Mears: I went to Galveston as Agent in 1967

Russell: That was then the old office building?

Mears: Yes the old office building during my entire 5 years in Galveston the freight office was on the ground floor of the office building at Galveston there are traffic was almost entirely export import traffic.

Russell: What was it like working in the old Galveston office building.

Mears: It was pretty nice the building was kind of down some there the Corp of engineers was on three floors but the rest of the building was vacant.

Russell: Thatâs right that was after the Gulf lines had been consolidated.

Mears: Yes the Gulf lines moved out of their August 1965 as I recall, I went there in September 1967.

Russell: so it was already vacated.

Mears: The only thing in the building was the building superintendent and the local freight office. As far as Santa Fe was concerned we still had WWIV office and the Corp of Engineers the Corp of Engineers had three floor and I do not know how many people they had working their probably a hounded.

Russell: Then your whole tour was concentrated their.

Mears: Our yard operations worked from the 59^th street yard office.

Russell: I guess that were they moved to?

Mears: The moved the fright office out their. Every thing is out there now.

They sold the general Office building and consolidated the mechanical forces and everything.

Russell: I understand they sold the building for the cost of the elevators.

Mears: And were glad to get rid of it! Probably.

Russell: I am afraid so.

Mears: It was a good building but it took a lot to modernizing it.

Russell: It is a nice museum now.

Mears: The plumbing and air-conditioning left a little bit to be desired so they had to redo that.

Russell: After your tour at Galveston?

Mears: I moved from Galveston to Amarillo in October 1972 working out of the Western Lines General Office here as station supervisor and worked that job for almost 13 years until my retirement.

Russell: Station Supervisor what is that supervising the station agents.

Mears: Supervising the station agents Western Lines at the time I came here I believe we had 208 open offices on my territory.

Russell: At the time of your retirement we were down to.

Mears: 27 I believe

Russell: certainly changed fast.

Mears: Changed fast 27 and that did not include four or five still in New Mexico that were being kept open because we had not been able to get authority to close them from the State Commissioner of New Mexico.

Russell: They had been officially.

Mears: They were just their we were not handling any business through them.

Russell: You had a man their but you were trying to handle the business with out using the man their.

Mears: right

Russell: Sure appreciate your telling me some of your memories of the old Beaumont Division do you have any thing you might want to add to the memories of the division in it's heyday.

.Mears: Well I do not know I can think of a lot of memories but I do not know what they might be worth to your operation here but.

Russell: We are interested in the personal side of railroading.

Mears: When I first went to work at Pineland we had a doodle bug passenger service between Beaumont and Longview one way each day and of course it was steam locomotives and we had a local between Silsbee and San Augustine.