Tales From The Cab !

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by RIHogger:
I was wroking on the Rock Island and we were running from Des Moines Ia to Silvis Ill one day.
We were running about 50 mph when we came around a curve and there were about 25 or 30 hogs on the
track. We didn't have time to stop so we just plowed on through them. It sure made a mess all over the engine. It was about the end of July so you can imagine aroma by the end of the trip. Not a pretty sight!

Gary<hr></blockquote>

Ain't it amazing what winds up in the tracks? We got a call from the dispatcher one night to slow down and make a lot of noise around a certain milepost. Seems the train ahead of us had center-punched a fat bovine at 50 mph and they were afraid there would be more out and around. We didn't see any live ones but there was beef cow spread thinly for a quarter mile down the track. Not enough in any one place for a cheeseburger. Glad it was foggy and dark.

 

Hey All A question,Has anyone thought about putting all these stories into book form? I
just spent over an hour reading thru most of
them and there are some of the best RR'ing
stories i've read.I know most of them are
true cause ol'railroaders never lie...,might
stretch the truth alittle but never lie.
RRman48

 

I haven't been on a train crew for twenty years, but I can always get a smile from a railroader (especially an old head) if he asks me the question, "do you know how to run a train?" I say, "sure...put it in run eight and straight-air the pi** out of it." This has always proved to be the satisfactory answer.

Just before I pulled the pin on the Frisco in the early 80's, the RFE joined us in the cab for many trips to show us the "new and improved" way to run trains (by this time, we were getting all of our wisdom from the BN). Instead of using the trainline to slow or stop the train, the RFE was telling us to use the dynamics for ALL braking. This did not apply to set outs and local switching, but all over-the-road braking was to be made with the dynamic brakes. Yes, I witnessed some really bad train handling during those times. And I didn't hang around long enough to see if the BN revolutionized freight hauling, or put the brake shoe companies out of business. Does anyone out there believe this weird story, or have another angle on it?

 

I can emagine you stood just a few of the RFE's on their ear!

Another angle is to ask, "How do you stop a train"? I didn't have the proper respect for the young diesel instructor I guess.

When he asked that of us, I told him to pull the Johnson bar to full reverse, pop the air, and jump!

(He didn't think it was funny, but the old hats laughed!)

 

Not only do I believe the story Trainbooks, it's a fact of life. Power braking is a dying art because it's a violation unless you absolutely need to use it. Dynamics are supposed to be the primary means of slowing or stopping whenever possible. The rules for dynamic and air use are complicated and you have to think about factors like equivalent axles on line, standard or extended range, trailing tons, crossovers, allowable amps, rolling releases etc., etc. It gets pretty crazy sometimes but you get your event tapes pulled periodically to verify that you're doing it by the book. I know, I've got a letter in my file to prove it.

 

You know ya'll,at one time I thought I really
wanted to be an engineer,but with all the
variables and information that the brain has to
process,I'd go into information overload and
my brain would vaporlock.My hat's off to yall.

 

It wasn't all that bad in steam days rrman. The Regulator set your watch, all you had to do was keep it wound, take a short snort and let er rip! Once she was runnin' and got smoothed out a little, you catch another short snort, and checked the gauges. If you could still read them everything was OK, and you gave her some more thrortle and waved at the kids. It was customarry to inch the J bar back a little onced you got the thobbley thingy wide obben. Then you had time four a short snorty er three. Oh an you tooted the ole honker ever onest in awhile to scare the cows. If they wuz a curve cummin up, ewe tried ter fin' them old orders to see how fass tew take it. Ifen yew couldn' fine em, then it wuz time fur a lil' ole snorty poo an by then weun's wuz around thet ole curve, and we could sellybrate with a long snor-r-r-rt fer it be's some ole station could come up right fass like! OOPS plumb o're shot that un', so we'll toss the Dead Soldier out an' catch the next depot ah som'er's down the line. You run it awile, I got a head ache. Z-z-z-z-z. It wuz easy, C?

 

All kidding aside, back in the 1940's when kids could play on and around the sidings, and climb on the box cars sitting there, several of us learned some valuable lessons one Saturday.

There was a string of box cars and a condola spotted at a warehouse in such a way that we could jump from the roof of the warehouse down to the roof of the box cars. We could then run along the string of cars, jumping from one to the next, then take a flying leap landing in the sand loaded in the gondola car at the end. It was great fun! By noon we had our pants cuffs, pockets, and shoes full of sand.

