Harrington News

This is the final installment in the history of the railroad in Harrington and compiled by Marge Womach of Mohler.

Now more than 30 years following Ed Haugan’s cessation of employment from the railroad. In a recent interview he shared many of his recollections of the years he worked for the Great Northern Railroad, which became the Burlington Northern and is now the Burlington Northern Sante Fe. For about 10 months Ed attended the telegraph school located at the corner of Main and Post in downtown Spokane, learning Morse code, railroad accounting, train order procedures, etc.

He spent about four weeks “breaking in” at the SP&S, Great Northern interlocking plant at Fort Wright. His first assignment was as a relief telegrapher at Wilson Creek. After that he was shipped around to various stations on the main line as needed from Spokane to Wenatchee. At that time, the main line included Ephrata, Quincy, Columbia River, Fairchild, Edwall, Odessa, Harrington and Fort Wright. He also had short stints on a couple of branch lines which took him to Valley, Oakesdale and Pateros.

Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1953, Haugan did his basic training at San Luis Obispo, Calif. and was sent to Livorno, Italy, where he was “Trick Chief of COM Center” or supervisor of their communications center. Returning in 1955, he bid in for the relief job at Odessa, where he worked the day shift Saturdays and Sundays for the Station Agent Ray Garrett, relieving the second trick operator Mondays and Tuesdays from 4 p.m. to midnight and working the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift Thursdays in Harrington. In 1961, he bid in for the agency job at Harrington.

The Harrington depot was manned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Located on the double track between Bluestem and Lamona, it was one of the busiest train order positions in the Spokane Division. In the 1950s and up to the early 60s, the agency at Harrington was a bustling operation. In addition to handling train orders, the agency was also responsible for the station accounting, selling passenger tickets, transmitting Western Union telegrams, handling Railway Express and local wayfreight (keeping the payroll). Other duties included ordering grain cars, typing up the waybills, making up switch lists for the train crews picking up the cars, making yard checks and writing many miscellaneous reports that had to be sent to Spokane or Seattle daily.

Up until the very early 1960s, the Great Northern ran four passenger trains a day in each direction. Now Amtrak is all that is left of the passenger business. Most of the passenger tickets sold at Harrington and Odessa were for train #5 westbound to Ephrata, Wenatchee and Seattle and train #6 eastbound to Spokane. These trains were kind of like local street cars, stopping at every station on the line either dropping off or picking up passengers and Railway Express shipments.

As the years progressed, the station duties were gradually consolidated or done away with. The first to go was the Depot Agent’s responsibility for the station’s accounting, followed by elimination of Railway Express, passenger tickets, local LCL freight shipments and Western Union Telegram service. When Centralized Traffic Control was installed, it eliminated the need for train order operators. The Harrington depot was one of the last of the train order stations to close (in 1984). There were a few in the community who would have liked to save the telegraph office section for historical purposes, but they didn’t get much support, and the depot was torn down. The structure itself was about 60 feet long by 25 feet wide. A waiting room and rest room were on the south end, the office in the middle and a freight house on the north end. Haugan says the depot had no insulation whatsoever and in the winter time you had to practically sit on top of the oil stove to keep warm. During most of the time he was Depot Agent, the station crew consisted of relief operator Ed Lust, second trick Don Fox and third trick Al “Bud” Kleckner. Frank Tate was the signal maintainer, and Sid Olsen from Edwall was the section foreman.

Haugan’s sentiments regarding the merger of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific to form the Burlington Northern were quite similar to those of Arlie Bischoff, feeling that the friendly atmosphere was lost, the jobs became more impersonal and the employees were treated more like a number rather than as part of a team. After the agency job at Harrington was abolished in 1984, Haugan accepted a buyout rather than commuting or moving to another city. He worked for the McCartney Insurance Agency and did the books for Fire District 6 for awhile, then took a bus driver’s job with the Harrington School district for 11 years after which he retired officially.

During those in-between years, he enjoyed traveling to such destinations as Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Italy and most of the continental European countries more than once and China three times. He is an avid photographer and has shown his travelogues over the years to many organizations and schools. Up until this year he hosted groups from Spokane on garden tours in the Harrington area and, since he was an active member of the Harrington Opera House Society, the groups also got a tour of the Opera House as a bonus.

A discussion of the Great Northern Railroad would not be complete without some mention of Dr. L.F. Wagner. “Dr. Wagner Has Been GN Surgeon 46 Years. Dr. L. Wagner, Great Northern surgeon and examining physician for employees, has held that position since 1907. In the first years of his appointment, accidents on the railroad were common and he was frequently called out for professional service. To facilitate his transportation problem, the doctor purchased a speeder that tracked on the rails. It was driven by a gas engine--but often the doctor had to do a foot race behind the volocipede to get the motor started. Often the engine lacked power to negotiate a grade, which required another turn of pushing the thing. The doctor’s experience with this not-always-convenient convenience during the five or six years he had it, were as varied and colorful as Jack Benny and his Maxwell. Dr. Wagner relates one experience when he was called to Mohler: ‘As my speeder sneezed down the tracks, I was aware No. 27 (fast mail) was soon due, so I stopped at a crossing this side of Mohler, set the machine off onto the road, and waited in it for the fast mail to pass. As 27 sped along, the trainmen saw my machine along the tracks so when they pulled through Harrington, they rushed into the station and reported the train had ‘hit the doctor’s speeder, knocked it off the tracks and someone should go out right away and see about the situation.’ After the train passed, I set my put-put back on the tracks and continued west. While I was on the tracks I wasn’t within four miles of that mail train.’ In due time railroad safety measures were much improved, and the doctor was called out less frequently. He was a bit weary of boosting the speeder off and on the tracks and pushing it up grades so he sold it to a man up north where the railway schedule included about three trains a week. Ironically, the speeder was hit and wrecked by a train.” (Citizen: 3-13-1953)

Other than the shipping of grain, the noise of the trains passing through town and an occasional complaint about the condition of the railway crossings, little notice is paid to the trains; yet in the hearts and minds of many of our present day residents, the railroad brings back memories of by-gone days, hard labor, a different way of life. For the majority, the railroad is seen for the importance it has played in the development and survival of the town. What began as the Great Northern Railroad, with its tracks completed on November 1, 1892, moved into history by the Burlington Northern’s closure of the depot in Harrington on February 15, 1984.