I Never Worked In Pocatello ‪—‬

Paul T. Collins was a railroad man from the day he was born, the son of a man who spent his entire career working for the railroad. Paul worked fifty-one years as a railroader. He worked many years for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad as trains and the business evolved and changed. He evolved and changed too, living and working in more than forty places, marrying twice, going where the train bosses sent him, even if it caused a breakdown of his mind and body.
Paul began his career with the railroad as a station attendant. His next job was telegraph operator, then on to dispatcher and chief dispatcher, to be followed by trainmaster before ending his career as rules examiner.
He worked all over the Southwest as well as in Chicago and New York City, calling more than forty towns, cities, and small communities home. The railroad helped break up his first marriage. He married again to a woman who had a teaching career, a woman who seemed to better understand of the life of a boomer. That second marriage produced a daughter.
Once Paul retired, he finished writing the story of his life in a book dedicated to that daughter. He had started the book right after World War II ended because he found writing relaxed him.
I Never Worked In Pocatello —The Life and Times of Santa Fe Railroad’s Paul T. Collins is Paul’s memoir, a story of fifty-one years of railroading and a story of a life lived from before the Twentieth Century arrived to the time of the Vietnam War.
The book has been edited and includes explanations of various railroad terms.