Western Railroad Discussion > Practical jokes on the RAILS?

What is the best practical joke that you have seen or heard about happening on RR company property?

Not sure if I'd call this a "practical joke" or not, but when I was going through the training program to become a dispatcher, part of my training involoved observation of most facets of yard and terminal operation at one or more classification yards on the system.

One of the carmen decided to "baptize" (his word) a couple of my fellow trainees by pouring part of a bottle of railroad water (the kind in those blue plastic bottles) on them from the cab of a locomotive.

Pretty surreal...

*****

Another good one that's fun to use in a large dispatching office is to wait until someone leaves his cubicle and then go and turn up the ringer volume on his side phone to the "full blast" setting. Then wait until the unsuspecting victim returns to his cubicle and gets engrossed in his work, and dial his number... I've seen guys jump right out of their chairs! And you can hear it all over the office... ;-) If you suspect you might be on the receiving end of such a prank, it's always a good idea to check your settings upon your return to your workstation.

This is not to say that we frequently have the spare time to engage in such folly in a busy dispacthing office... maybe on a _reeeaaaallly_ slow Sunday, but that's about it!

WSC

It wasn't a practical joke, but...

Engineer on a 3rd trick yard job was po'd at the braky & conductor for dragging their feet. They were both chatting on the ground beneath the engineer's window when he strapped a torpedo to the head of a hammer and dropped it just behind them. I don't think it helped the situation at all, but he sure got a good laugh out of it.

I've heard of a potentially dangerous practical joke on the Canadian lines, where the bells are mounted up front between the number boards. The engineer straps a torpedo around the bell clapper, and when the brakeman or conductor go out for a smoke, out comes the bell stop: POW clang, clang, clang! I imagine this has nearly sent a guy off the deck once or twice!
~GP-38

Here's my favorite (in which torpedoes played a role):

When I was a trackman at Markham Yard, we had an assistant foreman named Frank. At lunch, while we sat in the shade of a boxcar to eat, Frank would take our track speeder a few hundred feet up one of the yard tracks and take a nap. Exactly one half hour later, he would come zooming back down on us, shouting at us to get our f***ing a**es in gear and get to work.

After a week, this began to get tiresome, so while Frank was taking his nap, two of the guys snuck up on the motor car and removed all of the torpedoes (there must have been a dozen) from the box on board. They wired them to the rails near where we were sitting, and we ate our lunch and waited. Sure enough, exactly one-half hour later, here came Frank, urging us to get back to work...until he hit the first torpedo, then the next, then the one after that...it was just like the 4th of July.

Frank came right past us without saying another word, and went all the way down to the other end of the yard track. He sat there for a few minutes, then brought the speeder back and said, "Okay, guys, lunch is over."

He never shouted at us again.

on hot days we would have water fights between locomotives on the service tracks... If you take those railroad water bottles and cut a small slit or hole in the cap then point it at your un-suspecting buddy in the locomotive next to you then squeeze. It is pretty accurate with practice, just be quick about it sometimes he might have one ready to spray back at you. my tactic was always spray quick then close the window fast before you get wet.

excuse me for my ignorance...I have an idea what a "torpedo" is...can someone 'splain because I don't want to sound like an idiot..again I do have an idea....

At C&NW, the special agents would break in a new guy by having him check out a report on some stealing all the spark plugs from a diesel.

I forgot a good one I pulled a few years back on the Central Oregon & Pacific. I was riding the 100 Job with conductor Shane, who is about 7 ft. tall. He was out lining a switch, so I went over to his seat and pulled out the height adjustment pin. Those Jagger seats are a bit heavier than I expected, and it crashed all the way down to the floor. He came back in, sat down, and instantly glared at me. His knees were up by his ears, but he could still see out the windshield without a problem!
~GP-38

For Goofey:

Never underestimate the effectiveness of a search using the Google search engine. I found this within 3 seconds by entering the words "railroad" and "torpedo" into the search engine.

From the following URL:
http://www.michiganrailroads.com/MichRRs/Information/Terminology.htm

"Torpedo. A torpedo is a device which is strapped to the top of a rail. When a
train drives over the torpedo, it emits a very loud "bang" which can be heard over
the noise of the engine, and signals the engineer to stop immediately. Torpedo's
are generally placed by the flagman when protecting a train ahead. Torpedo's are
about 2" x 2", red, about 3/4" high, and have two lead straps attached which hold
it to a rail. The torpedo has discs inside and are filled with detonating powder.
The Torpedo was invented about 1874. "

Not quite off the subject, but we on the UP were recently told that torpedoes were no longer necessary, and that they would be disposed of (somebody's gonna have some fun, I'd bet!).

