Dormitory cars for the construction crews of the St. PM&M Railway in the 1880s. (Association of American Railroads.)

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Photos by Perry Rapier, December 1999.

by Perry Rapier

Norfolk Southern Corporation spends millions of dollars for technological advances in order to stay at the top of the railroad industry -- the best locomotive power money can buy, the best communications system, the best equipment, the latest vehicles, and so forth, right on down the line. In short, if Norfolk Southern thinks they need it to improve the bottom line, they buy it.

The one thing Norfolk Southern evidently doesn't believe they need is to provide for their maintenance of way production employees. For them, it's a different story and a different set of rules.

They may work all day with the latest equipment such as a computer assisted, laser guided surfacing and lining machine that carries Norfolk Southern into the 21^st Century. At the end of the workday, however, the latest technologies are all put aside and you must go back into the past.

Back to when railroads warehoused their production employees in communal living quarters called camp cars. For even though Norfolk Southern uses 21^st Century cutting edge technology to make money, they resort to 19^th Century technology to house their production employees. This means at the end of the day for a railroad maintenance of way production worker in the year 2000, not much has changed from 1880.

As the railroads were being built by huge gangs of men, company housing was provided by the railroads. This housing consisted of actual boxcars traveling on the rail and moved as needed to stay up with the progress of the work. These boxcars had windows cut out, bunks installed and some steps put up. To those of us who have endured these conditions, or still are, all of this sounds very familiar. For even though this was the way it was in the 1800s, it is still this way for production employees on Norfolk Southern.

Even though the boxcars are now steel instead of wood, they are still boxcars with holes cut in them and still used to warehouse employees. I say Norfolk Southern because it is the only class one railroad left in the United States that uses camp cars to house its production gang employees. It is clear that Norfolk Southern believes their employees do not deserve better living conditions.

That's right, while the rest of the railroad industry provides motels or hotels for their production gangs, Norfolk Southern still uses camp cars. Why? The reason is simple. It's all about money. If they can save a few pennies by subjecting their employees to intolerable living conditions, which all the other railroads have abandoned, then that is good for the bottom line. Never mind the fact that their employees are forced to live under the worst of circumstances in order to survive and make a living for their families.

If you are a production gang employee working on the railroad it is a very difficult life to say the least. To start with you are torn between wanting and needing to be with your family and the fact that in order to support them you must be away from them. To get home on the weekend you must drive hundreds of miles after working all day. When you get home you are dead tired and need to rest.

You hate to see Saturday night come because you know it will bring Sunday and time to leave again. You try to make the most of it given the fact you have only a few hours left at home. Sometimes you don't say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing. Why risk turning an already shaky situation into a heated one. You try to persevere and put on your happy face. You are not very good at it. Your spouse and your children see right through it.

Sunday is the worst day. You must get up and get ready to leave again. It's almost like you are getting ready to go to a funeral. You are feeling bad about it, in fact you are feeling guilty about it. You hope your spouse understands and that someday your children will. But for right now, you try to block out the picture of your six-year-old's tear-stained face as you turn to leave.

How many miles must you go before that lump is gone from your throat? How many miles must you go before you are mentally prepared to take up your life on the other side? If you are a production worker staying in motels or hotels you also must endure the repeated separation from your home and family. And it never gets easier.

However, if you are a Norfolk Southern production worker, it is all that and worse. First, you must find the railroad yards where the camp cars are parked. A good rule of thumb -- if you stay on the paved roads you will never find the camp cars. They are usually parked in a remote section of the yards. This means driving on muddy roads and through mud holes in areas with little or no lighting at all. When you find them, you park your vehicle in as good a place as you can find. This is so you only have to wade through the mud the shortest distance possible while carrying your personal belongings.

In the summer months these roads turn to dust that blows all over the camp cars and surrounding area. If you are standing outside, you get covered with dust and any chemical residue laying around in the yards. And after a gentle rain, instead of a clean, fresh smell, you smell chemicals churned up by the rain.

The summer also brings mosquitos that live in the weeds allowed to grow in the yards. So if the mosquitos don't get you, the dust will. If you are lucky, Norfolk Southern has a vendor come in and spray a nauseating toxicant for the mosquitos and an anti-dust agent on the roads. Some luck.

On top of all this, the camp cars themselves are very dismal. It's like living in a submarine with windows. The camp cars only purpose is to hold you over so that you can present yourself for work the next day. To be in a clean, relaxing atmosphere where you can get a good night's rest and be refreshed and at your best for the next day's work -- a person can only dream about.

A railroad yard is a 24-hour operation. There are trains going up and down the tracks all night long. In some places the camp cars are parked so close to the main line that when a train goes by it rocks the whole camp car and sways you back and forth while you lay in your bunk. Very often a train with a flat wheel will go by pounding the rail so hard it nearly knocks you out of the bunk. You lay there thinking, I hope the next train will not derail and wipe out the whole camp. God, please do not let me die lying in this bunk in such a lonely and forlorn place!

The next morning you go down to the kitchen car and listen to safety rules being read because Norfolk Southern cares for you and wants you to be safe.

