Railroaders' Nostalgia > Ouch that hurt........#2.

Here is my ouch......#2 story. It happen on the Strong City branch, too. In fact, it was about two weeks after I did my stupid stunt, hitting the switch target.

We had left Abilene heading towards Concordia, Kansas. We had train orders to pick up at Talmage, which is the first station north of Abilene. We did not have any cars for Talmage. We were not stopping. We had a GP7 on the point. I got down on the bottom steps so I could get the train orders. I did not know that this would happen. We were almost to the point, that I had my arm out, so I could grab the orders from the Y-shape hoop. Just as we got where the agent was standing. He sneezed, this cause him to knock down the hoop on my arm. Now, that stung just a bit!!!!!!! He hollered at me, that he was sorry. I waved back at him that I was fine.

We had to pick up some cars the next day coming through Talmage. He told me that he was sorry that he whack my arm with the hoop. I told him, no problem.

This time my ouch.....#2 was not my fault. He was very friendly the rest of the summer that I was on this job.

Gary A. Rich
Aurora, CO



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/29/14 19:01 by waycar_rider.

I can remember a story like that at King City. They used to run a 1st and 2nd LA down the coast. The powers to be thought they could save money by not filling them at Wat.Jct. and had the fill cars sent down on the east peddler to set out on the house track at San Ardo. The peddler would drop the bills off at King City to be picked up by the trains that had to pick up the cars. It was a pain in the ass, almost having to stop to pick up the bills, etc., in train order territory where you could be running out of time on a westbound train. The dispatcher complained to the officer that set this up about the delays.

Well the Stanford grad, thought he had the answer. We had orders to pick up so he had the operator tie the bills to a train order forks that were mounted on a pick up stand. When you caught the orders, the rods would spring back when you pulled the string off the clips. The delivery post and King City was 60 mph. Well this operator used two strings because because of the amount of the bills.

Well, the hoghead was Frank Jackson. He put his arm out to catch the orders at 60 and bang, everything exploded in what you would call, a snow storm of white way bills. They were scattered from the depot almost all the way to Welby. He had to stop in order to get the orders that went somewhere with the bills so the dispatcher finally told them to run the pick up. I saw Frank's arm and it was really black & blue where the strings got him.

The next day, "someone" put in a mail box at the east house track switch. It had a switch lock on it. Now they put the bills in the mail box by the train that was making the set out and picked up by the train making the pick up.

It didn't last very long and they tried something else. I think the mail box may still be there, unless the grad had another idea for it.

Nudge

Gotta love those college boys.