Tag Archive | The Railroader’s Daughter

Railroading – The Family Business

Jun7

The Railroader retired from the Norfolk & Western Railway as a locomotive engineer on January 14, 1980. His career of 40 years began on the Pennsylvania Railroad hauling troop trains during World War II. He later transferred to his beloved N & W.

At the age of 65, L.W. Buckland, Jr. “Buddy” was forced into retirement, To continue working would reduce his retirement income and he couldn’t afford that. He said to me, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the day you retire is a happy day.” I have never forgotten that.

Both of my grandfathers, a great uncle, my father and his brothers, my brother, several cousins and I, all worked for the railroad; and I married a locomotive engineer.

My paternal grandfather, Larkin Watson Buckland, Sr. and his brother, George Robert Buckland, Sr. My maternal grandfather, Asa C. Davis. My father, Larkin Watson Buckland, Jr. and his brothers, Robert Cecil Buckland,Sr., Charles Nye Buckland and Walter Edward Buckland. My brother, Larry Charles Buckland and several cousins including, Robert Cecil Buckland, Jr. and Charles Allen Buckland.

Charles, Walter, Robert, LW, SR., LW, JR

When Dad was on the N & W extra board, it was hard for everyone in the family. Same was true for his brother’s families. It was our way of life. Whether he was going or coming, it seemed to be in the middle of the night. Mom would always get up, cook a full meal and if it was for an outbound run, she would also prepare his lunch, sufficient for a lengthy trip since there was no place for stop for meals until the run reached the destination. Our family, like most in Falls Mills, VA only owned one family vehicle, so Mom would wake me up (the only child still living at home), and we’d head for the call office for Dad to report for work. When Dad was coming home from a run, then Mom and I (occasionally 3 of us when Larry was around) would load up the car and head to Bluefield, WV yard office to wait until the Railroader was relieved of duty. The cool nights, the lights, the sounds of steam engines letting off excessive pressure and cars being switched within the yard to build a train for a new destination, were all fascinating to me. It was a big city vibe to a small town country girl.

In the early 1980’s, when the US prime interest rate soared to 17%, I walked away from a stalled career in residential real estate sales and went to work for the Seaboard Coastline Railroad. SCL later became part of the Family Lines System through a series of mergers and acquisitions and then consolidated into CSX Transportation. That Seaboard line had been formed in 1967 from the merger of the Seaboard Air Line and Atlantic Coast Line railroads. I worked many stations across South Georgia and North Florida while employeed as a clerk operator, usually without enough seniority to hold a regular position. But because of the environment in which I grew up, I adjusted quickly to the “extra board” and that culture of irregularity. Receiving a 2-hour call to go work at any hour of the day or night seemed “normal” to The Railroader’s Daughter. Sometimes that advance call included “dead head” travel time which was good pay, much better than selling houses. I took to the road trips eagerly in my little gas saving Toyota Starlet since I was single and had no personal obligations. Then, as fate would have it, I met my husband, a locomotive engineer on CSX while working in Florida. The family business had come full circle.

Robert Buckland, Neb Gordon, Cecil & Janice Buckland, LWB, Sr
L-R S.O. Siple, ? Jack Ball, LWB, Jr. ????? Front L-R ? Duck Ellis, Flop Quillin, Uncle Charles Buckland
Left to right, LW Buckland, Jr., Uncle Charles Buckland, Cousin Richard McHaffa, Floozy unknown, Uncle Walter Buckland, Uncle Robert Buckland – Brothers, friends, railroaders
The streamline J series 611 steam locomotive speeds along a track, billowing thick white smoke into the air. I have time books where it is recorded that The Railroader and his father had both been at the throttle of this coveted engine.

Read more about the J 611 here

The Storytellers

May24

Attributed to Author Della M. Cumming ca 1943

We are the chosen. My feelings are, in each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again, to tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. To me, doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts, but instead, breathing life into all those who have gone before. We are the storytellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us, “tell our story”. So we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves.

How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, you have a wonderful family, you would be proud of us? How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say.

It goes beyond documenting facts. It goes to who I am and why I do the things I do? It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying, I can’t let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it.

It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family.

It goes to deep pride that they fought to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us, that we might be born who we are, that we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are us. So, as a scribe called, I tell a story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take their place in the long line of family storytellers.

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Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:26-27

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. Psalm 139:13-14

Come along while I share our story.

remembering the railroader on Father’s Day

Jun15

Here’s wishing all the railroad Dad’s and all fathers a very Happy Father’s Day! On this day, I remember my own father.

Larkin Watson Buckland, known to most as “Buddy” was born in Bluefield, West Virginia, Mercer County (10-8-1915) and resided his early years at 1505 Highland Avenue.  He retired from the Norfolk and Western Railroad (1-24-1980) as an engineer after 40 years of service. Beginning his railroading career by hauling Troup Trains during World War II on Pennsylvania Railroad (10-12-1940), Dad later transferred to his beloved Norfolk & Western (12-3-1942). He was previously a coal miner;  a barber, attending Kel-Roe Barber College on High Street in Columbus, Ohio.

2013-06-14 10.31.51

BUCKLAND LW jr RR

Dad’s mother,  Mary Jane Davidson said that L.W.Sr.’s name was Larkin Watson “Haynes” Buckland.  Thus, she passed the name on to one of Dad’s twin sisters, “Margrette Haynes Buckland”  and then to Larkin Watson Haynes Buckland, Jr. and subsequently to a grandson “Ellis Haynes”. The Haynes name was dropped, but Larkin has a namesake in his great-grandson William Larkin who was born on Dad’s birthday!
BUCKLAND LW JR Age 19    BUCKLAND LW Jr Buddy 1   BUCKLAND School Boy Buddy

Dad (1) Age 19
(2) at Barber School in Columbus, OH
(3) in an elementary school group picture