We weren’t protesters or vandals. We were working on the railroad.

My rail jobs were mostly fun because I had summer work to fill in for vacations. I came from longtime railroad families, and today I still feel something when that freight train rolls through the Susquehanna Valley at 5:30 a.m.

My Irish grandfather got his first rail job at a young age. He was only 14 in 1898 when his father, a switchman, was hit by a train and killed while working in the yards.

Back then, the only benefit offered to the families of those killed was the opportunity for a son to step in and take the job. So Grandfather Gallagher quit school and started working for the Erie Railroad in a small upstate village. He retired 51 years later at age 65.

On the other side, there was my great-grandfather, grandfather and then my father, who combined put in more than 120 years on the same railroad.

The decline of the railroads began in the 1950s when just about everybody was able to buy a car and the highways began filling up with tractor-trailers. On the Erie, the last of the Phoebe Snow passenger trains ended in the early 1960s and the railway became just a freight line.

By the summer of 1968, when I had my first summer job in the diesel shops, I could tell the end was coming. Many workers did as little as possible and on the late shifts didn’t hesitate to crawl up into the cab of an engine for a little nap. Some had it down to a science.

It was a closed shop, and the unions were strong. The workers knew they were treated poorly before there were unions. I liked the union because the bosses couldn’t make me get a haircut.

By then it was the Erie-Lackawanna with a mainline from Hoboken to Chicago. Diesel engines were brought in from all over the line for routine maintenance and repairs, both minor and major.

During the summer of 1970, I often worked with a machinist named Phil and together we sometimes spent lulls in our shift spreading the anti-war message. We would paint peace symbols around areas of the shop, and by 7 the next morning a foreman would have the painters covering them over.

We didn’t go so far as to paint the departing engines, but soot worked just as well.

I was fighting the draft that summer and would discuss the war with co-workers. Some thought I should go and would threaten to cut my hair.

My most disturbing experience, however, was three years later during a temporary job as a carman in the yards in large upstate city. Carmen, who were called car knockers, inspected freight cars on trains and then completed minors repairs such as replacing brake shoes or repacking wheel boxes.

I was on the graveyard shift, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., and worked with Jim for a week as training. On the first night, a train roared through about 11:30 and we went out to shine lights on the wheels as it went by to see if any of the boxes were hot. After that, Jim said we should take a drive to a nearby bar.

"We have until 3:30 for the next train, so we have time for a couple beers," he said in answer to my question. I sipped one while he drained several.

When we got back to the car shop, he pulled out an alarm clock, set it for 3:15 and curled up on a bench.

The following week, when I went solo, I didn’t return to that neighborhood pub, but I did get a lot of reading done that summer.

During my last week, on a Saturday night, I made my usual stop in the yard office and the yardmaster was drunk. He started complaining about me taking too long to clear trains to leave the yard and came after me with large wire cutters to give me a haircut. Fortunately, none of the switchmen came to his aid or I might have been scalped.

I figured at that point that not only were my railroad days over, but also the days of the railroad itself. And I was right.

Within three years the bankrupt Erie-Lackawanna was absorbed into the new federally subsidized conglomerate, Conrail.

I did make decent money on that job, however. In fact, one night the general foreman stopped by after he’d had a few and tried to talk me into staying with the railroad rather than going to grad school.

"You’ll never make this kind of money with a philosophy degree," he said.

You know, for several years after that he was right; I didn’t.

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Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at (607) 432-1000, ext. 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.