When another boy and I went back after lunch, there was a guy with a long pry bar walking over toward the string of cars, so we ran over and asked what he was doing. We told him we were jumping into the condola, and he laughed, and agreed it was fun. He had also jumped into the gondola, and asked if we wanted to ride, because he was going to "walk" a box car down to the dock where he had opened a huge door into that warehouse? You bet!

We watched as he placed the "Walker" on a rail and slid it up against a wheel. Then he pulled the coupler bar. It wouldn't budge! He said the weight of the car was pulling against the coupler claw hard enough to prevent the drop pin from moving. (Learned that!) Then asked us to bring him a couple of 4x4's that were laying around the siding.

We all went to the other end of the car. He told us to shove the wood tight up against the wheels and not get our fingers between the wheels and the wood or the rail. (Learned that!) Then he set that "walker" against the wheel and pulled up on the handle, and THE CAR ROLLED! (Man Oh Man, one guy moved a loaded box car, all by himself! Just wait til I tell dad about that!)

The car went about 2 or 3 inches and he yelled for us to block the wheels! Then he went to the coupler and easily pulled the pin. (GeeWhiz).

He had us block the wheels of the next car, then slowly "walked" the box car down to the loading door. (About half a block.) As the car got closer, rolling on its own now, he climbed up on top and started turning the brake wheel. He watched until the car got almost there, then started tightening the brakes letting it slow down, then stopped the car right in front of that door! Man he was slick!

We noticed where he stored that "Walker". Two weeks later we could uncouple the cars and walk one and spot it pretty well. Not as good as he did, but just great for us. We always walked it back and coupled it up again and put the "walker" away, when we had to go home.

Then we showed him one day how we could do it all alone, so could help him if he ever needed it.

He laughed, then got an axe handle and had us climb up on top with him. He showed us how to slip the handle into the brake wheel and really get some grunt on the brakes. He said we might find that helpful someday.

I was about 12 and Grover was about 14 but skinny, and we learned a lot they didn't teach us in school that summer.

DAD WAS AMAZED WHEN I WAS ABLE TO SHOW HIM THAT I COULD ACTUALLY MOVE A BOX CAR ALL BY MYSELF! Dad and the guy talked awhile. The guy told him we had been no trouble and had actually helped him, so dad let me play down there all summer. The axe handle lesson did come in handy later.

It was another great summer in 1942!

 

I have another old firebox kicker that sent this photo after I told about seeing this out in western Kansas. It is a PushPlow working.

(He calls me Staybolt, he claims I'm wrinkled all over like one, and twice as flat headed! We tease eachother a lot, but I would ride with him any day!

The snow in this photo is flying out about 75 to 100 feet on either side, so he is poking along at about 60 miles an hour!

 

Well, I guess no one else has any stories and I've had 3 e-mails wanting more, so here is another.

(I wont give names, to protect the guilty)-

There is a place a good bicycle ride from town where there used to be one of those tiny gasoline or diesel 0-4-0 switch engines, a hand pumped inspection/work cart, and another car that was just a tiny flat car they had hauled tools and barrels on.

In town the old turnout had been removed along with some rails because the little railroad was just a spur into town and dead ended along side this building. The track was under a roof like a car port, open all along the building and both ends. When the company shut down they parked an old pea green diesel switch engine down at the end of this spur under the over-hang, so other than being dusty, it was out of the weather. You couldn't see any of this from town except the roof of the building.

Back in those days, you didn't have to lock everything up. We could open the engine's door and go in and look at all the stuff, but we would never have tried to start it up, or do any damage, and we always closed the door when we left.

Now that little flat car, was another story. Four of us could push it along the track until we got it up to a place where the track dropped off a slight grade toward town, then we would start running so we could jump on and ride it maybe a city block before it squeeked to a stop.

The only vandalizing thing we did, if you can call it that, was to take the oil can out of the little 0-4-0 switcher, and oil up the bearings on "our" little flat car, but we put the oil can back where we found it. After that the little flat would coast maybe half a mile or so! It was a lot easier to push it back to the top too.

We eventually got the bolts tightened where the wood had shrunk, and even aligned the wheels so it didn't always try to turn left, then we got some serious coasting distance and speed!

There was usually several of us that could ride out, and I don't think anyone else even knew any of that was out there. It seems like maybe eight kids in all, but I can't name them now, too long ago. If any of them are still alive and read this, they will know instantly how much fun we had. None of us got hurt on any of the equipment, except if we fell or jumped off and got into the cactus. That smarted a heap!

