Etta noted the event with an uncharacteristically emotional outburst of “Hurrah! Hurrah!” Will also received a bonus of $3 a month for the next year.

 

During the seven years covered by Etta’s journal, Will took very little time off. He didn’t work on Sundays unless there was an emergency. He generally spent this free time either hunting or fishing near home. He usually missed about a week of work every year because he was sick in bed. He traveled to Vermont for a few days when his mother died and to N. Bangor for a few days when Etta’s father got sick and later died. On widely separated occasions, Will traveled overnight to places such as Utica, Herkimer or Albany on railroad business. He was in Beaver River all the rest of the time.

 

Will kept in touch by letter with his three younger sisters, Lillian, Cora and Daisy. All three of them were married and lived in the northwest corner of Vermont. Will’s mother, Eliza, lived with Cora and her family until she died in December 1911. His sister Lillian and her husband Theodore Marvin visited Will and Etta one time for three days in August 1915. They went blueberry picking, took long walks and made ice cream. One evening was spent around the piano with Lill and Thode, as Etta called them, playing favorite tunes and singing songs. 

 

It must have been quite an adventure for Lill and Theodore, especially because they drove their auto from their home in Fairfax, VT to Tupper Lake where they left the car and finished the journey by train. Given the rough conditions of the roads in those days, the auto portion of the trip took an entire day. From hints in Etta’s journal, it seems they crossed Lake Champlain by ferry connecting to Port Kent, NY. 

 

Will spent almost every evening with his family. After a light supper, they would sit in their parlor and listen to Gladys play the piano, or to records on their phonograph. They often played cards or a board game. Will liked to occasionally have a bottle of beer in the evening. This appears to have been a fairly rare event as Etta recorded him having only five cases of beer over seven years, including the two cases of Congress Beer he was given as a birthday present in May 1913. Will rarely visited Bullock’s saloon, but he did attend its grand opening on June 11, 1912. By way of contrast, Etta noted the section gang bought twenty cases of beer at one time, paying five cents per bottle. Will sometimes smoked a cigar, but it’s doubtful that he ever smoked in the house.

 

Will’s work was hard, but in many ways his life working on the railroad was considerably better than what it would have been on the farm. He was paid regularly. His family was furnished with a modest house by the railroad in a beautiful section of the north woods he loved. The quality of his work was recognized by the railroad. In 1915, the year he was awarded a prize section, he asked his supervisor for a new section house with a basement and indoor plumbing. The railroad quickly agreed and sent construction workers to Beaver River to do the building.

 

The new section house

Although Etta’s journal ends in December 1916, other sources show that Will continued to work as the Beaver River section foreman until he retired in December 1937 at the age of 69. In 1921 Will and Etta bought their own lot in Beaver River and built a smaller camp for themselves. They named it “The Pines.” After Will and Etta retired, they moved back to their hometown of N. Bangor to a house that still stands. They lived there together until Will died at the age of 75 in 1943.