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Book cover of 'Burlington Northern Adventures' with a train and snow in the background. Author William J. Brotherton. Published by America Through Time, an imprint of Sutton Publishing Inc.
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Burlington Northern Adventures: Railroading in the Days of the Caboose

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DESCRIPTION

Burlington Northern Adventures relates the personal experiences of the author William J. Brotherton, who went “railroading” as a brakeman, conductor, and trainmaster for the Burlington Northern Railroad system from 1979 to 1982.

Through his many interesting short stories, Brotherton illustrates what it was like to work for a major railroad company before branch lines, vintage diesel locomotives, and cabooses were phased out. His accounts show what has changed within the railroad industry since then—and what has not.

Brotherton, who grew up around trains in Georgia, takes the reader along on his personal encounters with a railroader’s life in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Minnesota, and Colorado. Now a lawyer, nothing in the courtroom compares to hanging on a boxcar in thirty-five-below weather working a local in North Dakota.

He truly believed he would put in his thirty years with the railroad once he received his promotion to trainmaster with the Colorado & Southern Railway, a part of the Burlington Northern Railroad system—but he soon found that being a trainmaster was a special kind of hell.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
William J. Brotherton hopped freights as a youth into downtown Atlanta and beyond. He parlayed that into jobs with the Burlington Northern Railroad as a brakeman, conductor, and trainmaster. He worked freight trains as a “boomer” in some of the most beautiful areas of the country, with vistas only available to those sitting in a locomotive or caboose. He operated trains with some of the most interesting people you could ever meet and survived 35- and 40-below temperatures hanging on boxcars and worrying about frostbite. A promotion to trainmaster made him reevaluate his railroad career. Today, he is a lawyer.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Pages: 128
Publisher: Sutton Publishing Inc
Imprint: America Through Time
Publication Date: 02/20/2026
State: New Mexico
ISBN: 9781634995870
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
HISTORY / United States / State & Local / New England (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT)
HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI) TRANSPORTATION / Railroads / History PHOTOGRAPHY / Subjects & Themes / Regional (see also TRAVEL / Pictorials) TRANSPORTATION / Railroads / Pictorial
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