The "Hoodlum"

Recent discussion of the "Hoodlum" on the Memphis Railfans FaceBook Page prompted me to dig out this article from the March 2008 "Memphis Buff": 

Hoodlum Update

By Tom Parker

(Reprinted from the April "2008 "Memphis Buff")

Following the publication of the article about the IC's “Hoodlum” in the November 2, 2007, Commercial Appeal and the December, 2007, Buff, I decided to follow the story up with some of my fellow members of the Memphis Chapter of the National Association of Retired and Veteran Railway Employees. While most were too young to recall, I did manage to find a couple of members that were able to provide some additional information. The first comment I got was “They used to have some whale of a card games on there!”

According to retired General Yardmaster Charles Dowdy, the “Hoodlum” made its last run on October 31, 1955. He recalls because it was right after he “hired out” on the railroad.

Retired machinist A. J Grandi recalls that before World War II, the “Hoodlum” consisted of a 1000 series 4-6-2 “Pacific” locomotive, a box car equipped with steps at the doorway and benches along the walls for the “passengers” and a caboose. Occasionally an 8000 series 2-8-4 Lima fresh out of the shop following repairs would be road tested on the “Hoodlum” before being released back into service. The “Hoodlum” ran once an hour between South Yard and Johnston Yard and made stops at Trigg Avenue and Mallory Avenue. Grandi lived in the area around McLemore and Third and would ride his bicycle to South Yard and leave his bike under the McLemore viaduct and catch the “Hoodlum” to Johnston Yard. It was only after WWII that they started using a passenger coach instead of the boxcar, he recalls. The car was an ordinary heavyweight coach painted in typical Pullman green. It was probably only the surplus of passenger equipment after the war that afforded the employees such an upgrade.

The GE 44 Ton 9275 replaced the steam engines in 1947 and was used until the “Hoodlum”'s last run in 1955 and it was used for a time as a “mule” at the Johnston Roundhouse shuffling the steam engines around.

While no one knows for sure, it's probable the “Hoodlum” started running in the early 1900's, almost assuredly by 1914 when the Johnston Roundhouse was built. Johnston Yard was way out in the country back then and there was little or no public trans-portation. The average person didn't own an automobile and the railroad's pool of skilled shop employees such as machinists, steamfitters, blacksmiths and boilermakers would have all been located within walking distance of the Memphis Roundhouse at South Yard.

Like many other passenger trains, the “Hoodlum” was killed by the automobile. When it was abolished, employees were given an allowance in their paycheck as compensation for driving their cars to work and messengers were provided with company vehicles to handle the company mail.

Steve Goodman's "City of New Orleans"

 “Ridin' on the City of New Orleans”

By Tom Parker

(Reprinted from the June 2012 Memphis Buff

(who borrowed liberally from other sources)

Perhaps the most popular train song ever written is “City of New Orleans” by Steve Goodman. A hit for Arlo Guthrie in 1972 on his album “Hobo's Lullaby”, it has remained an all time favorite some forty years later, joining such train songs as the “Chattanooga Choo Choo”(Benny Goodman, 1941) and the “Wabash Cannonball”(Roy Acuff, 1936) as a classic railroad song.

Steve Goodman - Photo by David Gans
- licensed under "Creative Commons "

I have imagined Steve Goodman aboard the southbound “City of New Orleans” shortly before Amtrak took over, in the observation/lounge car, busily observing and writing, capturing on paper the feeling of a train having “the disappearing railroad blues”. The real story is not that simple.

In 1965 Goodman, a native of Chicago, enrolled at the University of Illinois in Champaign, Il. Like a lot of other Chicago area U of I students, he regularly used the Illinois Central to commute between Chicago and Champaign. In 1967, towards the end of his two year off and on career as a student, he decided to skip class and remained on the “City of New Orleans” until it reached its namesake destination.

Shortly afterward, in a club in Chicago's Old Town, he related his adventure to Howard Primer, a high school chum, and was particularly animated when he talked about falling asleep on the return trip. “When he woke up”, as Primer relates Goodman’s story, “it was like he was in a surreal world: The sound of the train, the rhythm of the train, the swaying of the train, looking out the windows at the misty morning on the delta country. And he was talking about ‘Good morning, America.’” The two wrote the first lyrics of the “City of New Orleans” on a napkin that night, including the phrase “don't you know me, I'm your native son”. Some time later, Goodman would add “Good morning America, how are you”.

