Cobb County GaArchives News.....Doc Squires Gave Up Medicine For Colorful Railroading Career June 3 1957 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Nancy Squires-Shutt BShutt77@aol.com April 15, 2004, 10:55 pm The Marietta Daily Journal DEATH WINS IN LAST BRUSH By Bill Kinney This is the story of a man who rolled up a doctor's diploma to devote a half century to feeling the pulses of racing locomotives instead of complaining patients. It is the story of Engineer Robert Lester (Doc) Squires, who had railroading, not medicine, in his blood. It is the story of a colorful career along the winding tracks of the W.&A. Railroad in which Squires brushed shoulders with death on several occasions. Death finally caught up with Doc Squires, but it was in the peaceful confines of a hospital room, where he died Sunday. In the spring of 1903 Squires received his degree in medicine from the Old Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons, now Emory University. About the same time, this famous college was graduating such well-known Cobb doctors as Dr. W. H. Perkinson, Dr. J. E. Lester, Dr. C. W. Burtz, Dr. J. D. Malone, Dr. E. M. Bailey and Dr. C. T. Nolan. But medicine wasn't for Squires. Three months after graduation, Dr. Squires had traded a career in medicine to heave coal into the firebox of an engine operated by his father, Jim Squires. "My parents wanted me to be a doctor like grandfather Tob Atkins," Squires explained upon his retirement in 1950. "But, heck, I was raised on railroad money, went through medical school on it, and-well, railroading, not medicine, was in my blood." "Ever since 1858 there has been a Squires engineer on the W.&A." Doc Squires continued. "Three generations of my family have watched drivers roll on little kettles, like the General, up to the huge deisel of today." Even today that family tradition-now 99 years old-is being carried on by R. L. Squires' son Jesse. ONLY QUICK WAY All the old residents of Marietta remember Jim Squires, for it was "Mr. Jim" who hauled them to and from Atlanta on a little train called the Marietta Accommodation. It was the only way to reach Atlanta, unless one wanted to spend half a day in a buggy. The Atlanta Northern Interurban trolley line came along in 1906, causing the Accommodation to die a slow death. Two round trips were made each day except Sunday by the Accommodation. One left Marietta at 7:30 a.m. and arrived in Atlanta an hour later. Everyone rode the Accommodation, it seems, to work or to shop in Atlanta. It returned to Marietta at 12:55 p.m., made the trip back to Atlanta at 2:40 and left the Old Atlanta carshed for Marietta at 5:30. Doc Squires started firing for his father on this train in 1903. When the Accommodation passed into history, the father and son took the Rome Express, and it was while he was firing on that run that Bob was promoted to engineer in 1913, one year before his father retired in 1914. LIKE FATHER Doc's son, Jesse, always had wanted to follow his father and grandfather in the engine cabs, but it was not until April of 1942, at the age of 27, before all the men who were cut off during the depression were back at work and there was room for young Jesse. Several months after Jesse went to firing for his father in 1942, the father and son team were taking the first day of their vacation when their engine turned over on its return trip from Chattanooga, at North Chemical Company. The engineer and firemen who were substituting for the Squires on passenger Train No. 3 were killed. About 15 years before this, Squires had leaped from a locomotive seconds before it collided with another train almost atop the overpass across the old Highway 41 at the Cartersville city limits. He escaped with minor injuries. His most famous brush with death was in June of 1918 when he was overcome by fumes and fell unconscious from his cab window after his engine stalled in the 1,200-foot-long brick tunnel at Tunnel Hill, Ga. This was before a larger tunnel was constructed in 1928 SLICK RAILS Heavy grades led to both portals, the peak of the hill was in the center of the bore, and the rails were always slick. There was no such thing as shutting off steam and drifting through, and as the laboring engines barked their way from one end of the tunnel to the other, they often spun their drivers on the rails and belched dense clouds of deadly fumes from smokestacks that cleared the ceiling barely six inches. When the tunnel was bored, it was large enough for the little kettles. But the motive power grew, the tunnel did not, and larger engines were soon filling it to the point where they almost cooked the men when one of the iron horses "slipped to her knees" and stalled. Before they could get the wheels rolling again the enginemen would hear Gabriel's trumpet in the cabs. Many came out with their necks and ears looking like peeled onions. Squires was at the throttle of a new heavy type Mikado freight on a "test" run at time the engine stalled mid-way of the tunnel. The crew abandoned the train until the smoke cleared then let it roll back out of the tunnel. A rescue party went back into the tunnel and found Squire's unconscious form in the ditch beside the track where he had rolled. It took two weeks of hospitalization for Squires to shake the effects of his narrow escape. This marked his longest absence from behind the throttle of an N. C. & St. L. engine. Additional Comments: Robert Squires had another son who worked for the railroad. Charles Nolan Squires 1921-2003 worked for the Western Assoc. of Railroads for 35 years retiring in 1984 as a traveling auditor for the St. Louis office, ending a 122 year family tradition that started in 1862. This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/gafiles/ File size: 6.1 Kb