Story: Patrick Connell at 90: A Railroad Man and a Symbol Of The Past - 1947

From the Escanaba Daily Press, January 28, 1947 - By Jack Murphy

Patrick H. Connell of 327 South Seventh street is ninety years old. He hired out on the C&NW railway for the first time as a section hand in 1875. He took his pension in December, 1925. But let one thing be said immediately: This is not a piece about an old man on a pension.

This is a piece about Pat Connell, railroad man of the old breed, who is, at 90, one whole chunk of a lot younger than you and you and you.

When Pat hired out firing on the C&NW in 1883 (this was the second or third time he hired out on the C&NW) there were 87 other fireman hired at the same time. They're all dead now, except Pat Connell.

In 1887 when Pat was set up - when he was made an engineer - there were 63 other men set up at the same time. They're all dead too, except Pat Connell.

Those are facts, interesting facts, too. But the important thing is that Pat Connell was a gandy-dancer, a snake, a shack, a con and an eagle-eye; he was a section hand, a switchman, a brakeman, a conductor, and an engineer. He was a railroad man from one end of the scale to the other, an old time railroad man.

He's still a railroad man. And more important even that that, he's a natural walking man at 90, a laughing, thinking man with his triumphs riding his shoulders like a swagger and his sins resting light and laughable upon his soul.

From the Old School

Pat is a man, a character in his own right - and yet, he is a specimen, too, of the breed of old time railroad man, a breed as strongly American, as distinctively American, as colorful and as pungent as the cowboy or the lumberjack - though less publicized.

There are a lot of that breed here in Escanaba, which is, in a way one of the last strongholds of the breed. There are kids who hired out down here on the Peninsula Division, last year maybe, who have the makings of the old time railroad men, the swagger and the savvy, the feeling for railroad tradition.

But it's dying out elsewhere.

Pat Connell is typical of those men who started railroading in the days of the unbelievably vicious link-and-pin coupling, who moved from town to town, from road to road, following the rails, just plain not giving a hoot and a holler that the percentages were all against them.

In those days, every time a man leaned in to make a joint, to guide with his finger-tips the 18 inch link into the drawbar slot of the approaching car, the percentages said he'd leave his fingers or his arm mashed between the deadheads.

There were no air-brakes in those days, not to amount to anything, and every time a man crawled over the tops of the bucking, weaving cars, to set up the hand-brakes, walking bent kneed, bucking the pitch of the cars, or crawling  maybe with a brake club in one hand and a stinking, smoking kerosene lantern in the other hand or in his teeth - every time a man went high to move along those snaking cars, the percentages said he'd never make it back to the caboose, and maybe  section crew would be out the next day to shovel what was left of him off the right of way.

Born In Canada

These men were the railroad men of the old tradition, men who could go braking, firing, switching, or running the engine. Just as along as they were railroading.

That was Pat Connell when he hired out as a section hand on the C&NW on April 11, 875, the same day he got fired at the New York mine at Ishpeming because he'd let a team run away from him.

He was born in Ontario, Canada March 13, 1856 and his parents moved to Ishpeming  few months later. It was in Ishpeming that Pat got his start as a railroad man. There were rails boarding at his house and he was raised on railroad talk. He thought railroad talk was the King's English, which of course it was not, but rather a special dialect of English, stronger, sharper, more colorful than most.

He gained too, listening to that talk, the typical railroad man's pugnacity and argumentativeness. It was a characteristic which was to stick to him for life. Today he is still a bad man to argue with. At 90, Pat has little of old age's mellowness  that so called tolerance which is so often weariness or indifference.

Pat Connell wasted the early years of his youth. He didn't go to work for a living until he was nine years old, and he didn't start railroading until he was 19, when he hired on on a C&NW section gang.

The next year, 1876, he went braking for the old pioneer Marquette, Houghton & Ontonagon (now the Soo Line) riding the head-end, winding up hand-brakes for that long and treacherous hill that ran from Ishpeming like a ski slide to the Marquette tocks.

Then he went of to the C&NW switching in the yards at Negaunee and Ishpeming. The day before that famous explosion of the nitroglycerine car at Ishpeming in January, 1878, an older man displaced Pat on the switch-engine which stood, that 2nd day of January, waiting for the car to be loaded, and took the force of the blast which disintegrated a teamster and two helpers.

