Kay Fisher

Kay Fisher had been married to Bill for all of 4 months when he bid on and won a job of signal maintainer on the Southern Pacific Railroad. The job only allowed Bill to be at home one day a week so 2 months later Kay found herself moving from their small honeymoon cottage near Roseville to an “outfit” car for a signal maintainer on a passing siding of the SP mainline outside the town of Cisco.

Her outfit car (#713) was a roughly refitted baggage car coupled to a semi-derelict boxcar (#787) which served as a tool carrying car. It was part of a larger work train with bunk cars for railroad workers. It came with a boarder (her husbands assistant), a bedroom with a paper thin partition and door, a kitchen with a coal fired stove, a small living room and a shower fed by water from storage tanks on the roof. Restroom facilities – an outhouse (“The Dream House”) with no direct connection to the car.

The world Kay found herself in was that of railroading up close, personal, gritty, dangerous, exciting and in a constant state of change. Her front door was only 6 feet from the mainline which meant a 24/7 parade of thundering locomotives and cars, ringing bells and shrill steam whistles. Since the work train went where work was needed the moves were frequent and the destinations, more often than not, were desolate railroad sidings a long way from nowhere.

The author’s adventures covered the full spectrum of life’s chance encounters (giving first aid to a member of the work train who was badly cut in a knife fight, knocking on the door of a diner car stopped on the mainline to ask for and receive a pound of coffee, suffering through odoriferous weeks parked on a storage track next to a large holding pen for cattle awaiting shipment by rail, etc.) and her compelling writing style brings all of them to life for the reader.

It should be noted that both she and her husband wrote a book about their experiences on the railroad. She provides the railroad homemakers perspective and in his book (30 Years Over Donner) her husband, Bill Fisher, provides the workman’s perspective. To the best of my knowledge they are the only husband and wife team to do this.

I think this is a very well written book and it should appeal to both the person interested in stories about working and living on the railroad and to anyone interested in reading about one of the more unusual ways of housekeeping in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. See Common Knowledge for an example of the writing style. (Text Length – 170 pages, Total Length 177 pages includes supplement)… (més)