Hallelujah Conductor


Calvin Eugene Shelly was a conductor on the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad. He had come to Skagway from Chicago but was born in 1864 in Akron, Ohio. He came here with his wife Mary and their two sons Allen and Robert.
He attended the Peniel Mission and was “beautifully saved at the mission. He received the name of “Hallelujah Conductor” for he was always praising the Lord….One night during testimonies, he said this –“I have been a year paying for a dead horse, and now I am clear before God and Man.” He meant that he had been a year paying and making restitution for things he had done in the past.” – as Mable Ulery put it.
Their home was on 7th between Broadway and Spring which is just an open lot now. When we moved here in 1998 I remember there was a controversy because someone bulldozed the house one day and hauled it off. It was that action which prompted the city to make it necessary to get permission to bulldoze historic buildings and not just do it in the night. True, it was just a dilapidated house nearly 90 years old, but it was part of the fabric of historic Skagway.

Speaking of historic, seen above is Lep in his conductor’s togs.

Calvin passed away on December 28, 1945 in Burlington, Washington.

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