It wasn't until some three years later that the rest of the song came together. Goodman had dropped out of school to pursue his musical career, gotten married and in 1969 was diagnosed with leukemia. In April of 1970, he and his wife boarded the “City of New Orleans” on a chilly Monday morning to visit her grandmother in a nursing home near Mattoon, Il.

“Nancy was sleeping in the seat next to me. I just took out a sketchpad, and I looked out the window and wrote down everything I saw: junkyards, little towns that didn’t even have a sign to say what they were. Just out of Chicago, there was a bunch of old men standing around tin cans, warming themselves and waving. Nancy was still asleep after about an hour and a half, so I went down to the club car and ended up playing cards with a couple of old men.”

On that train ride, Goodman wrote two verses to add to the chorus he had written three years earlier. After his return to Chicago he added a third verse describing life inside the train; “pass he paper bag that holds the bottle” and “feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor”, etc.

Goodman first recorded the song on March 3, 1970 and was released on his album “Gathering at the Earl of Old Town”. John Denver had a version on his album “Aerie” released on December 4, 1971, just a few weeks after the train was cancelled by Amtrak. Neither version went anywhere.

At this point in his life Goodman was eking out a living recording jingles for TV ads (Dial Deodorant and Maybelline Blushing Eye Shadow were two of his accounts) and performing at local Chicago clubs. It was at one of these clubs that as fate would have it, Goodman met Arlo Guthrie.

Guthrie was sitting at the bar after doing a show, trying not to be noticed. The club owner approached Guthrie and said he would like him to listen to a “train” song in which might be interested. Guthrie replied angrily that he didn't like train songs, but the club owner assured him he wouldn't be disappointed and introduced Goodman to Guthrie.

Guthrie told Goodman to give him the tape, he would listen to it. Goodman replied that he didn't have a tape, but could sing it for him. This angered Guthrie even more, but he agreed with the stipulation that Goodman buy him a beer and finish the song before Arlo finished the beer. Guthrie would later say “one of the finer beers of my life”.

Arlo Guthrie's recording of “City of New Orleans” peaked at number 18 nationally and the rest, as they say, is history. The song has been recorded by at least eighty artists. Darcie Sanders, co-founder of Amazingrace, a cooperative in the Chicago suburb of Evanston that often hosted Goodman in concert, keenly observed that the song

“goes beyond classic into something archetypal that hooks into people so deeply that they’re moved, and they join in. . . . It’s the best outsider anthem anyone has ever written for America. We were the native sons and daughters, but maybe America didn’t know us or recognize us. Who has not felt that their life is disappearing? It’s the questioning, the trying to get closer, and yet the train is speeding away, the sense of the lost moment. That’s how a whole generation felt about their relationship with America and themselves as Americans.”

Original Lyrics by Steve Goodman

City of New Orleans© Turnpike Tom Music 1970

Original Lyrics by Steve Goodman

City of New Orleans© Turnpike Tom Music 1970

Riding on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields
Passin' towns that have no names
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles
Chorus
Good morning, America, how are you
Don't you know me, I'm your native son
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

Dealin' cards with the old men in the club car
Penny a point, ain't no one keepin' score
Won't you pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor
And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpet made of steam
Mothers with their babes asleep
Are rockin' to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they dream
Chorus
Night time on The City of New Orleans
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee
Half way home, and we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea

And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain't heard the news
The conductor sings his song again
The passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues
Final Chorus

Good night, America, how are you
Don't you know me, I'm your native son
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

Repeat First Chorus

Good morning, America, how are you

Don't you know me, I'm your native son

I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans

I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

A Walk Down Whitehaven Lane

Some history on the line recently acquired by Iowa Pacific Holdings

A Walk Down Whitehaven Lane

by Tom Parker

(Reprinted from the July 2008 Memphis Buff)

Looking North from Whitehaven Lane. Vacant area 

West of track was depot location.

There are probably a number  of old railroad stations in the Memphis area that have been lost to history. One station that almost  fits that description is “White's Station” in what is now Whitehaven.

In February, 1846, a group of cotton planters in Northern Mississippi were granted a charter by the state of Mississippi to build a railroad for the transportation of cotton to the Mississippi River. The charter was renewed in 1852, but  ther was no progress made until  July 4, 1953 when a  meeting of planters occurred at the plantation of Colonel Francis M. White in Como, MS.

