In the top photo, he was an agent-telegrapher at some unknown station.  He held a number of those jobs when he worked the extra board after he was married.  He is directly in the middle with a train crew (consisting of conductor, engineer, fireman and brakeman) on the left and executives from Chicago on the right.  They were no doubt promoting good will between the Chicago headquarters and the railroad workers.  In the bottom photo he is at the Chicago Northwestern Depot in Kimberly, Wisconsin, where he worked as a telegrapher for about twenty years.  You can see how high the ceilings were and how the heat would have collected up there in winter.  Bill Kumbier, who became his daughter, Ruth’s, father-in-law, was the depot agent there.  Carl Senior worked three separate jobs in Kimberly during the depression:  telegrapher, mail handler, and he was also the Western Union man.  It stretched him very thin, but it kept his family fed during that exceptionally hard economic time.  He was a very hard worker and provided for them well.

Carl Krieser, Agent-Telegrapher

The top photo was in Dad Krieser’s scrapbook.  I don’t know anything about the people or the train, but it reminded me of something that happened to me many years ago.  It was the first time that I ever saw Carl Junior, and I was NOT favorably impressed with him.  Dad Krieser told about the incident on his train dispatching tape but I remember it a little differently.  He said it was Christmas Day, about 1944, but I wonder if he got it mixed up with the next story that he told.  I remember that it was the day before Thanksgiving and there was a big train wreck a mile or two down the road from our house on Wisconsin Avenue.  My dad took me in the car to see it.  Two-Hundred-And-Nine hit a car at the Ballard St. crossing and it derailed the engine.  It was terrible weather, the first snowfall of the season.  I was rubbernecking my way across the tracks to see everything, and here comes some kid a little older than I was, ordering me back off the tracks and away from the train.  I didn’t know who he was but thought he had some nerve ordering everybody around (namely, me!).  Who did he think he was anyway?  I was pretty miffed.  I realized years later that that kid turned out to be the man that I married.  His father had told him to get everybody back away from the wreck and he was just doing what his dad told him to do.  If you had told me then I was going to marry him, I’d have said you were crazy!  No way would I have married that pushy kid!  Life is interesting, isn’t it?  The second photo is of Dad Krieser when he was the Chief Train Dispatcher at Antigo, and in the bottom one, he’s Chief Train Dispatcher at Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Carl R. Krieser, Train Dispatcher, Green Bay, Wisconsin

Through their downsizing, the Chicago Northwestern Railroad combined the Ashland Division into the Lake Shore Division.  The headquarters for the Lake Shore Division was in Green Bay, so that necessitated their moving from Antigo to Green Bay.  The two photos below show Dad Krieser hard at work as a train dispatcher at Green Bay.  He worked at his job until his retirement in 1963.

The Coming and Going of Two Railroad Careers

Carl R. Krieser spent his entire career working for the Chicago Northwestern Railroad.  Carl F. Krieser, his son, started following in his father’s footsteps, but the railroad had changed, and so did his direction.  After several jobs in related fields, he ended in a career in Traffic Management.  As young Carl’s wife, our years of living next to the tracks, cleaning the soot from out trailer walls, and waking up in the middle of the night with the train whistle blowing full blast eight feet from our bedroom were over, but it was fun while it lasted.  Life always moves on, doesn’t it?