Pat Leaves Ishpeming

Pat Connell had, as a matter of fact, caught the footboard of that engine on his way to breakfast, riding it up to the boarding house path crossed the track, arguing with Jerry Foley and Billy Spellman about their New Year's celebrating. And he was the first man to get to the engine after that explosion which left nothing and no one to explain it, which threw the axles of the car as far as Teal Lake, two miles away, and blew the switch engine skinned like a rabbit a quarter of a mile, its flues twisted like tortured snakes and blood and guts and blasted flesh of the switch crew streaking the cab with color.

And then like most good railroad men, Pat Connell moved. He went out booming, moving from town to town, following the rails. He went braking on the Madison division of the C&NW; then switching in the yards at Winona. He went braking on the CMStP&P out of Minneapolis, then snaking in the yards there until the day he rode a coal car off the hump, a bad order car with a broken brake chain that half a dozen men, including Pat, should have noticed but didn't, rolling head over tin-cups while the wild car went smashing head-long through the turntable.

He got fired - or he quit, depending how you look at it - and twenty minutes later had gone to work for the Minneapolis and St. Louis, whose tracks lay with a spit and an insulting holler of the Milwaukee's hump yard. There he had charge of a transfer job hauling to the Northern Pacific yards and spotting cars for the flour mills. A big money job that would have been, if a man wished to work the angles and favor of one mill manager over another in the matter of spotting cars, but of course Pat was above such shenanigans.

There were a lot of angles in railroading in those days, what with passenger trains jammed to the ceiling with cash fares, and moneyed men wishful to ride in the empty box-cars of freight trains - for the experience, of course, and a nominal fee.

All the angles weren't written down in the schedule, that little green book which contains the agreement between the Brotherhoods and the railway company. Today, that agreement is as long and complicated as a Pennsylvania search-warrant, but back in those days it was a weak and simple, very puny thing. Pat had a good deal to do with the growth of those agreements, for he was always a union man.

Slight and anemic as it was, the agreement between the enginemen and the railroad company was the big reason why Pat hired out firing instead of braking on the C&NW when he went back to Ishpeming in 1882. The switchmen and trainmen were not organized in those days, and the enginemen were. So in the spring of 1882, Pat Connell, a strong union man, climbed up in the cab and stayed there the rest of his time.

In 1887, he was set-up, moved to the right side of the cab, made an engineer. In '93 he was pulling a passenger out of Chicago hauling World's Fair passengers. In '87 he ran engines at Chicago, Baraboo, Winona, on the Peninsular Division, switch-engines, road work passengers. 

In 1925 when his wife died, he said to the railroad, "Pull the pin on me, and send me in...I'm tyin' up, I'm tying up for good". And though he applied for his pension immediately and drew it immediately, he was a liar. He didn't tie up. He's still a railroad man, though he never goes near the roundhouse, and he's a symbol, too, of a breed that's dying, or at least passing into something different.

From the Escanaba Daily Press, January 28, 1947 - By Jack Murphy

Additional Information About the Nitroglycerine Explosion

1878. January 2. A terribly fatal accident occurred about at 9:45 a.m. this morning near Negaunee by which seven men lost their lives and several others were slightly injured. The Lake Shore Nitroglycerine company was preparing a car-load of nitroglycerine at the Jackson Mine for shipment by railroad to the Republic mine, and while this was being loaded, the entire lot of 4,800 pounds exploded with a terrific crash, demolishing the car, engine and everything within a radius of 500 feet. The concussion shattered the glass of nearly all the stores in Ishpeming and Negaunee and all dwelling houses were left without a single window light unbroken.

The engineman, fireman, two brakemen and employees of Lake Shore were killed. Their remains were blown to atoms and scattered in all directions and are being picked up in small pieces; the largest piece being found thus far was no more than 1.5 pounds.  What can be found of them will be placed in one coffin and buried together as there is nothing by which either can be recognized or identified. Great excitement prevails and business is at a stand still. Great sorrow is manifested in all quarters, as all the parties were widely known and universally respected. [SAG-1878-0110]