Railroaders' Nostalgia > Crew transport question for 1965-1975 era

Any of you really old heads remember what was used to move crews from place to place vehicle wise in ex late 1960's to early 1970's? Were they similar to vans like today or bigger trucks? Or just the Trainmasters station wagon? I can't seem to find any pictures of crews getting canned to other end of yard or tie up point.

I know the mini van was not created til the mid 1980's.

Thomas G



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/14 23:43 by Splitrock323.

A clerk driving a Suburban or an equivalent Ford.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/14 00:09 by Chico43.

on the Southern Pacific we had clerks that drove crews around... The term that was used by the crews was send the carryall down to the hump to pick us up..

In the late 60's I remember riding a Greyhound bus to deadhead longer distances, i.e., Los Angeles to indio or Indio to San Bernardino, etc. As others have said, at least on the SP, the clerk and a "carryall" (like a Chevy suburban, etc.) would do the short hauls. And, unlike today when they have a Rensenberger van for just about everything, if it was a relatively short walk like from the yard to the yard office, YOU WALKED.

On Santa Fe (at least in '78) clerks also drove you in vans. You dead headed longer distance via Greyhound or Amtrak.
JB

I was a clerk for the CB&Q in the summer of '64, and drove the company's black Suburban to the other end of the yard to pick up the caboose crew of inbounds. Not that they wanted to save the crew from walking, but so that the wheel report and waybills got to the yard office quicker.

Also, shuttled crews between the yard office and the hotel downtown St. Paul where they were put up.

Up in Proctor, MN the DM&IR had a former Minneapolis/St. Paul streetcar that had been sold to the Duluth-Superior Traction Co., and upon shutdown of the DST streetcar system in 1939 was converted to diesel electric, which was used to shuttle crews between the southend shops and the North roundhouse. This was numbered W56. Whenever W56 was out of service a 2-8-0 or other suitable loco shuttled with an open platform wood coach, No. W55. This service lasted until at least 1959.

-John Stein aka Larry Doyle



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/14 08:10 by LarryDoyle.

"Carry-All" was the model name International Harvester used for their Suburban like truck. Could it be that's where the term came from?

Commercial taxi's (Yellow Cab's and others), were often used by the SP around Los Angeles area to get engineers
to and from various on duty points such as Tweedy, Dolores, City of Industry, Anaheim etc.
Just what I needed after a 12 hour day was a trip back to Taylor roundhouse in a wobbly-wheeled,
bare treaded, 300,000+ mileage crate with dubious brakes and a backseat area rife with mysterious bits
of flotsam and jetsam floating about. Ah yes, those were the days!

Charlie

Carryall is what I remember working on the UP in the 80s although by then we used vans driven by Renzenberger, a contractor. We referred to the vans as the "Berger Bus". But the Carryall name was still used by a lot of the old heads.

BTW, Carryall was a version of the Chevy Suburban sold in the 1950s. The International Harvester version was called a Travelall.

Terminal to terminal deadheading we did a lot of on the second unit.

On the Rock Island at Silvis we used "carryalls" or Ford Vans.
We hauled crews to/from the dorm and around the yard. Usually
over the road deadheads were by commercial taxi (Buddy Boy).
The clerk doing the driving was the "Call Boy".
Note: They changed the job title to callers when women started
working the jobs!
zr190

On the SP/PE, between the clerks driving us in a "carryall" and today's Renzenberger, we had the "Bummy ride". An ex trainmaster who left the company started a bussing company, and because of his last name we termed it the bummy.



V

SLOCONDR

Thank you everybody who posted. This is what I thought and kind of remember seeing.now we have just about every sort of Van, mini van, suburban and whatever the MYO is assigned to drive.

The vehicles have improved, but the drivers.......

Thomas G.

Now I need to find a picture of a Chevy Suburban from the late 1960's.

At East L.A. yard we called them buses although they used Chevy Suburbans. The term bus came from when passenger service ended, UP (at least out of L.A.) had buses and drivers left over and used them to shuttle crews around the L.A. Basin. I remember seeing the buses pulling up to the City Of Industry Depot with crews in the early 70s. Most of the old head UP employees still call them buses.-BMT

In Fresno during the '60's and early '70's, Chevy Suburbans were used around the yard and to ferry crews to and from trains being patched out on the mainline. For crews arriving Fresno as an "away" terminal, there was a funky, old Ford school bus that was operated between the yard and the crew's hotel downtown. It was painted a medium green and looked to be a refugee from "The Partridge Family". This particular service ended when the notorious "modules" were constructed adjacent to the yard office.

John Ford

In the West Oakland California yard we had 2 carryall drivers per shift on all three shifts. These were clerks.They ran crews mostly but did any errands that the chief yard clerk needed done such as pick up his lunch. This was at least until 1975 when I left for the GOB.

