Not to disparage Jimmy's fine postings that I always enjoy...but...
Bud Ritchie was a monster and a cruel foreman nobody could stand except for his hand picked favorites. I worked for him in Denver in the early '70s and he told me he was born in a narrow gauge outfit car in Salida. His old man was also a B&B foreman that loved the Lake City branch, calling it the "bridge man's paradise." One of the B&B men told me about the Parkdale bridge job, mentioned above by Jimmy, when one of the guys went to move his lunch pail out of the sun and Ritchie saw it, came over to him and told him "You don't touch that pail until I tell you to touch it." The man picked up a claw bar--it was the last straw-- and chased Ritchie down the line and would have hit him with it but another man stopped him just in time or Ritchie's foreman days would have been over.
Another time they told me they were on a bridge job over the Alamosa River in January and daytime temps were well below zero. Ritchie had two men that were his favorites, so they got to huddle with him in a heated tent and the other men allowed to freeze and had to work until the last second of quitting time...and of course Ritchie had the standard RR watch.
One time Ritchie sent me up on the roof of the enginehouse at Burnham to tar cracks IN FEBRUARY and the tar bucket was so stiff I couldn't get a scraper into it. This was a couple days after Ritchie made me and another guy walk back from North Yard just because he knew he could. Well, Ritchie shows up and told me "Either you tar where I told you to or you can find another job." He had been riding me and another guy a couple of months for the fun of it, and it was all I could do to control myself. He was standing right near the edge of the roof...you can guess what I thought about doing. It was a long way to the ground.
After Ritchie retired he moved up to Rollinsville and it became his personal mission to intimidate anyone standing around waiting for the RG Zephyr to get photos.
Eddy