Colonel White took charge and by the spring of 1855 severeal miles of track had ben laid southward from Memphis and on May 5, 1855, the first engine, the “DeSoto”, arrived in Memphis. One year later, on May 1, 1856,  a celebration was held in Hernando, Mississippi, marking the completion of the rails to that city. One year later the tracks reached  Sardis, Mississippi, the halfway point between Memphis and Grenada, MS. It was not until 1861 however that the track was completed to a connection with the Mississippi Central Railroad at Grenada, Mississippi.

A station was established  just north of the Mississippi/Tennessee state line at what is now the intersection of Whithaven Lane and  Amey Road. The station was originally named “White's Station” in honor of Col. White. The community surronding the station became known as “White Haven” and eventually  “Whitehaven”.  Although the depot has been gone for for many decades, the house track survived through the 1970's.     

This 1891 plat shows location of Depot (highlighted in red)

As late as 1979 the house track still appeared on IC's Track Profiles

Illinois Central's "Hot Cut"

Illinois Central's “Hot Cut”

- By Tom Parker

North Yard transfer job with IC GP-7 8963 and SW-7 403 passes through Central Station in July 1968 . Note southbound “City of New Orleans on adjacent track.

Photo by Phil Gosney and used with permission

I happened across the above photograph on Mike Condren's website and and it immediately took me back to the early days of my railroad career over forty years ago.

I first became acquainted with IC 8963 working a data processing (keypunch) job at Johnston Yard. Aside from telegraph operators at Central Station and Johnston Yard, the “IBM Room” in the “Big Office” was the only interface between the Memphis Terminal and the IC's telegraphy based information system. Interchange cuts and and the “Woodstock Switcher” had to be punched into IBM cards each night and transmitted via telegraph to the IC's computer in Chicago. (Records of transfers between the yards and industrial moves were 100% pencil and paper and were not transmitted to Chicago.) IC 8963 was the engine assigned to the “Woodstock Switcher” and after a few days typing “IC 8963” four times a night the number began to stick in your head, even after forty years.

8963 was usually tied up on the North Yard
Engine Track behind the yard office

Phil Gosney's picture is what was the afternoon transfer to North Yard. There were three of these transfer jobs, one for each shift and operated seven days a week, The jobs went to work at South Yard and would take track 9, where the North Yard cars were classified to North Yard. 8963 was probably on its way back to North Yard after being serviced at the Johnston Roundhouse. Its usual home was the engine track behind the North Yard office.

After the transfer job yarded its cut, it would double together tracks containing blocks of cars destined to South Yard and “A” and “C” Yards at Johnston Yard.

Map showing yard locations

This Southbound transfer was known as the “Hot Cut”. A number of Memphis' largest industries such as Humko, Firestone, International Harvester and Kimberly Clark were located in the North Yard territory. Additionally, the aforementioned “Woodstock Switcher” operated out of North Yard and cars from Dupont, W.R. Grace and other Woodstock industries were added to the mix.

Companion to the “Hot Cut” was the “Hot Sheet”. Issued by the Superintendent's Office each day and updated frequently, the “Hot Sheet” was telegraphed to all the yard offices on the terminal, listing cars requiring expedited handling, many of the on the “Hot Cuts”.

At South Yard, "City" loading was set out and the "Hot Cut" proceeded south to Johnston Yard taking the “North” and “South” cars to Johnston's “A” and “C” Yards respectively. At all three yards, the cars would be switched immediately upon arrival and the loading would move on the very next train, interchange or industrial cut, many times within just a few hours after the leaving North Yard.

My dad was an engineer for the Illinois Central. In the years that he worked for the IC, he probably sat at the throttle of a majority of the IC's engines, but 8963 is the only engine that I can definitively say he operated. More than once, he got stuck with working the night switcher at Woodstock.

IC GP-7 8963 was built in 1953. It spent most of the 1960's assigned to the “Woodstock Switcher” operating out of Memphis North Yard. It was rebuilt in 1978 by VMV at Paducah, KY into a GP-8 and renumbered IC 7973. It was sold to Steel Processing on May 26, 1993, and presumably scrapped. 

 Reprinted from the June, 2009 Memphis Buff

Note: The above photo of IC 8963 is available as a post card in the Museum's gift shop.