The last time I was down there before I went away to boarding school, someone had pushed, pulled, or run the little engine up to the other end of the building. Everything else was just as we had left it.

Its all gone now, even the building. It was a good time.

 

When the axe handle thing came in handy was by accident. Here is how it came about:

One afternoon, there were four of us had been out rabbit hunting, and were on our way home cutting across the edge of an industrial district. We usually went down what served as an access street between buildings where trucks could back trailers in to load and unload goods that had been shipped in by rail on tracks that ran behind these buildings.

These Feeder tracks came in along one end of the industrial complex, then rather sharp curves went off into ladder tracks behind each row of buildings, continued across several streets, then curved back onto out bound Feeder tracks at the other end. There were several sidings down there.

Cars were picked up and dropped off mostly during the night, so auto trafic was not disrupted during the working hours.

On the track where we were close to, a switcher backed a car in and spotted it at one of the loading docks, but it just barely bumped a car already there, that had been wheel chocked with a 2x4. The switcher pulled the rest of his string back out (with the brakeman on the rear car), and onto the feeder track and was gone out of sight. We waved to the brakeman hanging on the last car as we were walking down along toward the newly spotted car. As we were passing beside the car it had bumped, one of the guys said he heard wood cracking, and we started looking around for what was happening.

Finally we noticed this car was just barely beginning to roll as it was coming down off the 2x4. The bump had rolled the wheel up onto the 2x4, but not across it. As it sat there, the weight was crushing the wood, and the car was settling back down onto the rail. It was moving, but not gaining any speed.

One of the guys jumped on the foot iron to ride, all great fun, but one of the other guys started climbing up to set the brake wheel so the car wouldn't coast out into the next street. He set the brakes as best he could, but the car had rolled about 15 feet and was still moving, very very slowly.

When we determined that this car was going to continue probably into the street, I remembered the axe handle lesson, and grabbed another 2x4 and climbed up on top. I stuck one end through the spokes of the brake wheel, and wedged it against the shaft, and pulled as the other guy pushed. We got the brakes tight enough to stop the car, tnen climbed down and chocked the wheels again with another 2x4. (There were hundreds of them laying around, used to chock wheels). We felt like heros, having saved the city from the worst train wreck in history! We felt pretty good!

The other guys asked what had made me think of using the 2x4 for added leverage? I told them the story I told above, now they all knew how to set brakes.

If there was only one or two of us, sometimes the switcher crew would let us ride the engine as they switched cars, so we spent some exciting days "playing trains" down there. We were always careful and made sure we didn't get in the way, so they let us ride often, but only on the engine where they could see us.

I learned how to connect the "Glad Hands" of the air brake hoses between cars. You can't just wring them together, there is a trick to make them clasp themselves together. It is a secret.

 

Well, I guess I can share my humble story of running a locomotive at the age of 13. My father was a traveling erector-engineer and he used to build lumber and paper mills all over the US and Canada. In 1970, I was with him on a job in Silsbee, Texas. Just outside of Beaumont. He was building an addition to the Kirby Lumber Company. They had quite a bit of yard track and owned what I believe was an SW9. My father and I were fishing in one of the log ponds one day when a train full of logs pulled up. We talked to the crew and got invited up for a ride. Well after that I was bugging my dad to take me to work with him every day that summer. I did spend several whole days with the crew setting out log cars to be emptied into the ponds, taking empty log cars to the interchange yard, moving chip cars, box cars etc. The engineer taught me how to work the controls and several times I was allowed to operate from the yard to the plant. To this day, I would still say that this is in the top 5 thrills of my life. I would imagine that crew would be pretty old today if they were still around. I still covet the 4 pictures I have of them and me and the SW9. I'll never forget them or the joy that they gave this (then) 13 year old boy from Ohio.

 

