Career steam to green & everything between

Trains Magazine, September 2016

Railroading for 60 years;

Hired out on the Virginian in 1956, Pete Hypes has no plans to retire

By Chase Gunnoe

"You got 100 of ‘em and two engines back to back. You're good to get your cab and come down the old main. Remember, don't get in the taxi until the taxi gets there."

 The phone slams shut and 60-year railroad veteran P. Pete Hypes turns around, jotting down numbers.

Hypes isn't your typical first-shift yardmaster. In August, he celebrated his 60th year in a career that began with the Virginian Railway. “They told me I was making a mistake coming to Elmore,” he says, “telling me the railroad was about to shut down.”

That was on Aug. 5, 1956. His career began in Elmore Yard in southern West Virginia during the final days of the Virginian's electrification era before the Norfolk & Western acquisition. He survived two major railroad mergers, record-setting floods, and fluctuations in the Appalachian coal industry. He holds No. 1 yardmaster seniority of more than 200 men and women on the Pocahontas Division and has spent his entire railroad career working in the same yard.

In summer 1956, amid the era of Virginian Alco Westinghouse EL3A electrics, an 18-year-old Hypes was playing J billiards in downtown Mullens when he learned of clerk vacancies at nearby Elmore.

 "I just came out of high school," Hypes says, "and went down to the yard office to see about getting a job checking railroad cars. I only knew one man. We called him Spike. After talking to him, he told me he would call me about the job. I made it about as far as the edge of the parking lot before he called me back. I had the job. Coal was everywhere back then. We had all kinds of men and all kinds of business just everywhere."

His earliest responsibilities in Elmore had few restrictions. Some days he would be a callboy, others a checker or a supply boy. Each title had its own guidelines, responsibilities, and stories. Callboys were responsible for going door-to-door to make sure crew members reported to work. Checkers verified handwritten manifests for yard clerks, and supply boys restocked cabooses and locomotives with the necessities for a day's work.

 "One morning, at about 3 a.m., I had to go call a trainman to work. He lived in a caboose down by the shop track," Hypes says. "The yard was packed full of coal. I jumped on the caboose and heard a damn rattlesnake singing. I finally got my lantern lit and looked down. There was a whole cage full of rattlesnakes just sitting there by the door."

Other times, calling railroaders to work would require Hypes to head into town to their homes. "It was pouring rain one summer night when I was on my way to call a Virginian engineer to work. It was raining and dark I was running across the lot when I hit a clothesline. I busted myself up pretty bad that night."

His earliest days on the railroad were never void of entertainment. Mischief and coal were equally abundant.

"One time, somebody was cutting air hoses with surgical tools. We could go down the yard every day with a wheelbarrow full of air hoses. They used to cost $9 back then. We never did find out who it was,” he says. "One day, we were moving cars from track to track and while we grabbed a cab, our train had been cut in nine different places. It was just an everyday thing for us to take a wheelbarrow full of hoses out there to replace the damaged ones.”

As the paint schemes transitioned from Virginian's yellow and black to Norfolk & Western black and white, coal kept moving around the clock. During the transition, the last two Virginian Fairbanks–Morse H24-66 Train Master locomotives, Nos. 57 and 58, were based in Elmore. Eventually, even those locomotives disappeared, succeeded by EMD GP9s and SD35s. Elmore moved an average of 2,000 carloads a day, accomplished by its confederation of onetime Virginian employees and N&W hires. More than 45 carmen reported to work daily and airmen, operators, brakemen, conductors, supply boys, checkers, clerks, yardmasters, and engineers all played a vital role in keeping coal moving.

Elmore was the classification point for all export coal and the yard used to assemble empty trains for the various branches. The railroad's Princeton-Deepwater District runs railroad west and compass north to Deepwater Jct., where it interchanges with CSX Transportation's ex-Chesapeake & Ohio main line and continues across the Kanawha River to Alloy Yard on the railroad's recently divested West Virginia Secondary. Coal mines once dotted the entire 60-mile line from Elmore to Alloy and were served by mine runs using 50-, 75-, and 80-ton company hoppers. Now, the P-D District serves as a through route connecting Elmore with coal loadouts along the Kanawha River, southeast of Charleston.

Virginian-built branch lines east and west of Elmore are significant contributors to Elmore's coal traffic, as well. East of Mullens, Virginian-built tracks skirted along the city limits of Beckley, flirting with the rival C&O. Both railroads competed for business in the New River coal market, crossing rights-of-way at various points in picturesque over-and–under views and even a diamond. Other branch lines, including the Guyandotte River Branch, run west from Elmore to Gilbert, where N&W-built lines serve customers on the banks of the Guyandotte.

