John E Langlot

Rocky's Rail John E Langlot

Consummate trainman John Langlot's career coincided with a tumultuous era in railroad history. He started with Great Northern at Hillyard (Spokane, Washington) as a brakeman, spending his early years on the Wenatchee-Oroville route. He was promoted to conductor in 1968. With the 1970 completion of the Burlington Northern merger, his work territory expanded. He retired in 2004 and now serves as a director and vice president of the Great Northern Railway Historical Society. Rocky's Rail recounts his railroading experiences from 1960 through 2004, a period of sweeping technological change. His stories provide a rare first-person view of the craft of trainman. He also summarizes corporate-level decisions and their local impacts. In addition, the book offers a geographically arranged operational overview of the Great Northern Railway's Spokane Division in the 1960s.