IPSWICH — The next time you drive through Salem and realize you never had to stop at a railroad crossing, you can thank Alan MacMillan.
MacMillan, a longtime Ipswich resident who died recently at age 85, was the project engineer for the construction of the nearly half-mile-long railroad tunnel under the city in the mid-1950s.
The tunnel eliminated about a half-dozen railroad crossings at busy intersections in the downtown area. It also left a lasting legacy to a man who dedicated his life to working for the railroad.
"He was truly a lover of trains and train travel," said MacMillan's son, Alan Jr. "He fulfilled his dream by working for four different train companies and building bridges, tunnels and trackwork."
MacMillan started as a baggage handler for the Boston & Maine Railroad. When he was drafted during World War II, he was assigned to a railway operating battalion as the company clerk.
He was one of 4,000 soldiers on a ship headed to North Africa when he attended a church service on board. Because there were so many people, he had to share a hymnal with another soldier. That soldier, Doris McGraw of Cairo, Ga., would become his wife of 55 years.
After the war, MacMillan earned a civil engineering degree under the G.I. Bill and worked for railroads in Maryland, West Virginia and Iowa. In 1954 he was hired by the Boston & Maine Railroad and bought a two-family house in Ipswich for $12,000.
The next year he was assigned by the railroad as project manager for construction of the tunnel under Salem, an undertaking that some historians have called Salem's equivalent of the Big Dig. The tunnel replaced a smaller tunnel and eliminated the railroad crossings that were creating congestion as cars became more popular in the 1950s.
But the loud, dusty, dangerous project — one man died when a crane fell on him — caused havoc in downtown Salem, forcing many stores out of business. With the Northshore Shopping Center being built in Peabody at the same time, Salem went into economic decline.
"My father was aware of what was going on at the time in terms of the negative effects on downtown business and also thinking of the positive effects of eliminating traffic," MacMillan Jr. said. "He considered the tunnel one of his greatest achievements."
Trains were MacMillan's life, but one day in 1956 they nearly caused his death. Minutes after he got off a train in Salem during a blizzard, it crashed into another train in Swampscott, killing 13. MacMillan helped in the rescue operation.
The late 1950s and early '60s were not easy times for MacMillan or the railroad. The company's president, Patrick McGinnis, went to prison in 1963 for taking kickbacks on the sale of old passenger cars.
MacMillan Jr. said his father knew about the corruption, but with five children at home, he couldn't risk blowing the whistle and losing his job.
"My dad would come home a very angry and bitter man," his son said. "He was an honest man to a fault, a man of integrity."
MacMillan did take action, however, when McGinnis ordered the company's records destroyed. As the files and old photos were piled into several dump trucks, MacMillan instructed the drivers to drop them off at his house on Maple Avenue in Ipswich, filling up the family's two-car garage.
Many of those records are now preserved at the Boston & Maine Historical Society in Lowell.
MacMillan passed on his love of trains and travel — as well as his integrity, honesty and faith — to his five children, his son said.
Alan Jr., who is now 61, has continued his father's legacy. He has worked for the railroad for 37 years, most of them as a locomotive engineer.
Four times per day he drives his train through the Salem tunnel that his father helped to build.
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