Daniel Blair Henderson worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad for 48 years, from 1909 to 1957, with time out for military service in World War I. For most of his career, Blair (he preferred that name over Daniel) was a locomotive engineer based in Tyrone. He operated trains over virtually all of the PRR’s Tyrone Division’s 270 miles of principal track — the densely traveled Bald Eagle Branch to Lock Haven, the coal-heavy Clearfield Branch, and lesser lines to Snow Shoe, Bellefonte, and Fairbrook.
Most railroaders in train service did not work regular hours. Then, as now, they were subject to being called for duty at any hour of the day or night, seven days a week, holidays included. The jobs paid well but took a toll on family life.
“We lived on Thirteenth Street,” recalls Blair’s daughter, Dorothy Henderson Glenn, a lifelong Tyrone resident. “A man would come and knock on the door, or he used a stick to tap on the door.” The “call boy,” in railroad slang, would never stop to speak but simply make the sound. Blair — and Dorothy — knew what it meant. “I hated to hear that sound because it meant my father was being called to work.”
“My father was on call all his life — he slept and he worked. We had no life except for his two-week vacations. I swore I would never marry a railroader.” And yet that is exactly what she did.
The Tyrone Division and Its Bald Eagle Branch
In 1910, the PRR’s Tyrone Division employed more than 500 people in the immediate area. These included employees in the car shops and classification yards of Tyrone and East Tyrone, maintenance-of-way gangs, division offices at the station adjacent to the main line, and the train crews based in the town. In fact, the railroad ranked second only to the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company’s big mill as Tyrone’s single largest source of jobs.
Blair Henderson was one of those PRR employees, having joined the railroad in 1909 as a hostler at the 32-stall roundhouse that stood east of the Fourteenth Street grade crossing.
“My father was born in Warriors Mark in 1892,” Dorothy says. “His father was a farmer, but he had also worked for a time as a motorman on the trolley in Tyrone.” The trolley linked Tyrone with Nealmont, East Tyrone, and Bellwood. (In 1904 it became part of the Altoona and Logan Valley Electric Railway, which offered passenger service to Altoona and Hollidaysburg.)
A hostler’s tasks included moving locomotives around the engine terminal so that they could be supplied with coal and water and receive routine servicing, and making sure fires were properly tended and steam pressure kept up. The job was enough for Blair to get his foot in the door with the railroad. In 1912, he was promoted to freight fireman, firing steam locomotives that powered trains over the 54-mile Bald Eagle Branch between Tyrone and Lock Haven.
The Bald Eagle Branch was extremely busy. In 1912, the trade magazine Railway Age labeled it “the most densely traveled single-track railroad in North America.” An average day saw the passage of four passenger trains and about 25 through-freights in each direction over the entire length of the branch. In addition, numerous work trains and local freights traveled over only a portion of the branch (the passenger trains running between Tyrone and Clearfield, for example), as did helper engines returning to Tyrone after having pushed freight trains up to Summit on the Clearfield Branch, or to Dix on the Bald Eagle Branch.
The Bald Eagle Branch was the heart of the Tyrone Division. Over its rails operated high-priority merchandise trains running between the Midwest and upstate New York, New England, and Canada. In addition, more than 2 million tons of coal each year came down the Clearfield Branch from the Moshannon Valley to Tyrone yard, where it was weighed and classified into trains for dispatch via Lock Haven to points east and north.
War and Marriage
Blair was promoted to freight engineer in 1917 — the same year America entered World War I. Despite the promotion and increase in pay that came with it, he decided service to the nation came first. He enlisted in the army and was sent to Europe in 1918. Fortunately the war ended later that year, and he returned to Tyrone and his engineer’s job unscathed.
Running the Bald Eagle Branch again, he met and fell in love with a young woman named Olympia — “Ollie” — during his off-duty times at the Lock Haven end of the line. They married in 1920 and set up housekeeping in Tyrone. Dorothy Henderson was one of four children born to Blair and Ollie.
In 1921, after a fund-raising campaign by Tyrone Division employees, the famous bronze “doughboy” statue was erected on a large boulder in the park within the wye near the Tyrone main line station. A plaque accompanying the statue included the names of the 231 Tyrone Division employees who had served in the armed forces during the war, including 11 who made the supreme sacrifice. Blair participated in the campaign, and later took the lead in obtaining and installing an 80-ft. flagpole at the site. According to old news clippings from the Tyrone Herald, he regularly mowed the grass in the park, trimmed the shrubbery, and kept the statue clean.
The Clearfield Branch
As Blair gained seniority on the roster of locomotive engineers, he had more flexibility in choosing his assignments. He spent many years running trains on the Clearfield Branch, which extended about 50 miles from Vail through Osceola and Clearfield to the end of the track near Grampian. Numerous tributary branches and sidings served the Moshannon Valley’s coal mines, brick yards, and other industries. Most Clearfield Branch train crews reported for duty at Osceola, where the PRR had a classification yard and office, scale, and engine house.
One of Dorothy’s fondest memories of that time was when her father would bring home boxes of Clearfield brand cheese, which PRR crews often received when they shifted refrigerator cars in and out of the Clearfield Cheese Company factory.
Dorothy also recalls a trip by train with her family in the 1930s to visit the Chicago World’s Fair. Because Blair worked for the railroad, his family was able to travel for free on a company pass, but it was good for coach travel only. Upgrading to a Pullman sleeper cost extra in those days of the Great Depression, and Blair thought it was a luxury they could do without.
Another incident that stands out in her memory was the time her father saved a life. Blair was at the throttle, heading his train through busy downtown Clearfield in 1945. The track ran right down the middle of Third Street and was embedded in the pavement. Trains operated slowly over that stretch for obvious reasons. Suddenly a baby carriage appeared as if out of nowhere and rolled onto the track in front of the train. Blair jumped down to the street, ran ahead of the engine, and pulled the carriage to safety. A few days later he received not only a letter of commendation from the railroad, but also a handwritten note (which Dorothy still has) of heartfelt thanks from the baby’s mother. The mother explained that she had gone inside a nearby building to drop off a package and her baby “wriggled in the carriage,” setting it in motion toward the track.
The End of the Tyrone Division
The PRR dissolved the Tyrone Division in 1929, merging most of it into the Middle Division, which encompassed the main line between Altoona and Harrisburg. Some jobs were lost, as Altoona became the terminal for most Bald Eagle Branch through-freights. The roundhouse and scales were closed; the towering coal wharf was razed; and activity in general at the East Tyrone yard declined sharply.
Blair continued working former Tyrone Division territory, especially the Clearfield Branch, right up to the time of his retirement in 1957.
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