End of the Line
An era which has been a long time in dying finally ended this past winter, with a cloud of smoke and the sharp crackle of flame. The last of the railway camp cars, once home to hundreds of WU people, were put to the torch in Chattanooga.
There should have been some ceremony, some little bit of fanfare to mark the final passing of these stalwarts. But there wasn't. There was only the unsentimental calculations of the scrap metal dealer who had bought them, and who was burning off the excess material before hauling them away.
At one time, there were 120 of these camp car outfits scattered throughout the United States housing "line gangs." The usual arrangement consisted of two Pullman cars (one for sleeping, one for eating), two box cars (one tool car and one material car), and a water tank car. The outfits were snug, though hardly luxurious, and in fact resembled a ship crew's living quarters.
The sleeping car was partitioned into three sections or rooms. The
foreman's private quarters, at one end, were equipped with bed, lockers,
chairs, desk, and wash basin.
Next came the men's dormitory: two rows of double-decker bunks that could accommodate sixteen men. The remaining half of the car (these Pullmans were seventy feet long) was used for recreation and locker space.
The dining car also contained living quarters for the man and wife team who served as cooks. At first, only men were hired as cooks -- the "Bull Cook" and his "Flunky." Within a few years, it was discovered that a married couple was more reliable -- and less susceptible to the lure of nearby bootleggers and saloons. So from 1918 on, camp car outfits were graced with a woman's touch, and a nearer approximation to home cooking.
The heyday of camp cars was from 1920 to 1930, when WU's pole line
reconstruction program reached its peak. After that came a slow decline
caused partly by increasing costs, partly by new methods of telegraphy which
made such an extensive pole line network unnecessary. The last complete
camp car outfit, Number Ten, was decommissioned in 1960.
The few survivors that came to a firey end this winter had been used as storage space at the Chattanooga Works. Finally, they were no longer needed even for this lowly function. So on a cold gray day, with firemen standing by just in case, they passed into history, leaving behind a few tons of metal, and many memories.