Ask any railroad man to tell you a story, and in most cases he will say that he doesn't know any. "I just can't remember those old stories. I forget them as soon as I hear them." Or, "Oh yes, I've been working for one railroad or another for twenty years, but nothing exciting or interesting ever happened to me." Then, just as you might be leaving him, he says, "Well, there was the time I rode a reefer (refrigerator car) down the side of a mountain after it had jumped the track, but it wasn't much."

If rails (veteran railroad men) "don't know" any stories, then how do railroad stories get told? When do they become full-fledged stories? It seems to me that most rails don't look at their reminiscences as "stories" that can stand alone, but as contributions to bull sessions, which are remembered when something reminds the teller of a personal experience or a story he heard.