Railroaders' Nostalgia > Fifty-Feet

As I had mentioned before about working in the Amtrak Coach Yard at West Oakland I had this Conductor who was forced assigned, he wasn't a happy camper dragging each shift 10-12hrs long when it didn't need to go down like that. Eventually myself and one of the other Trainmen who is now an engineer coined a nick name for him that he hated, that being "Conductor Bob", it was mostly the fact of being called "Bob" that he hated the most. He was forever questioning my car counts when we worked together regularly, if I was a move via the radio I would day back up one and a half cars, he would pipe on the radio "I dunno, I think it's two" and I would tell him "come do the move yourself if I'm wrong"........silence. So this would go on night after night, our engineer never questioned me, we had a policy of referring to the car counts based on what we were handling, if they were coaches than they were 85', if Amtrak freight cars 50' on average though there were some that were 60'. One night ole "Conductor Bob" decides he is going to sit up in the cab with the Engineer Aaron Edson, who questioned how come he wasn't on the ground helping, Bob's reply was "he can handle it and I want to see about these car counts of his". Aaron replied that "Frank's car counts are pretty much on the money", and "Conductor Bob says we shall see". So we (well I) had to switch cars between the fume track, the two stub tracks and the house track behind the diesel house. Everything was going well, power was #5's power of P42DC's, on the final move I said back 'em up 50' to a safety stop, and according to Aaron this is when "Conductor Bob" set the distance counter on the P42 as he said "no way is that fifty feet." I initiate the movement via packset due to line of sight restrictions, "Coach yard, bring 'em back 50', yard easy, easy and that will do and coach yard lets ease 'em back into a hook, and that'll do". Since they were not going on a train or we were switching them once again there was no need to stretch, so Aaron says to Conductor Bob "How far......Forty-Nine Feet" and "Aaron said I told you his counts were good".

From that day on Ole' Conductor Bob after questioning me never did once again when it came to distances or car counts, was a rather comical story when they both told me. And I tell the story not to sound arrogant or to dump on someone, rather it was just one of those nights of two new trainmen working with each other still feeling one another out and some of the antics that go a long in the process.

Enjoy,

FJC



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/05/14 00:32 by fjc.

Been there, done that. Except my counts aren't as good, so we won't talk about that.

:)

Just kidding

Posted from Android

Countin' those "rubber cars".

On the NSSR we use 80' cars, since we work primarily with passenger equipment.

Our neighbor in Two Harbors is the CN, ex DMIR, where 24' ore cars are used.

I'd say that's about the extremes.

In any case, 24', 40', 50', 60', or 80' - consistency is important.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/14 17:22 by LarryDoyle.

Rubber cars. When I was on freight, we had this one conductor: "Back 'em up 50 cars to a joint" followed by "thirty cars", "25 cars", "15 cars", "10 cars", "20 cars", "ten cars", then "5 cars", followed shortly with "that'll do". Whenver the count fell below about 10 years, I would slow down to about 4 mph so if they were short cars, the impact wouldn't be too great.

EtoinShrdlu Wrote:
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> Whenever the count fell below about 10 years, I would slow down
> to about 4 mph so if they were short cars, the impact wouldn't be too great.

I know what you meant to say but some times it does seem like years!

When some hoghead starts to give me crap about my car counts, I give them 30-foot car lengths. They back off pretty quickly after a couple panic stops and rough joints. ;-)

trainjunkie Wrote:
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> When some hoghead starts to give me crap about my
> car counts, I give them 30-foot car lengths. They
> back off pretty quickly after a couple panic stops
> and rough joints. ;-)

I just give him what he asks for - whether he means it or not.

-John

I don't know how the rest of the railroad world is, but where I work, car counts are only to be given in 50' lengths according to the rulebook. In reality, yes, most conductors I work with just use the length of whatever car they are standing next to-and some will tell me "one long car to a joint" which means an autorack length or something similar. Individual results may vary.