WKB

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In Salina KS on the UP there were several options---short train and caboose was close you walked. There were always several of Chevy Suburban-type Carryalls that the yard clerk would drive you to the far end of the yard, or a car toad would take you in his Jeep----both were painted in the school-bus-yellow color at that era (MoP had orange ones).
To another terminal was either via Greyhound Bus or any UP passenger train schedule.
In an emergency where a crew was needed quickly, the Trainmaster would drive the crew.
My Dad used me once---I hauled him and 4 other crew members from Salina to Junction City KS to protect the hot KCLA account if they took the passenger train earlier there would be a looooonnng wait and the bus schedule wouldn't fit well either, so I got them to the depot about 30" early, watched them leave from the platform then gave chase in Dad's Chrysler New Yorker the 42 miles back to Salina----I could occasionally see the caboose, but couldn't keep up with the short train and a couple of DD-35As------my Dad was waiting for me at the yard office when I got there.
Brian Stevens

Gyralite, I remember those "carryalls and clerks" when I hired out. Most of the drivers were old head clerks who had worked as baggage handlers at LAUPT in it's heyday I was told. When they shut all that down, they weren't qualified for some of the regular clerical jobs so they found a place for them driving the suburbans. Those carryall drivers had some high clerical seny. I'm sure we all have tales about Resenberger. I deadheaded back to West Colton from Yuma a couple of times on Greyhound that stopped everywhere. Felt like an all day trip. When you went down to Yuma as a fireman off the extra board on Amtrak you had to deadhead back. The engineer just stayed on the pool. By the time you got to Yuma, there were no more fast trains to deadhead West on.

Ray

In SF in 69-70, they had a old pickup truck that had a crew cab that hauled us around to Bayshore. The driver was a nice guy but way past his retirement. He would get on 101 coming in on the left and then had to make the next exit, 1/4 mi. to the right. He would just point the truck over to the exit and go. People were swerving, honking, locking their brakes. He didn't care.

In SLO they had an old 60 Chev Suburban that was falling apart. They finally got a new one in 71 but it was only around 6 mos. We were then graced with a van. What a piece of junk. the sliding door kept getting messed up sooooo, they welded the door shut, took out the right front seat and kept driving it. I was present, being driven by the clerk, when we were deadheaded to Surf to patch a train at 2:00AM. We made it about 2 miles down 101 when the engine seized and we coasted into the breakdown lane. The conductor called BI and they called us a taxi to go the rest of the way. The SP did have some sort of contract with the local cab company and they would use them as needed. The one thing the cab couldn't do was to take crews over Cuesta Grade. The cabs were made to run on LP Gas and before we would hit the grade they would switch it over to gasoline. It would make the hill at about 5 mph and sometimes couldn't make it at all.

It went on like that for a few years with the clerks driving a carryall. In LA, the SP lost their mail contract so a lot of mail clerks went back to their seniority at the yard office, being drivers. Talk about being scared. A 65-70 year old, thrown out on the freeway at the commute hour? Every once and awhile we would die at Santa Barb and they would drive a new crew up and take us on to LA. The only trouble was we couldn't keep the drivers awake, so one of us did the driving. Later found out the SP had a contract with a taxi outfit in Santa Barb so we would call them if we wanted to eat in route. LA also had a deal with Red Top Cab to drive is around the LA basin.

Roseville was okay. They had an inside and outside carryall. The outside would take you to eat and the inside would carry crews around the yard. Driven by clerks.

In Dunsmuir they had "Cadi-Cab" taxi. He would take an old limo, paint it and use it to haul crews. He picked me up one night over at Bieber after I took an Atk bypass over and the new crew was there from the south. It was snowing hard and the roads were not plowed much. He took off for Mt. Shasta, no chains. We slipped and slid all the way over. I had him drop me at Mt. Shasta, called my wife to come and get me and tied up by phone. The guy was nuts. He had an old Checker cab that he was going to use to haul crews but could not get the rear warm at all. We refused to ride in it so he want back to the limos. They still had

K.Falls still had a carry all when we were in the mods and they would take you to eat. In Portland the used "Radio Cab" to haul you around and to take crews to Eugene if need be.

I have heard that the contract people they hire now don't stay long and the pay is the pits.

My first deadhead was in 1969 from SF to San Jose for a train to Wat.Jct. as the fireman on a red tag veto. It was a Yellow Cab and the bill when we got to SJ was almost $100.00. I couldn't believe it. We were only making $26 to $32 a day on a goat or hostling.

I finally got used to the SP throwing money away on simple matters and they would screw their socks on to get 5" TD back.

Nudge

When I worked for Santa Fe in San Bernardino as 2nd trick (swing shift) radio tech in 1969-70, we had a female "crew caller" who would pick up train crew members where needed. Back in the old day, many a young fellow got his start in railroading as a "call boy", whose job it was to go around to the rooming houses and other dwelling places near the yard or terminal and rouse the workers as needed. No one would ever refer to our San Berdoo crew caller as a "call girl". She drove a rather decrepit International Carryall (might have been a Travelall) which was their version of a Chevy Suburban. Since I was in the radio shop, I'd hear her call in when her rig conked out.