A “PERSHER”
For some strange reason I have never discovered, an older friend of mine in
southwestern Virginia used the term ”persher” when talking about the railroad which
was, in those days,the smokey, life blood of our town.
I quickly realized he was referring to steam engines used to “push” trains up the
shaper inclines, rather than those which pulled the string of cars. To him a pusher was
always a “persher”... a specific type of engine. I never made any attempt to correct his
usage or to question in any way, but I always used the proper pronounciaion when
talking with him. In all fairness, I must mention that he never once tried to correct my
usuage of the word, either.
We often talked about railroading from the “persher” viewpoint because his
brother was a semi-retired railroad engineer who actually drove the huge, coal
powered monsters for many years. His “run”, as he grew older, consisted of about twenty
miles or so...ten of riding as a tag car to the freight train from the Yard in Roanoke. He
then did about six or eight miles until they arrived at the lower edge of the mountain.
We always called it “The Christiansburg Mountiain”. It probably had another name, but
I don’t remember ever hearing it called anything else printable. It was so named
because, at the top of the long gradeo, one arrived at the town of Christiansburg -
named after William Christian who came from the Shenandoah Valley into the Roanoke
Valley. Others with the westward urge went on into the New River Valley and then the
Holston Valley, but all had to climb the mountain at Christiansburg. The historic Valley
Piike twisted and turned its way more or less parallel with the tracks. Now, Interstate 81
pretty well flattens out much of the terrain but when I was a teenager cars working
their way up the crooked, unpaved highway used to seem to give off more stream
from oveheated radiators than did the steam powered trains.
It was a daily trip for his brother, the enineer, and some days, when the traffic
was heavy - mostly long strings of a hundred or more, empty coal cars being taken back
to the mining areas, he made the trip several times each day. They had a steep grade
and a long one to climb from the realtively low Roanoke-Salem-Vinton (Roanoke Valley
area) up to Rose Valley, I think it was called, and at Elliston and Shawsville the grade
grew steeper. That’s when “brother’s persher come to life”.
The railroad system could not have continued to exist without his brother’s
assistance in getting the cars over the crest of the mountain. Once there, he would
detach his engine from the train; exchange a blast of whistles with the fore-engine crew
and back into the Roanoke Yards to wait until another train needed his help.
I often think of the many “pershers” who have helped me climb mountains in my
life. I find there are, literally, scores of them. I can’t list them here. I’d run ito pages
describing how they have helped me in so many ways.
Think about it. Have you had some “pershers” in your life?
A.L.M. August 17, 2002 [c-546wds]
l