A couple of weeks ago I was having dinner with a family member who is a life long railfan. He never worked for a railroad, but he travelled America on some of the great streamliners, and his father's machine shop was next to the KCS and did repair work on steam locomotives. During our meal he recalled the story of the ATSF Grand Canyon and the Super Chief going bump at Wagon Mound, NM back in the waning days of steam. The point of his story was that one train was piloted by diesel locomotives and its crew suffered fatalities. The other train was headed by a massive steam locomotive which handled the impact with little consequence. As I listened to this story my mind went to another point; "I wasn't there at the wreck, but I KNOW what caused it." Then I told my host of seeing photographs of the Pioneer Zephyr with its face mashed in by an opposing freight train; again, "I wasn't there, but I KNOW what caused that crash. It's difficult to explain, but I know what was happening."
Having spent some time as a head brakeman in non-CTC territory I told my host what a guy in charge of the switch feels when an opposing train approaches. "Let's say that you are on a train that takes siding and waits to meet a man...All the pin-puller is supposed to do is get on the ground, wait at the fouling point for the train to pass, watch it by when it passes, and then reverse the switch to let his train on to the main. "Here is what few people know and I don't expect anyone to understand it. "When the opposing train approaches you get a sick feeling in your stomach along with a thought that says, 'did I do everything right?', and then a big wave of self-doubt. "You know that if you didn't do things right there is going to be a BIG crash!"
It sounds like a weird theory, but there are rules in the Standard Code to support it: the head brakeman of a train that has taken siding is supposed to wait at the fouling point of the side track until the opposing train has passed. Or, for a train that holds the main, the head brakeman is supposed to reverse the switch, LOCK IT, and GO BACK to the fouling point, or to the opposite side of the track from the switch stand plus 15 or 20 feet away, and BYGAWD STAY AWAY! (emphasis my own). I think these rules were implemented to keep the person in charge of the switch from doing something crazy in a rush of panic. And I have named two probable examples of when the rules didn't work.
There were many quiet mornings waiting in the hole between OKC and Tulsa on a mainline with 123 curves and so many trees that the only direction you could see was up. Then the train you were meeting would bust around a curve, and that terrible feeling would run through me even though I knew I had everything set just right. If a guy is at the switch on short rest and half asleep, or dreaming about girls it's a rude awakening when this feeling comes over you and little time to wake up and think.
It is just me, or can somebody back me up on this theory.

 

HermanzG., you had similar experience that I have had. It is a life long memory. The "feelings" and sounds really never die because there is nothing else like it, and can not be synthetically duplicated.

TrainBooks, you are not alone, and not having mental problems! To some extent, that wave of "Oh Oh, am I correct" comes to all of us who have stood facing life threatening situations. I can well remember feeling confident, then seeing the Express round the bend coming on full bore "TRUSTING HIS LIFE AND ALL HIS PASSENGERS" on my shoulders. I can remember it begins to creep up my spine, the back of my neck gets cold, and I shoot a glance at the points, the lock, then an irresistable urge to look back and verify that I am correct, that I am in the hole (on the siding), the points ARE set for the Express to remain on the mainline, and I am NOT standing right between HIS tracks, and HERE HE COMES!! Then when he begins to shake the ground and the rail beside you begins to ping and pop, you glance again at the points, there is an urge to move a little farther away from the tracks. Then WHOOSH! He's thundering past and alls well! But you just begin to breathe again, and your heart starts pumping again. Its OK. You aren't alone.

 

The rulebook still says that anyone manning a hand thrown main track switch will, if at all possible, stand on the opposite side and/or well away from the (locked) keeper until all passing trains are clear. I suspect that the above posts are the reason for still carrying that rule.

It's been known for a guy lose his concentration for a second and throw a switch under an engine or car in the yard on occasion, which is bad enough, but for that kind of thing to happen on the main could ruin your whole day.

 

You are right Rule-281, guess I didn't make myself clear above. I meant, after I have set everything, I have double checked it, then crossed the mainline and am standing out on the mainline side with the mainline between me and the siding. When the "Am I Correct" tinge begins, I move a little farther into the ditch, just to be sure I am not standing on the mainline. One of our guys had a habit of stepping into the mainline tracks to sight down the rails after throwing a switch. He said he was making sure the setting was correct. Better him than me!

 

BNSF7173, I hope you got his address so you can keep in touch with him! He sounds like the fellows I grew up around, and at a later date, he would probably allow you and your wife to go along again, and this time you could probably "run" the train! I used to happen all the time, on the shortlines anyway. Keep it in mind, just don't make names public. Good Luck.

(It is a thrill, isn't it?)

 

If you like the GS-4 you would have fallen in love with their AC-9's! That was a 2-8-8-4 Yellowstone with a "streamlining hood" covering the domes. Really sharp looking and fast! My dad used to try to keep up with them out on the plains of Kansas and Oklahoma in his 1936 Chevy (hot-water 6) but they always blew a couple of short whistle blasts, waved, them accelerated outrunning us! He was pulling 88 cars too, that was a mile long train back then! The greatest sound was to stand there when they started up one of them. That would shiver your timbers!