Rocky's Rail: A Spokane Division Trainman 1960-2004

By John Langlot and Mac McCulloch. Rocky’s Rail is a new hard cover book of nearly 400 pages with 50 maps and 98 photographs that recounts the career of John Langlot who hired out on the Great Northern at Hillyard, WA in 1960 and retired from the BNSF Railway at Spokane in 2004. The book is intended for general readers, historians, and rail fans interested in what it was like to work in the ‘running trades’ in the latter part of the Twentieth Century. The heart of the book is John’s stories of working on the railroad. A few are typical, but most are unique to him. What sets John’s stories apart are his ability to recognize their worth and to tell them long after the fact. He tells the story of many a railroad operating man using events from his own life. John illustrates the effort and determination of the men who made, and make, the railroads work. This book is one of very few in railroad literature that describes railroad work from the perspective of a trainman, that is, of a brakema