Colonel Sanders a Railroader

[Rayman4449]

Posted by Norfolk Southern Corp: 05/26/2016

 

It’s Throwback Thursday! Did you know that Col. Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, was a railroader? Sanders signed on as a blacksmith’s helper for the Southern Railway at age seventeen; worked as a fireman stoking steam engines with coal; and repaired track as a section hand.

Before he opened his first restaurant in 1930, Sanders had worked for the Northern Alabama Railroad, the Norfolk and Western Railway, the Illinois Central Railroad, the Rock Island Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. On this 1972 excursion trip, the Colonel helped to fire the steam engine from Huntsville, Alabama, to Decatur, Georgia, and then joined the passengers for the remainder of the trip, signing autographs and telling stories about the time he was aboard a runaway train.

The railroad likewise played a part in the Colonel’s early business plan—his wife, Claudia, remembered how restaurants in other states would phone in orders for chicken. She would package the food and take it to the train station, often late at night, for the next train out.