Well, we all have our fetishes. The SP switchmen that I worked with did not use car counts, but rather a succession of "easy" signs. Car counts were for trainmen.

At any rate, given that Conductor Bob was forced assigned, thus of little seniority, he was lucky that he did not run into an old head engineer, who would have simply told him to "shut the f*** up, get off my engine and try to do your f*** job, if you are f***ing capable of it." Yes, this is technically a violation of the Amtrak Standards of Excellence (which also prohibits walking down a hallway with your hands in your pockets - true!), but it sure worked for me on similar occasions (also appropriate for throwing trainmen out of your cab car). One guy was so clueless that he turned me in to the trainmaster,Charley Miller, who later told me that his response was "Get out of my f***ing office and do your f***ing job. Charley had a gift for words.

-E.O.

>I know what you meant to say but some times it does seem like years!

The more years you have, the smaller the keys get.

Frank! I thought that the initials ringed familiar.

How ya doin', buddy?

-E.O.

While 50 foot lengths is considered 1 car on my road their were a few characters who used different terms. My favorite of all time was "vertebrae" when switching intermixed equipment. I didn't understand it the first time until my conductor told me we were switching spine intermodal cars like single axle TTOX cars and 5 platform TTOX cars etc. Each "vertebra" was a platformthought this was an excellent descriptor and obviously others did too as the term became pretty popular. Just watching an empty intermodal train now makes me think of a really long spinal column twisting and turning though the curves.

Newbies often have a hard time estimating distances. Our road uses 80 foot carlengths, as I said above. I tell 'em to look at the rails, counting the joints. Each rail is generally 39', so two rails is one carlength.

Wouldn't work with welded rail though.

-John

> Our road uses 80 foot carlengths, as I said above. I tell 'em to look at the rails, counting the joints. Each rail is generally 39', so two rails is one carlength.

We used to talk in terms of "long ones" and "short ones" when I worked freight years ago. I can see how multiple draw-bar cars would complicate this. So you present-day rails just speak in terms of 40' boxcar-lengths, I guess? How retro!

-E.O.

I work with both passenger and freight equipment. We use car lengths expressed either as 50-foot lengths, and "long cars" or passenger cars as 90-foot cars. If handling coaches, long cars are implied but we still call them out as "coaches",as in "5 coaches to a stop".

Auto's are "racks" everything else is cars

Posted from Mobile Safari

I'm alive and well my friend, my lower back is still screwed up, but that's par for the course.

Glad to see you on here, I don't frequent as much so this reply is a couple of weeks late.

I trust retirement is treating you well?

hogheaded Wrote:
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> Frank! I thought that the initials ringed
> familiar.
>
> How ya doin', buddy?
>
> -E.O.

I was taught that you go with the cars your working with, in our case we were switching most of the time Superliners and Amtrak California cars, all about 85' long. So our car counts were based on that, but we were also handling the freight at the time and we had 50' and 60' freight cars, along with the road railers and we all would come to the agreement on the crew (especially a regular crew) that when handling said cars 1 car was 50' for the most part.

In this case I said 50' because it really was 50', that's where Conductor Bob doubting me about my distances using the distance counter in the cab came into play, and the engineer said that my counts were good, and I was only off by 1', lol.

When I would switch with day or night signals, I would just keep cutting the speed down by giving an easy each time until we made a hook, but with the radio we'd go car counts and distance if it was shorter than the normal count.

I shared the story not to dump on Conductor Bob, were good friends, rather because I thought it was rather comical that night it happened and even now 15 years later.

DrLoco Wrote:
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> I don't know how the rest of the railroad world
> is, but where I work, car counts are only to be
> given in 50' lengths according to the rulebook.
> In reality, yes, most conductors I work with just
> use the length of whatever car they are standing
> next to-and some will tell me "one long car to a
> joint" which means an autorack length or something
> similar. Individual results may vary.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/05/14 00:28 by fjc.