During each of his 42 years working with the Santa Fe Railroad, he brought home another pile of railroad memorabilia from antique shops and flea markets all over Texas. He had to retire from his job at the freight yard in 2002 and now he says it is time to retire his 600-piece collection.

“It leaves an empty spot,” Houston said. “I’ll get over it, but I hate to part with it.”

It got to the point where his game room was stacked floor to ceiling with railroad collectibles.

On Saturday, Feb. 16 in Alvarado, Houston’s collection goes up for auction.

Items includes pocket watches, lanterns, locks, a poster advertising a baseball game between the Kansas City Monarchs vs. the Memphis Red Sox - both in the Negro American League - bells, whistles, oil cans, telegraph machines and conductors hats. Houston thinks the rarest item in his collection is a Golden Glow locomotive headlight made by the Keystone Co.

Back when the rail companies were converting from coal to diesel locomotives, it was common to send the old trains directly to the scrap yard, so finding a headlight intact is uncommon.

His most unusual item up for auction is not train related at all. It is a ceiling fan shaped to look like an airplane engine and propeller.

This is Andy Frank’s first time to run a railroad auction, but with 600 items Houston is bound to draw some attention.

“He’s got so many unusual-looking things you don’t see for sale every day, it deserves (a look),” said Frank, whose Andy’s Antiques is in the antiques and auction service business.

He said he has received calls from all over Texas and from 10 other states.

Houston grew up in a railroad family. His mother was stenographer for a railroad manager and his father was the superintendent of a railroad tie plant.

Houston began his life with the Santa Fe Railroad in 1959 as a fireman at the age of 18. Firemen traditionally were in charge of shoveling coal into the boiler to keep the steam pumping. By then coal had been replaced by diesel so Houston spent his time replacing fuses and making sure air was flowing to the engine to keep it cool.

When he was laid off in 1964, he then hired out in the train service as a switchman-brakeman and conductor and stayed with it until March 2002.

He said he loved the job, “but it was brutal.”

“It was 30 years before I could sleep in my own bed. I was on call 365 24/7,” Houston said.

It wasn’t until the last 12 years of work that he could come home to his wife and children every night.

He was in charge of “making up trains” in the north train yard in Temple, attaching the right freight cars together and getting them out on time. He lived by the timetable and the pocket watch. Their watches were serviced every six months to maintain accuracy.

While in some areas there were switches and signals to keep trains aware of traffic, some areas were known as dark territory. In areas out of contact from the yard all anyone had to go on was the almighty timetable. If the clock was off by just a minute it could cause delays and accidents if a train was put on a track in front of an early inbound train.

Houston said he was lucky he didn’t get hurt in his career. He had several friends killed in the switching yard.

He once had to work a 16-hour shift during an ice storm. He had to climb the ladder to the top of the cars in his rain gear as ice built up on his arms and back.

In the summer, when working in between those steel train cars, it can get up to 115 degrees, he said.

He said he learned something new every day and has seen some strange things.

One day while watching train number 39 from Temple to Houston, he saw a hobo straddling the drawbar, the connecting point of the trains. He was holding on for dear life, the metal joint swayed with the curves of the track and rattled with every bump. He would have to ride that way all the way to Houston.

“He would have made one hell of a bronco rider,” Houston joked.

A few things have changed over the years, Houston said. They went from using cabooses to having none, and railroad companies are downsizing more, which means, “it’s worse now because there are two working the yard rather then three,” Houston said.

Houston began taking his work home with him from the day he joined Santa Fe. His first collectable was a timetable from his first year as a fireman.

“I’ve always been a junker,” he said. When he was a child he collected arrowheads and graduated to signs, lanterns, old stoves and train sets.

He spent 42 years adding to his collection. His favorite spot was a flea market in Canton, with 200 acres of antiques.

“Back in the ’70s you could find just about anything,” Houston said.

He found his Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad sign hanging outside an antique shop in Johnson City.

“I had to have it,” Houston said.

When asked why he is giving it up, he said it was just too much to keep. He filled a 20-by-20-foot room full of forgotten treasures and he and his wife, Jean, decided enough was enough.

He isn’t selling all of it, though. Lanterns can still be found scattered around his home and he kept a few of his more sentimental pieces. He has the original charter for the train worker’s union from the late 1800s as well as some other odds and ends.

To find the rest of Houston’s collection, the auction is in Alvarado in the Old Settlers Reunion Building starting at 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 16. Visit andysantiques.com for more information.