After putting in your 10 or 12 hours on the job, you return to the camp cars located on company property. You look out the window (if it's not covered over) and see company train cars and company railroad tracks. Inside your company camp car you see company bulletins posted on company bulletin boards. For you there is no escape. Even though you only get paid for the hours you labor, you put in a lot more time than that. The company has a grip on your body, mind and soul. Every minute of every hour of every day of your tour of duty, you are theirs.

You are cut off from the rest of the world. On the camp cars there are no telephones. If you want to call home you have to get in your car and drive to the nearest phone. If you rode with somebody else you have to get somebody to take you to a phone or borrow a vehicle.

If you have an emergency at home, there is no way you can be called direct. You must rely on your spouse or other family member to try to contact a railroad official and then hope somebody can find you. Since you travel and are in different locations almost all the time, nobody except the people working directly with you know who or where you are. Contacting you normally can take hours and sometimes even a day or two.

Inside the camp car, you usually have to cope with the fact that you have to walk on filthy floors because of all the mud tracked in. Yes, you can clean it up and you do clean it up. But when one of the other five, six or seven occupants of the camp car comes in, it has to be done again, and again, and again. After awhile, you are forced to accept the fact that there will be mud on the floor to some extent as long as you are parked in a mud hole.

When you live in a camp car, you must share virtually everything with everybody else. Some camp cars have two showers for eight men while others have only one. In any case, you must wait to get into the shower. Sometimes there's no more hot water when you do get there. You always hope the person ahead of you cleaned up after himself. And you hope you have the energy to clean up after yourself.

Your sleeping area consists of bunks stacked on top of each other on both sides of the camp car separated by an aisle in which to pass. The bunks are narrow and short. You have to be fairly small in order to stretch out and be comfortable. This means most people have to sleep as best they can all curled up. There is another person either two feet above you or two feet below you and another almost within arm's length at your side. People are snoring as you try to get to sleep as best you can. The constant noise, inside and out, is a part of your environment and you have to learn to deal with it if you expect to make it.

Often a person in a bottom bunk will hang a blanket down from the top bunk in an attempt to get some privacy. But with the number of people cramped up in the limited space of a camp car, privacy is out of the question. It is another luxury that you can only dream about.

Basic little things that the rest of us take for granted do not usually come easy for camp car workers. Like going to the bathroom, for instance. When the rest of us need to go to the bathroom, we get out of bed, walk to the bathroom, do our business, and go back to bed. It's as simple as that.

If you live in a camp car, however, it's not that simple. First you have to get out of bed and get dressed. You can't forget to put on your shoes too because you will need them to walk through the mud, snow, or ballast. And you can't forget your flashlight, you'll need that too.

After walking outside, you shine your light on the porta-johns and try to determine which one will be the least offensive. The walk to the porta-john is a short one because they're usually located within three feet of your camp car window. In fact the vents for the toilets go right up beside the widow. The "convenience" comes at a heavy price, especially in the summer; even when you can't see the toilets, you still get to smell them.

In fact, each season presents its own toilet challenges. In the summer, as I mentioned, the smell is virtually unbearable. You think about your cat at home and how after he does his business he gets to cover it up. You are not afforded that luxury. You open up a door and shine your flashlight inside. The object is to find one not too full and has a clean seat because the last guy remembered to bring his flashlight. At this point you don't know if you need to go to the bathroom or throw up; either one would be a relief.

In the winter, the matter in the toilet sometimes freezes and piles up so finding the one that is not too full is still important. You try to block out the fact that the temperature of the plastic toilet seat you are about to press against your bare bottom is about 10 degrees below zero. Often you wonder if constipation isn't a better option. As you pull your clothes back up, your mind drifts to the Norfolk Southern safety rule book and the sentence that says, "The areas most susceptible to cold injury are hands, feet, face, nose, and ears." You think maybe this statement should be revised to include other parts of the anatomy.

You walk back to your bunk, take your clothes back off and get back into bed. What is just a simple routine matter to most others is a dehumanizing experience for you.

I have only briefly touched the story of camp car life in this article. In my opinion there is probably enough information to write a book about camp car life and the misery it heaps on the backs of our members. A needless misery added to a very demanding job that by itself takes its toll on members, both physically and mentally.

While housing workers in motels or hotels does not make their job or being away from home any easier, it does significantly improve the quality of their lives after work. The other railroads have recognized their workers' basic needs but Norfolk Southern still clings to its antiquated system of subjugating its production employees. I can only believe that's because Norfolk Southern's concern is for dollars and cents, its own bottom line, and they never consider or equate the damage done in human suffering.

This article is dedicated to my fellow brothers who are still enduring these conditions and especially those who have allowed me the privilege of sharing a part of their lives. As I wrote this article my mind reflected back to the countless hours we spent together that will always be a part of me. You know who you are, Catfish, Slick, Rat, Hoyt, Ruben, Ronnie, Bear, Tubb, Baker, LeBaume and Doc, and all the rest.

Perry Rapier began his railroad career in 1974 by working for the Penn Central (now CSX) as a trackman and has experienced living in a camp car. While working full time as a Vice Chairman for the Pennsylvania Federation, a position he has held for 16 years, Rapier earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Labor Studies from the National Labor College in 1999 and is currently working towards a Master of Science Degree at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.