Cool! Where did he work out of and when did he retire? I work for the BNSF but recently I spent some time running over the track between OKC and Shawnee. This is AOK track now. Before that it was UP and before that it was Rock Island. It is in really bad shape now.
He started with Rock Island in 1966 in Enid and when they shut down he was with MKT for a bit until UP bought those lines. He then went to engineer training with UP and did that for several years. If I remember correctly he retired around '02.