Frank Froat

Frank John Froat was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and was the son of William T. and Lucinda Kidd Froat. He had several siblings. The family lived in Plainfield for a short time but afterwards moved to Garwood, both towns along the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Forat lived in Garwood until 1971, when he moved to Linden. Froat's earliest recorded job was a clerk. Froat married Alma Nemi and the couple had three children: Dorothy, William, and Thomas.

Froat first hired out on the RV in January 1920, as a locomotive fireman, and worked under Carl Nees. He later left that August and worked jobs on the CNJ and LV, also as a fireman. In the years that followed, Froat would work infrequently for the RV when they needed a fill-in for the Sunday hostler job. In 1933, during the Depression when all the big roads furloughed train crew en masse, he became the RV’s regular weekday hostler. Froat stayed in that job until June 1937, when he again left the RV, but came back that August as fireman and worked under Bill Snyder. 

At some point, perhaps during his Summer 1937 gap, Froat left the RV to go firing for the LV in hopes he could squeeze into an engineer’s job. Instead, when Snyder retired in 1939, Clark passed over Harry Williamson whom he had promised the job to, and made Froat the RV’s engineer. 

During his time with the LV, there was a labor strike and Froat crossed the picket line and worked his fireman job as a “scab.” Thereafter, Froat was blackballed on the big roads and his career was relegated to the little RV. The Froats were an impoverished family; Froat likely could not afford to go without a paycheck during the strike.

On the RV, Froat was immensely proud to be the engineer and loved the steam locomotives under his charge. He almost never took a day off from work. When his mother, Lucinda, died in July 1951, Froat only took half a day off to attend the funeral; he returned to work that afternoon. 

Froat was an unkempt man, he often wore the same dirt, soot, dust, and grime that the locomotives under his charge did. Bob Hoeft remembered that Froat was “a filthy individual.” Regardless of the temperature, he wore long johns year round and would only change out his coveralls once a year, when Clark would buy him a new set for Christmas. The train crew would not let him in the caboose at lunch. Clark called him “Dirty Neck” (Froat’s fireman at the time, Hoeft, was nicknamed the “Human Phonograph,” a reference to his musical talents). When the RV went into full time diesel operation, Clark bought Froat a new pair of coveralls and admonished him, in writing, on the shop bulletin board, to take at least one bath a week.

The RV went into diesel operation in February 1951. Froat disliked the diesels and he was not too careful in his handling of them, at first. In recalling Froat’s demeanor at the start of full time diesel operation, Hoeft said, “To be honest, he was scared to death of the damned thing.” Despite early misgivings, Froat worked as enginer on the diesels for twenty years.

Froat worked past retirement age and his finesse wore down somewhat. He would couple up hard to cars and was regularly told by George Davis that he didn't use the bell or blow the horn correctly at grade crossings. Walt Switz recalled, "he was not the best engineer I ever worked with but certainly not the worst."

One time, at Hammett's siding, the crew was going to pull out an empty car. The crew unlocked the gate and wound off the handbrake. They gave a signal to back up but there was no response. Upon looking, Froat was asleep on the arm rest. "Wake up, Frank," they shouted. He woke up and give a little smile and a laugh.

Some days, the crew would want to try something different in the switching moves and Froat would argue, "that's not the way we always do it." The engines customarily pointed towards Summit because Froat would say "we never did it that way before," and if challenged on his style he threatened, "I'll tell Davis on you." Froat did not like change and he would tell Davis... George Davis would pull the crew member aside and tell them not to change stuff up and not to upset Froat, "just do it the way we always do."

Froat retired from the RV in February 1971, just shy of his seventy-third birthday. He died on December 8, 1981, aged eighty-three.

Froat is buried in Rahway Cemetery, in Rahway, New Jersey.