Mine runs from all directions would congregate in Elmore Yard for assembling into mainline hill runs to Clark's Gap. Often, export trains consisting of 200 loaded cars would move across the mountain to Clark's Gap in two individual hill runs of 100 cars each. Trains would traditionally operate at up to 16,000 tons with six locomotives - three on the head end and three on the rear. The train would be built at the summit before descending into Princeton where a Roanoke crew would take over for the eastbound trip. Trains with westbound destinations, such as unit trains destined for Midwestern power plants or for steelmaking destinations, would utilize the Guyandotte Branch to Gilbert and west to Williamson, or via the railroad's West Virginia Secondary west of Alloy Yard up through western West Virginia and into Ohio.

After a hiatus between 1961 and 1963 while serving in the U.S. Army, Hypes returned to Elmore in September 1963 as a clerk. Still holding a position on the extra board, Hypes secured a yardmaster position in 1974, often working 16 hours a day and 7 days a week.

During that time, the railroad was running 10 “stuppies,” a local term to define mine runs; six mainline hill runs; three crews at East Gulf; and multiple jobs going toward Alloy Yard. With coal coming from all directions, Elmore was a busy place, even during times where the coal industry faced challenges.

“They came in one day and sat a computer down on my desk. They told me I was to create a switch order using this machine and give it to the conductor. He would switch the cars as the list read. No more checkers. I had to figure out how to learn the computer," Hypes said. This took place in 1975, and soon thereafter, the checkers were cut off and car-knocker positions were cut in half.

Throughout his career, now spanning six decades, the atmosphere of railroading has drastically changed. Even since I had the privilege to sit down with Hypes over a series of multiple shifts, railroading at Elmore has changed.

"Five motors and 108 cars," Hypes tells a hill run crew who just marked up. "We have two A.C.s and three D.C.s? We'll try and if we can't make it, we'll just have to double the hill," the engineer responds. "Oh, wait, here's one more motor. That'll bring us up to six," Hypes tells the crew. "Move those cars around, get those engines right, and we'll make it work."

Assembling hill runs, calculating tonnage versus horsepower, and finding the right balance of motive power without cutting yourself short on good working motors within the yard was a daily ritual for the Elmore yardmaster. Now, a deplorable coal market and fewer trains have resulted in the abolishment of hill runs. Coal with eastern destinations is routed west along the Guyandotte to Gilbert and south on the ex-N&W Gilbert Branch to Wharncliffe, W.Va., where it joins with the Pocahontas main line at a wye. Coal can then go east via N&W's Elkhorn Grade to Bluefield or west to Williamson.

The 50 miles of main line east of Elmore only hosts a track inspector and his hi–rail truck. The mountainous grade, peaking at 2.3 percent, has not seen a coal train since Sept. 30, 2015. The silent line is maintained for future operation, and locals around Elmore are optimistic trains may come back.

“When coal comes back, you'll see trains over here again, it's just a matter of time,” a local resident told a group of photographers gathered in the small town of Covel one dreary afternoon last September.

 While hill runs have changed the character of railroading around Elmore, Hypes is still responsible for keeping coal moving. The railroad continues to serve customers at eight facilities to the west, north, and east.

A weak coal market was at the forefront of obstacles faced by eastern Class I railroads in 2015 and the closure of the main line east of Elmore was an alarming testament to energy headwinds. Despite those obstacles, not all Virginian character is lost. His stories of how "things used to be" are well preserved and in Elmore, locomotives are still called "motors" and there's a special dialectic and ambiance that encompasses the yard when Hypes is on duty, an atmosphere that gives one a glimpse into how railroading used to be through the stories of the only man on the payroll who can say he hired out on the Virginian.

Hypes says he has no plans of retiring. "As long as the railroad is here, I'm going to be here," Pete says. "I think I'll stick around until at least 100 years," Pete says, noting that he has not missed a day of work in more than 40 years. "And if I feel like it, I might stay here longer than that"

NS Trainmaster Jason Zimmerman says that Hypes is a link between the past and the present as his career spans the days of steam and electric locomotives to modern diesels.

"I believe the Virginian Railway would be very proud of the legacy that Pete has carried on,” Zimmerman says. “He has been a constant in an ever-changing industry for the past 60 years."