WAHPETON (AP) - Nine railroad retirees can make a lot of noise as they reminisce and jab at each other about their former work.

The men, ages 75 to 93, met recently at the Fryn' Pan in Wahpeton. Each had a story to tell of life on the tracks as employees of the Great Northern Railway.

The railroad itself reached neighboring Breckenridge, Minn., in 1871, and the community became a railway center.

"Breckenridge was a very important town in its time with the railroad," retired engineer Tom Anderson said.

Anderson started out as a crew caller at age 19. He ran in town to get the men to the Breckenridge depot. He was on foot, appointed to the job of finding the caboose man and engine crews staying at local rooming houses, he said.

"There was lots of calling to do between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. each day for a lot of trains," he said.

The Great Northern Railway eventually stretched 8,316 miles from Lake Superior at Duluth, Minn., and Minneapolis-St. Paul west through North Dakota, Montana, Idaho to Seattle. It transported passengers, cattle, grain, groceries, mail and even the occasional hobo. Many transients hitched a ride on the train.

The steam engine was in service when the local retirees started working for the railroad in Breckenridge.

The "261" weighed 750,000 pounds and carried 25 tons of coal and 45,000 gallons of water. The engine traveled up to 60 mph. Later, the steam engines were replaced with diesel engines.

There were five lines going east and west of Breckenridge. The city had a roundhouse that held 32 engines with 150 men working three shifts. At the roundhouse, engines were watered and fixed.

The men said the even-numbered trains ran east and the odd-numbered trains ran west.

"The (Northern Pacific) used to run through a block south of here," Lowell Kolbe said pointing out the window. "That Milwaukee ran north and south from Fargo to Ortonville (Minn.)."

The trains were full in the area. There were fruit trains brought in from the West Coast, silk trains with cargoes valued at millions of dollars. The railroad express carried groceries.

There were even cattle trains from Montana and cherry trains from the coast; freight trains, circus trains and troop trains carrying soldiers, the retirees said. During World War II, the railroad was a busy military supply line and carried soldiers to their destinations. There was even a special train to carry the president of the United States.

In those days, everything was shipped by rail and the government paid for a lot, the railroad men said.

The railroad wasn't without its mishaps, including train derailments. One retiree remembers tipping over a grain elevator.

Anderson remembers a train derailment at Lidgerwood coming from Aberdeen, S.D.

"There weren't enough rail anchors, and the rail had worn away," Anderson said. The town was filled with grain.

He said the same thing happened three weeks later.

"You did that one yourself, didn't you?" Rueben Kath asked with a chuckle. "Yeah, the grain did," Anderson retorted.

Engineers ran the engine and had to watch everything. On the local, they stopped in every small town and often used hand signals. When the diesel engine arrived, it was placed with the passenger trains, first.

Conductors legally were the train bosses, but there were many important roles in making a train run safely and efficiently. Engineers, brakemen, firefighters and operators worked hard, 16-hour days.

Crew members reminisced about a terrible spring blizzard in 1966 that tied the Great Northern train service in knots and curtailed passenger and freight traffic through parts of Minnesota and North Dakota.

Driven by fierce winds clocked at more than 100 mph, the snow packed solidly into drifts of up to 35 feet in some areas.

"The snow drifts were 15 feet higher than the train," Kenneth Skoog recalled. He and the other local retired railroad men remember 14 days on the other end of the line with no money. "We were starving to death," Skoog said.

The Great Northern halted traffic in the storm area, and freight and passenger traffic that could be moved were moved to the nearest towns on the line.

Tracks in some areas of North Dakota were closed for eight days in March that year. The only way to some trains was by snowmobile.

Pigs on the train turned cannibalistic and ate each other, one retiree said. It was a difficult situation all along the tracks.

"It was a lot of snow, I can tell you that," former conductor Bernard Holecek said.

The biggest gripe each of the men could relate about their jobs was that they were never home.

"We never saw our kids' games. I knew people who left the railroad because of the hours," Lowell Kolbe said. He began with the Great Northern in 1948 and retired as a conductor in 1988.

They agreed the pay was pretty good, but there wasn't much of a social life. "I was home three times for Thanksgiving in 41 years," Kolbe said.

Skoog, Lesley Aldrich and 93-year-old Tony Radke remembered that when the phone rang, the hugging and kissing was over and a man had an hour to get to work.

Skoog said he kept his clothes lined up in order, so he could quickly jump into them.

Most of the men worked every holiday, and they were all called during storms.

There were beautiful times as well. Kath remembers nights when the northern lights danced across the sky. He watched them for five hours one night. "It was a beautiful way to pass the time in the middle of the night," Kath said.

In 1967, the rail postal service was discontinued and in 1970, the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific merged.

The local retirees said the loss of mail business was a major blow.

The Breckenridge depot was a busy place, with someone there 24 hours a day until it closed in December 1987.