One engineer told me about how he "taught" a new switchman something...as they were going down a track, he ratcheted the handbrake a bit (this was a switcher--the brake wheel was in the cab), and told him that it makes the engine move easier by lifting the wheels off the rails. Then he had the switchman lower the wheels back down himself when they were about to stop.

I don't know how many young brakemen thought their yardmasters had "track stretchers" (and that all of those yardies really wished they did!).

The best joke I have been involved in was when I was headed west on a Z train and we ran around a junk train at W. Victorville. The conductor on the other train thought it would be funny to moon us as we went by. He walked out the front door and dropped his pants right at eye level. My conductor could not resist the big white target. He shot his ass with the fire extinguisher. He couldn't have been more than 5 feet from the hose. It took him seconds to get on the radio and tell us how cold it was. He also told us he felt very dry down there.
I kind of felt bad and called him the next day to apologize and he said it was the funniest thing that ever happend to him on the railroad. He tells everybody about it with pride.
He reads TO so I'm sure he will have some comments on this. Hey 453, keep your pants on.
Mike

This one's from back east, but this a fun thread, so hear 'goes...

CSX's mainline through the Carolinas runs thru some fairly dense cotton fields, in many places growing thick on both sides of the track. One time (so a conductor told me a year ago) an employee from way up somewhere in the Northeast transfered down south to Rocky Mount, NC and on his first trip to qualify on the line he asked his conductor what all that white stuff was, never having seen cotton growing nor realizing it was a plant. The conductor quickly replied, with a perfectly straight face, that those were fields where southern farmers grew snow.

I don't believe that the Transfer asked many more such questions of that conductor...

Telling a crew we relieved that the train rolled away because the brakeman didn't tie hand brakes like he was told to. We were pissed because not only were there no hand brakes, but the train broke in two, so the next day we fabricated this story and watched him get chewed out. Turns out he thought to tie a hand brake meant to pull the cut lever, which resulted in the separation. We kept this story to ourselves and finally told the conductor that chewed him out about a year later.

Give it up, WSC! Most people on TO think a "search engine" is a yard job sent out once in a while to find cars the computer system lost...... <G>

lowwater

WhiskeySCharlie wrote:
>
> Never underestimate the effectiveness of a search using the
> Google search engine. I found this within 3 seconds by
> entering the words \\"railroad\\" and \\"torpedo\\" into the search
> engine.

Years ago, when all switches had kerosene switch lamps (we called them "pots") and yards had no lighting at night, it was a good trick to make the switch foreman think he was doing a hell of a job while switching a cut of cars.

The foreman would be doing the switching (giving signals and telling where the pinpuller was to make the cuts, and telling the field man which switches to line. The field man would be down along the long lead and all the foreman could see would be the switch lamps and the switchman's lantern. When the foreman would see the switch lamp change from yellow to green or vice versa, he would let some more cars go. The trick was to change the switch lamp--not line the switch at all. When the cut was finished, all the cars were in the same track and in the same order.

When I was an Asst. RM with ATSF, I was working a sled gang (cleans the ballast out from between the ties) around Dalies, NM. I was at the back of the gang doing quality control on the new ties we were inserting. My Asst. Div Engineer (my boss) came up to me and told me they needed me right away at the head of the gang (about 1/2 mile from where we were). He said to take my truck which was a couple of hundred yards away..but hurry!

I hustled to the truck, threw open the door and pulled myself in by the steering wheel, with all intention of putting in the key and highballing for whatever "emergency" was at the head end. My feet hit the floor boards, but it wasn't quite solid...sort of firm yet pliable. I looked down and there was the biggest friggin' rattler I'd ever seen all curled up with its head looking straight at my crotch! I beat Carl Lewis's high jump record by about 15 feet. The rattler, as you might suspect, was already quite dead...my heart rate did not confirm this!

When I landed (about 150 yards from the truck), I looked back to the track to see my boss and another RM doubled over laughing. To this day, I regret that I did not have the presence of mind to clutch my heart and drop to my knees, then keel over into the dirt. Perhaps that would have stopped their enjoyment!

for 'splaining torpedos..figured it might be some kind of thing that sounds like a cap gun or something...kind of sort of on the right track huh..thanks again..

When we first started out computerized tieups, sometimes people would leave their logon screen up and forget about it. Anyone can go into their layoff requests. People were laid off more than once for a request to attend the Gay Pride Parade or have a sex change operation or such. Within a short time everyone remembered to logoff before walking away.

This is kinda rotten...
In our yard, the carmen do air tests on the yard channel, and they often broadcast the EOT numbers to the head end of outbound trains to be punched in. And, sometimes you hear it's someone you really don't like, so, you punch in their EOT number at the same time, and when the carmen says "Arm It", you arm it, too. And when the carmen says "Set The Air"... oops, she dumped...

repeat as necessary.