Train Conductor

Gordon Lannon

Gordon Lannon lives in Bishop's Falls. In 1944 he joined the Newfoundland railway and retired in 1985. His father was working for the railway when Gordon was hired.

AFTER I GOT MY DISCHARGE from the army, in 1944, I got a job with the railway. I wanted to be a locomotive engineer. Well, I was going to go firing at first. You started as a fireman, shovelling coal.

We lived in Kilbride at the time. When I was a boy, the trains used to go up through Bowring Park. The locomotive would be pulling the train up the hill. I'd see them when the fireman shovelled the coal in, in the nighttime. She would be going up the grade, and you would see the black smoke coming out of the stack, into the sky.

So anyway, I went out and I applied for a job with the railway. You had to go as a student fireman at that time. I saw the chief engineer. He said, "Well, we'll give you an opportunity, a chance to prove yourself."

I went home and I told Dad. Now, he was the type of man, when he said no, he meant no. We were sitting down to supper. I forget how many were at the table, but there were quite a few of us there.

He said, "No, you're not going on any locomotive, because I don't want you to end up like a few other poor unfortunates that were killed on the railway."

Charlie Cahill had been killed out at Northern Bight shortly before that. The locomotive went off the track and turned over and they couldn't get out, and they were scalded. I said, "Very good." I wouldn't go against him for all the tea in China.

So I left the next day and I told the superintendent, "Dad doesn't want me to go firing on the locomotive."