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A Fictional "Day in the Life" of Claude Stoner
Claude Stoner was an optical engineer for the Ann Arbor Railroad Company
with an interesting hobby - he copied and collected photographs.
In addition to working on the rail lines, Stoner took photographs --
hundreds of black and white prints -- of train engines, stations,
passengers, accidents, and employees. His work is an invaluable resource
for learning about the central role that railroads played in the everyday
lives of Ann Arbor's early twentieth-century residents.
While Stoner did not leave a journal or letters to accompany his
photographs, we invite you to join us on a "fictional" journey
down the railroad line. The photographs are from the Bentley Historical
Archive's collection -- the words are ours. What do you think a day in the
life of a railroad employee was like? How might you have written it
differently?
For the past year, I've worked as an optical engineer for the Ann Arbor
Railroad Company and I've seen hundreds of trains come and go. But each
one
begins as a smudge of smoke on the horizon among the great grass plains.
As
the train approached the station, the once faint whistle became a loud
hissing noise. This particular train carried mainly freight, food
to supplement what was grown here in town.
On the platform were a few bystanders who came down to watch the trains
arrive; some come down almost every day. Most people couldn't afford the
travel on these large trains. They either walked or used horse
carriages. This meant it took a long time to get from one city to the next
and visiting was a major event-- most of us just stayed in town.
As the train came to a stop, several people disembarked from the final
carriage and moved towards their waiting friends and cars on one end of
the station. Groups of people carrying baskets and boxes began to unload
the front cars of the train. A few brought rope and leads for the
livestock. The station soon filled with the smells of horses, cows, fruits
and vegetables.
As foreman I supervised the station activities, but there were all kinds
of jobs on the railroad. One of my good friends was Dick Griffin, a
Crossing Guard, who worked up in Howell, Michigan. Usually the Crossing
Guard jobs were given to older railroad employees, or men who had been
hurt on the job. Click
here for a picture of the watching guard. We kept
close contact. We didn't have electric stoplights and it was the watching
guard's job to stop street traffic when the train crossed a street in a
town.
Some of my friends were more senior. They dressed in neat uniforms and
maintained order in the railroad station. Click
here for the photograph of
the railroad station. They had their own offices in the "quarters,"
behind
the offices were passengers bought their tickets.
After about a half an hour, the Ohio train passengers were gone and
most of
the freight was unloaded. The station agent arrived with a big book in one
hand to record the unloaded goods and livestock. The conductor checked
his
watch and blew a whistle. The train roared into life and slowly moved out
of the station, back on its journey across the Huron Valley."
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Students On Site is a community
project of the Arts of Citizenship Program at the University of Michigan,
funded in part by the Michigan Humanities
Council and the U-M Office of the Vice-President For Research.
This website is a collaboration between the Arts of Citizenship Program
theCHICO
Project of the School of Information
and the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.
