Author's Dedication -- About the Author

They Moved The Millions · by Ed Davis, Sr.

Dedication

Love You All, and may the force be with you! To my wife Fay, who took my life from a pile of ashes, from a fire that I caused myself, thank you for making my life complete, and understanding me. To my children Ed Jr., Donna, and Lisa, who gave Dad a reason to go on when things were bleak.

With Me In Spirit

One cannot forget the people who'll made their life a complete picture and who have helped when needed. Likewise it is with a book both with help for its producion and the courage to carry it out.

Special thanks be in order to the late Mr. James Wyles, native of Scotland, who spent most of his working life as a machinist for the Interborough and later a car supervisor for the Transit Authority. While I watched the IRT I loved as a child become history Mr. Wyles shared as much of his knowledge of the beloved car equipment that was going or gone as was possible, and for this I will be forever grateful.

Thanks also are in order to the following people who also shared their knowledge of the system with me and helped with materials as well: Donald W. Harold, Karl F. Groh, Bill Zucker, Joseph T. Seren, and many others. Thanks to these and many others who were there when the chips were down and I needed a friend.

In my thoughts also are the women in my life who loved me for whom I was, not for a price nor convenience. whom I loved in return. Even if it couldn't have been forever I'm thankful that we had each other when we needed each other, and thankful for the time of our lives that we shared.

And I couldn't forget all the co-worker friends I've made in my 30 year railroad career, in New York City, North Dakota, and Montana. Regardless of race, age, geography or the decade we were raised in I've met so many wonderful people it made a job worthwhile and outweighed those we weren't happy working with; my gratitude and my thoughts will be with you always.

Thanks also to Frank J. Sprague and other pioneers of the electric railroads, whose primitive inventions and engineering survived, in some cases, 50 years and more of service and paved the way for the system we know today. They did have people to work with, and people had lots of good jobs.

About the Author

Ed Davis was born in the Bronx, New York, on May 5, 1943 and was raised in the Highbridge neighborhood. Within walking distance from home were the mainline of the New York Central which was home to electric commuter cars much like the subways' cars, electric locomotives which pulled the mainline limiteds from Grand Central to Harmon, and the Putnam Division with its Toonerville Trains, which were pulled by 1908 built steam locomotives until 1951. The family took many trips downtown on the Lexington-Jerome Line of the IRT, the Broadway-7th Ave. Line of the IRT, 6th Avenue-Concourse Line of the IND subway. All of these things nurtured the love of the electric railroad which the author still feels.

A 1961 graduate of William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx, Ed became a conductor on the transit system in 1965 and was promoted to motorman in 1967. He moved to Brooklyn in 1968 and lived in the Cypress Hills area until 1977.

With mixed feeling about giving up his job as a motorman and gambling on landing work elsewhere, Ed decided that big city life had deteriorated to the point where seeking a better life was in order. He moved to Montana in 1977, living first in Forsyth, then in Glendive, and for 13 years called Livingston home. With many regrets about leaving what he considered one of the prettiest places in the world, Ed left Livingston for Laurel where he now lives. With freight run-throughs on Montana Rail Link better working conditions were in Laurel.

Ed has three teenage children in Livingston. They are all good people and happily still have a good relationship with "Dad" and visit Laurel regularly. Recently married to the former Fay Unterseher, a North Dakota native, he is happy to have a friend and companion in her that shares his interest in trains, she especially likes the Chicago elevated and Amtrak and like Ed dislikes long distance driving and flying.

Ed's hobby pursuits are of course model railroading with a small collection of American Flyer S gauge and about a dozen sets of S gauge models of rapid transit and commuter cars which he scratch-built himself, most of them being from the early years of New York's IRT, subway and elevated . All of these trains run on a large basement layout with some of the tracking on elevated structures. In addition he enjoys listening to l950's rhythm and blues and rock and roll music, watching old movies and railroad videos and has a collection of books, photo slides of trains and ships. Marine history is another interest.

Copyright 1985 by Edward C. Davis, Sr. Reproduced on nycsubway.org with permission. Webmaster's Note: The photos presented in these articles were in many cases scanned from the original slides obtained from the author. Where the original slides weren't available, scans from the book are used. In a few cases, similar photos from the collection of nycsubway.org were used instead of the low-quality scans from the book. These are all noted as such in the captions.