FOLLOWING
THE TRACKS SUMMARY
By Ada
Brownell
Ever wondered how trains going different directions on the
same track arrive safely at the destination despite rock slides, derailments, a
fire burning a trestle bridge, and other hazards?
How in the era before Centralized Traffic Control railroad employees
communicated and prevented accidents?
Lester C. Brownell was age eighteen when he started working
for the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, after earning a certificate
from Gale Institute’s telegraph school in Minneapolis. He was one of many
employees who helped transport people, animals and mammoth loads from coast to
coast, around the clock. For years, telegraph was about the only means of
communication.
When he began his career, an unknown stomach ulcer ready to
rupture worked on his insides, and he didn’t even notice when he stood beside
the rails, his pants flapping in the breeze, meeting a train going 50 miles an
hour. With a Y-stick in his hand, he delivered urgent transcribed telegraph messages
up to the engineer.
When he married Ada Belle Nicholson, she became the support
and companion he needed. After they married in 1953, together they conquered
challenges of moving twelve times the first three of their 66 years, finding places
to live in the desert or snowy mountains, and making a boxcar, a depot, and
shacks into homes..
Then Centralized Traffic Control changed the railroad and
the lives of workers. Enjoy the history, the humor, the romance, the suspense,
the rewarded faith—a true story.
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