My father, Robert C. Walker, many of you have never met. He was born in 1889 in Poland and attended school there and in Mechanic Falls at the Walker Farm on Walker Road. He started work on the railroad for Grand Trunk Railroad at the age of 14 as a section hand, maintaining the railroad tracks and soon after worked as a fireman on the big steam engines.

He became a locomotive engineer at the age of 20. The engineer is the person who operates the locomotive. Before that time, he had met and married my mother, Mira Spiller, when she was 16 years old. To upgrade his position, they moved to Portland where he could hold the best possible engineering position.

Back to the era when he was born, there were no phones, radios or other forms of communication, no electricity, no automobiles — just horse and buggy for transportation, and paved roads were unheard of in rural areas. Just imagine the changes that he witnessed over the 76 years of his life.

His position with the railroad enabled him to never be without income and never to suffer lack of work during the Great Depression. Perhaps most of you cannot even imagine what a plus that was. The majority of employed people felt the effects of that era and suffered with little or no funds.

Our family was more fortunate than I could know for my parents had bought a working farm in West Falmouth that provided a near total sustenance throughout the “lean” years. But, also my dad was never without work by being a rail road engineer.

Our nearby neighbors also benefited from the farm as Pa’s generosity with farm products helped better their lives as well. Sorry to say, my dad passed away in 1966 only a short time before my beautiful wife Sandy and I met. I’m sure that there would have been mutual admiration between them for each other. He, like Mother, seemed never to stop working to provide for their family and close relations.

So that is an abbreviated description of our grandfather, great-grandfather or more greats down the Walker family line. —  DRW, Dixfield.

RESPONSE: Thank you for sharing your family’s history about your father’s experience working as a locomotive engineer at Grand Trunk Railroad. Sun Spots has many readers interested in historical facts and trivia and hopes more readers write to this column with historical information to share.

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