Railroaders' Nostalgia > MILW Bellingham - the reality

Surprise! The little break in that the agent gave me was bogus...except the don't call him part.

Yard crews - the day job got a quit. Of course they did. The agent and both clerks were out of there at 5p like the place was on fire. The 5p job...well...12 every day. Lists were wrong. If the day job pulled any weighers, we weighed them. They were on the ground a lot. There were two reasons. The railroad was falling apart under them and they were wrecking stuff:

Date: 11/28/09 21:40
Re: "How are we going to explain this?"
<http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2066575,2066629#msg-2066629&gt;

I quit marking up the lists as the crew was switching because it got to be too exciting. Picture the poles in the story in the link kicked against a car of chlorine, or propane, or hydrochloric acid...yup, just about every night. One night they uh...forgot, I guess one might say, that they hadn't pulled the AmFab (GP) paper warehouse before spotting it. The field man was at the end of the cut in the building, ready to ride it out and line back. The rest of the crew got on a track of AmFab cars in the yard and shoved them from the yard to AmFab. Apparently they thought the field man was back there to watch the shove. They shoved the cars in the warehouse through the bumping post, off the track, and through the wall of the building...with the field man aboard.

There was a mechanical foreman who was not happy there but he couldn't go back to the tools because his seniority was Deer Lodge, which had been closed. He was trapped in management at Bellingham forever. There was one carman. There was a section foreman and one gandy. The section foreman had a pickup truck, the only company vehicle in Bellingham. The signal maintainer (for the crossing signals) was in Tacoma.

Frequently, the switch crew would call me long before I was due to go on duty to tell me that they were on the ground somewhere. I'd drive in my pickup truck to wherever they were, pick up the crew, and go searching for whatever they needed - blocking, frogs, cables, chains, etc. Sometimes we repeated the process two or three times a night. BN got rid of their scrap by throwing it off of the bridge over the MILW and the adjacent road. Sometimes I'd go there with the switch crew and maybe the gandy to rummage through the scrap for what we needed.

If they weren't calling before 7p for being on the ground, they were calling me before 7p because their lists were wrong and they had cars they didn't know what to do with.

Then there was the local. The only way to know where they were was to use the packset and listen for them:

<http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,2652938,2652938#msg-2652938&gt;

Not long before, there was the Sumas Local (Bellingham - Sumas - Lynden - Bellingham) and the OPC rock train (Bellingham - Limestone - Bellinhgham). The train crews milked them into oblivion - two jobs that should have been done in 8 hours each were out there for 12 hours or more every day. Management consolidated the two jobs. Now it was legitimate when they didn't make it back, which happened a lot.

There is a lot more here:
Date: 03/01/09 11:14
Re: Brush Covered BN Branch Northeast From Bellingham,
<http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1885110,1885260#msg-1885260&gt;

In addition, I wound up helping the carman a lot. Sometimes I needed to hold patches up on the ore cars while he tacked them. The side sheets on a lot of the cars were rusted through or punctured by machinery when OPC attempted to move them. Sometimes I'd have to help him bring tools down to the yard.

The agent at Lynden was generally LFVC (A waybilling term meaning Loaded to Full Visible Capacity to denote that the car was loaded to maximum volume and less than the load limit weight - that's not exactly what I mean when applying that term here). He was responsible for the reefers shipped from the packing plant being fueled, running, and at the right temperature. That was way too much work. He typically came in, marked up some lists and left them for the crew, and headed for some refreshment. Since I was responsible for the condition of reefers leaving Bellingham, I had to restart a lot of reefers and note high temperatures on a lot of bills. One reefer of theoretically frozen crab came in at 50 degrees. I couldn't get the engine started. It had obviously not been started at all. Sometimes the carman would help me get reefers started. He helped with this one. We worked on it for about 30 minutes and used a can of ether. Now what? The car was in the train, the crew was called, and the car had to go. I endorsed the bill
ARRIVED BELLINGHAM WA 50 DEG HAD BEEN THAT WAY FOR HOURS HAVE SET TEMPERATURE AS LOW AS POSSIBLE TO FREEZE AND MAYBE REDUCE THE SMELL WHEN YOU OPEN THE CAR

Bellingham was a two shift office by Hours of Service law definition. That meant that I was limited to 9 hours on duty in any 24 hour period. You can see here and in the link above, I put in a lot more than 9 hours every day. How was that done? Well...

The Hours of Service clock for an operator stopped if there was one hour off duty (it's four for train and engine). Operators got a two hour minimum for being called to service outside of assigned hours. Put those together and you get
5p - 501p Deliver switch engine list
7p - 3a assigned hours
4a - 401a Deliver switch engine list
6a - 601a Transport crew
8a - 801a Train orders
10a - 1001a Train departure report

There it is - 17 hours...uh....mmmm...8 hours 5 minutes. I wasn't the only one. I learned how to do this on the MILW because it was expected. This went on 5 days a week. Saturday, I wound up often not being able to fit the work into the allowed two hours. Nobody seemed to have a problem with hours during the week (as long as it kept me from calling the agent - just fine), but Saturday needed to be only two hours. I made up for it by a few extra calls on some weekday:

5p - 501p Deliver switch engine list
6p - 601p Crew transport
701p - 3a assigned hours
4a - 401a Deliver switch engine list
501a - 502a List tracks
602a - 603a Transport crew
703a - 704a Fix lists for bad orders
804a - 805a Train orders
10a - 1001a Train departure report

That example is 24 uh...legal hours in one night. I put in a lot of timeslips like that too. They were approved, no questions asked. However, this figures importantly in the next segment.

