Obituary of Thomas Harold Smith

Tom was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1945. From the earliest age, he was captivated by trains. Maybe it started when his mother would put his playpen in the front yard to watch the tracks of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad that ran past their house. His fascination never abated, from the excitement of writing in his journal that his train on a western vacation in the 1950s was pulled through the mountains by steamers, to the Lionel toys with his handwritten lettering, to the model railroad he built—much from scratch—in his basement. By his high-school years, he was an avid railfan, and he and his father were helping launch an organization to found Delaware’s Wilmington & Western Railroad. Tom attended the University of Delaware, initially intending to study political science, and even tried volunteering for Vietnam. The military didn’t take him, and he was no politician, so he found himself back in more traditional terrain for his family: a business degree program. He followed his father and mother’s footsteps into Hercules, Inc, a Wilmington chemical company. He worked there for 21 years on international import, export distribution, and duty drawback. The career allowed him to dive headlong into his railfan hobby. He was a co-founder of the Wilmington chapter of the National Railway Historical Society (NRHS), he purchased his own Pullman restaurant-lounge car, #7014 Defender, he traveled widely throughout North America in his attempt to log one million miles on passenger rail, and he shot train photos on thousands of rolls of film, many of which he developed himself in his home darkroom. The only thing he didn’t find was love—until, on an Amtrak train between Chicago and Wilmington in May 1976, he looked out the door of his sleeping car compartment and saw a young lady’s feet in the opposite compartment, dangling off the floor because she was too short. She was from Chicago, on her way to an arboretum conference in Delaware and had just splurged on a $7 upgrade to get her own little room instead of going by coach. He asked if she’d like to get a tour of Delaware from a native Delawarean; she said yes. Before long, they were corresponding; he and Karen were married on August 26, 1978 at Faith Presbyterian Church in Delaware where Tom had attended all his life. After a honeymoon—on a train, of course—Tom and Karen settled in Wilmington. Their son Allen was born in 1982. In 1989, Tom was laid off from Hercules, an early casualty of the end of the paternalistic American corporation. The shock, combined with difficult economic conditions in his field, was the inducement to make a cross-country move to Camas, Washington. But he didn’t find a shipping job in Portland either. Instead, at Karen’s urging, Tom applied at the Mount Hood Railroad, where he began his second career as a conductor/brakeman on the small tourist-freight operation. Economics demanded a move to the Union Pacific Railroad in 1999. The first few years on the Union Pacific were grueling, on call 24/7 for the “extra board” with only 10 hours of mandated time off between calls. Eventually he worked up to a yard job, and was thinking about applying to engineer school. But when yard locomotives converted to remote-control operation, he moved to mainline operations, where he remained the conductor on trips from Portland to points east and south. He referred to this job as one with a seat and an ever-changing view. Tom continued to plan his vacations around trains, and eventually followed them into retirement—he quit the Union Pacific and went back to the Mount Hood Railroad for his last few years of “work.” He also served on the Clark County Rail Advisory Board, wrote articles for rail publications, and built a catalog of the chain of ownership of every Pullman railcar ever built. Tom also volunteered at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in Ilwaco to assist with preserving the last remaining passenger car of the Ilwaco Railway. Tom’s son Allen married and gave him a daughter-in-law, Ruth, and three grandchildren: Eric, Corina, and Charlie. In 2016, Tom’s life took a terrible turn when he began experiencing debilitating physical and mental impairments. His condition progressively robbed him of his faculties. His last trips were a photo special on Oregon’s Sumpter Valley Railroad with Allen and Eric, and to Hawaii, where he was finally able to finish his goal of riding a train in all 50 states. A stroke in 2021 left him homebound and needing multiple stays in facilities. Karen was his caregiver until the end. Tom was given the miraculous gift of a swift natural passing at home, surrounded by his family. He left us peacefully as he entered his new world, where he would be able to enjoy his new life. His body has been interred in the most fitting possible place—directly adjoining the BNSF Railroad in Cascade Cemetery, North Bonneville, Washington.