From the Railroad to the World Wide Web

Born in Port Huron, Michigan and raised near Dayton, Ohio, John Keith attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Case Western Reserve in Cleveland and graduate school at the Ohio College of Podiatriac Medicine. In the late 1960s, after deciding he really didn’t want to be a foot doctor, Keith became a self-described hippie, joining the Frogge Hollow commune with a farm in northeastern Ohio and Genesis 1:29, a vegetarian restaurant, in Cleveland. He also worked his way through school with seven years as a respiratory therapist.

Working his way west as a ranch hand and a "worm" (a roughneck’s oil patch helper), Keith eventually visited friends in the Sierra Nevada’s Feather River Canyon and decided to settle there. A marathon runner by 1975, he decided to work for the Western Pacific Railroad (now Union Pacific) because he "thought the railroad would pay me to exercise." Until 1985 Keith worked as a laborer, machine operator, track patrolman and relief foreman in northern California, Nevada and Utah. For obvious reasons, his handle on the tracks, which currently sticks with him, is "Dr. John."

As the "low guy" on the WP’s tie gang, Keith "used a hay hook to pick 30 to 50 pound tie butts and throw them off the roadbed." The gang averaged 1,000 ties a day. As a result Keith suffered a "cumulative injury," a permanent cervical neck spondylosis which eventually ended his time on the tracks but not his interest in the railroad and increased his loyalty to the union.

Keith was elected Secretary-Treasurer of Feather River Local Lodge 1246 in the summer of 1985 and continues to hold that position to this day. (Keith sends thanks "to all the Brothers of Lodge 1246 who continue to re-elect me as their Secretary-Treasurer.") One of the first things Keith began to do upon his election 16 years ago was produce the quarterly newsletter 1246 Gazette.

Having purchased his first computer in 1984, Keith has made his living since becoming disabled primarily through desktop publishing. For the benefit of BMWE members, in addition to the 1246 Gazette, Keith has also edited and produced the quarterly Union Pacific Safety Chronicle and the bimonthly newsletter 922 News/Noticias.

In 1985 Keith also produced a safety manual, Ingles del Ferrocarril, for Hispanic workers to learn the railroad English they needed to work safely on the tracks. This was the result of his desire to help the many new hires straight from Mexico he worked with on the Western Pacific’s tie gang.

In recent years Keith has enlarged his services to include Web Page design and maintenance and when he’s not running the tiny post office from 9:00 to 11:00 where he lives in the beautiful Plumas National Forest in the Feather River Canyon in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in northern California, Keith can usually be found at his computer working as a WebMaster.

The two websites of which he is currently most proud are the Storrie Retreat (www.storrieretreat.com) and the BMWE Pacific Federation (www.pacfed.net). As you will immediately see if you go to either of these sites, Keith has made excellent use of color and graphics in addition to designing informative, easy to navigate sites. This makes finding out when and where your next lodge meeting is, for example, a most pleasant task when you can also view photographs of railroad bridges in the scenic Feather River Canyon.

Another website to check out to see Keith’s work (and get more information about him) is that of Canyon Graphics (www.psln.com/bluesy/), the business he owns to produce newsletters and websites for "our nation’s unions, with railroads a specialty."

Although he doesn’t limit his services to unions alone, he does limit the rates he charges for a newsletter, logo design, web page design and/or continuing WebMaster services to that of a track foreman if anyone represents a local lodge, system division or federation or national/international union. In addition, to help with budgeting, if you provide him with your needs and a general idea of what you want in your newsletter or web page, Keith will bid a fixed rate for the job. He also offers mailing services for your newsletter or other "snail-mailed" items. To get more information, you can contact John Keith at the website above or call 530-283-0960 or write P.O. Box 100, Storrie, California 95980.

Keith also thanks Pacific Federation General Chairman Ray Ash who commissioned the Pac Fed’s website and who has supported Lodge 1246's Gazette for 15 plus years and Local Chairman Fred Hugg who "has lent me assistance and encouragement since he arrived on Western Pacific territory many years ago."

As assistant foreman on a B&B concrete construction crew, Blake Horstman couldn’t help but keep a watchful eye on a passing Canadian Pacific Railway train as he drove home from work one night this winter in the Tomah subdivision. It’s a good thing his work habit of watching trains extended into his off-duty hours because Blake probably prevented a derailment at the small southeastern Wisconsin town of Bangor.

Driving on a county road along the tracks, Blake, 25, saw sparks coming from the wheels of one of the cars of the westbound train at about 8:30 p.m. January 25. He was due to reach his home in Rockland, Wis. within minutes.

"As soon as I got home, I called up the dispatcher on the telephone and told her what I saw and said I thought they should stop the train because it was sparking pretty bad," Blake said. Tina Shea, the Wisconsin dispatcher in Minneapolis, called the train crew and stopped them on the main line at Milepost 274.5, shortly before it was scheduled to take the siding at Medary, Wis., to make way for opposing freight train traffic. This would have entailed the damaged car having to negotiate the turnout into the siding at a speed of up to 25 mph. The east switch for Medary siding is 2.5 miles farther down the track.

"In my opinion, this car with a jammed front truck and wheels that were not turning freely would not have made it through the switch at Medary East," said Rick Wedel, the service area manager for engineering services in the Chicago Service Area. "This likely would have caused a derailment on this main track turnout, causing extensive damage and interruption of train service for many hours or even a couple of days."

Rick noted that this area is inaccessible to equipment and vehicles, which would have made a derailment even more serious and difficult to repair. "In addition, there is always the possibility of personal injury when we have a major train accident," he said.

Blake didn’t find out that he had prevented a likely derailment until the next day when his supervisor called to tell him what happened. Inspection of the train showed that the center sill of the leading truck had broken away, and the leading truck had shifted forward and jammed under the frame of the car, Rick said.

"Maintenance of Way forces inspect passing trains as part of their normal work duties. In this case, however, Blake was off duty but still did his duty," Rick said.

Blake said several supervisors thanked him for catching the problem. One even paid for the tickets that Blake had ordered for the Daytona 500 to show his gratitude. Blake, who took his wife to the race, said they ended up sitting in front of the spot where Dale Earnhardt suffered his fatal crash.

"It hit really hard. But I’ve seen wrecks like that and didn’t think much of it. When the other driver got out and stuck his head in that car, he waved his hands (for help), and I knew it wasn’t good," Blake said.

Blake began working for CPR in 1994 on an extra gang and transferred to the bridges and building crew in 1996 as a carpenter. In 1998, he was promoted to assistant foreman on a concrete construction crew, which works from St. Paul, Minn. to southern Indiana.

Staying alert and reacting quickly runs in Blake’s family. His father-in-law, machine operator Dale Johnson of Rockland, Wis., likely prevented four people on bicycles from getting struck by an Amtrak train at a crossing last July 20 in Reeseville, Wis. Dale sprinted from his work truck and yelled at the people to get off the tracks after the lights and bells on the crossing signals came on and the train whistled from around a bend. Within seconds, he helped push a girl on a bicycle off the track and prevented another bicyclist with a toddler in tow from getting on the tracks. (See story in November/December 2000 JOURNAL.) Like father-in-law, like son-in-law.

-- Laura Baenen, Communications Representative for CPR