Of course, if I was out braking on the local or a dogcatch, it was on the train crew timeslip. The train crew timeslip did not reflect my operator work and my operator timeslip did not reflect my train service work. What FRA man is going to compare train service timeslips to operator timeslips for violations?

How about the switching settlements, interchange, and demurrage I was supposed to have plenty of time to catch up and keep current?

Well, the interchange was easy. I had that caught up pretty quickly - go to the binders of lists and get the to and from lists for the night switch job. Switching settlements were pretty much the same but involving more research. That took a while - use the finished interchange reports to find the loads from BN with delivery to AmFab, the team track, the pole yard, etc. From there go to the switch lists for that day...or the day after...or the day after that, and find out when they were spotted (reverse that for loads pulled). It took a couple of months, but I got all of the switching settlements up to date. Hooray, we were actually going to get paid for handling the BN cars.

Then there was demurrage. Demurrage is supposed to be based on the 7am yard check. The agent made the 7am yard check. The clerk made the switch lists - pull, spot, yard tracks - for the switch job. They didn't match. I discovered that in researching switching settlement statements. The 7am yard check showed cars in and out of most industries - zip, zip, zip. Most industries had no demurrage charges. The clerk's switch lists had a different story. Cars were sitting in the yard instead of being spotted, and they were not being constructively placed (notice to the consignee or shipper that the car is available) until the consignee/shipper was ready for them. I was not about to do fake demurrage reports and not make bills for the cars being held, so I started over on 7 months of switch lists. Then I discovered cars moving without being listed up to move. That meant looking for them in the next day's lists. It took a long time. Actually, it was not caught up by the time I quit the MILW.

Periodically, Mt. Baker Plywood would attempt an extra switch using their forklift. Periodically, the cars would get away and go over the derail at the main line switch. Not a word would be said about it. One morning, I told the agent that there was a brand new box car on the ground at Mt Baker. It still had the new car smell. It was on its first revenue trip. It had forklift holes through the sides and through the door, which was equipped with a wheel operated gear and rack arrangement for opening the door...virtually no effort required. He wanted to know why I would bother him with it. There are derailed cars all the time. I told him it was a new car on its first revenue trip and there was no reason to tear it up. He responded that Mt. Baker is a good customer and he didn't want to upset them.

It was going to be a very long year.

After I quit, I decided to apply for unemployment from Railroad Retirement Board (RRB). I went to talk to the RRB guy and he told me what I knew - you can't collect unemployment if you quit. He asked why I expected any different. I told him
because I worked for the Milwaukee. He approved the unemployment claim.

TAW

Nearly unbelievable. When I joined a RR in '91 there were lots of stories of crazy stuff but most of the players had either left or reformed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/14 06:23 by RRTom.

Excellent.

Wonder how many other employees were putting in this kind of effort to keep the railroad alive while middle management was not there, other employees were trashing it, and top management was privately trying to get rid of it.

Best regards,

Rob L.

I'm suspecting that the main reason for this "Chinese Fire Drill"
operation was the fact that the principal Milwaukee offices were
in Chicago. I'm wondering how many, if any, times senior officials
of the road showed up on the west end while TAW was employed there.
I'm taking the "under" on one.

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

ntharalson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm suspecting that the main reason for this
> "Chinese Fire Drill"
> operation was the fact that the principal
> Milwaukee offices were
> in Chicago. I'm wondering how many, if any, times
> senior officials
> of the road showed up on the west end while TAW
> was employed there.
> I'm taking the "under" on one.
>
> Nick Tharalson,
> Marion, IA


Nick, I don't know if you (or any of the other readers) have seen this but here is a link that is relevant to the subject at hand. "TAW" might recognize some of the initials on the TO's contained in various on-line chapters:

http://www.mrcd.org/index.html


Allen



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/14 09:00 by bradleymckay.

The stories on mrcd website are interesting but get into a sad spiral at some point. The story about the auto-rack on the Hoquiam branch is pretty funny though. Great information for the Seattle to Portland branches, actually almost the only info available.

I found a few of the missing photos on TrainWeb, interesting perspective of the day. I'd really like to see the photos added or the stories continued. On a previous thread the writer was apparently in the Ballard area and had made some of his Videos available on DVD.

> -----
>
>
> Nick, I don't know if you (or any of the other
> readers) have seen this but here is a link that is
> relevant to the subject at hand. "TAW" might
> recognize some of the initials on the TO's
> contained in various on-line chapters:
>
> http://www.mrcd.org/index.html
>
>
> Allen

TCnR Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The stories on mrcd website are interesting but
> get into a sad spiral at some point.

This was true for most Lines West employees. They watched as the great potential of the railroad was pathetically pissed away. Almost all became pretty cynical.

> On a previous thread the writer was
> apparently in the Ballard area and had made some
> of his Videos available on DVD.

John Crosby runs a coffee shop right across the street from the Ballard Canal. Stop in some time for a dose of Milwaukee Road tales.

Best regards,

Rob L.

I have one of Johns CD's I bought about 6 years ago. I had a niece who was going to Seattle Pacific
at the time. One day I found out where John was and picked up the CD and spent another hour
talking with John after reading a lot of his online postings. Just a great guy with some terrific tales.

Larry Dodgion
Wilsonville, OR

truxtrax Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have one of Johns CD's I bought about 6 years
> ago. I had a niece who was going to Seattle
> Pacific
> at the time. One day I found out where John was
> and picked up the CD and spent another hour
> talking with John after reading a lot of his
> online postings. Just a great guy with some
> terrific tales.

Good coffee too.

rob_l Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> TCnR Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > The stories on mrcd website are interesting but
> > get into a sad spiral at some point.
>
> This was true for most Lines West employees.

A former MILW Seattle roadmaster told me that he would prepare a budget for $1 million of annual work and get $20,000. He didn't stick around either.