Railroaders' Nostalgia > Handing on - the rookie student

I was working 3d trick Centralia (WA - BN) in 1977. I was there for a month for the vacation of the 3d tricker. Centralia was a hot train order job. There was effectively a permanent 19 (receive orders on the fly) board both directions. The line was 2 track CTC at Centralia. from Wabash, 4.5 miles north of Centralia, the line was double track ABS to Seattle. UP and BN each had a dark train order branch between Centralia and Hoquiam, out on the Pacific coast. The BN Centralia North dispatcher handled between Wabash and Seattle. The BN Centralia South dispatcher handled between Wabash and Vancouver (WA). The BN Mountain dispatcher handled Centralia - Hoquaim (as well as Auburn - Ellensburg and some other branch lines). The UP dispatcher handled the UP Centralia - Hoquaim line. Every northward train got the Centralia North slow orders and a clearance. Every southward train got the Centralia South slows and a clearance at Centralia. Of course, all of the branch trains got orders and a clearance at Centralia. There was also a lot of telegraph (teletype) traffic, all of which had to be typed on a hectograph master, duplicated, and distributed to the various mailboxes (trainmaster, roadmaster, agent, etc.). The dispatchers had a lot of work messages for trains (pick up here, switch there, leave an engine, get an engine, etc.). When nothing else was happening, there was making more copies of slow orders and repeating them to the dispatchers. It was a hot job.

There was a train order stand for Main 2 (the far track). Main 1 (the close track) had no train order stand; it was hand on at 40-50 mph. There was a short reverse curve just north of the station. From the time that a southward train was on tangent where the operator and engineer could really see each other until the engine was going by was about 2 seconds.

The guy in charge of operators (let's call him L) didn't particularly care for operators (some stories in that) and really didn't like dispatchers. That's pretty much why I lived in Ferndale and was working in Centralia, 182 miles from home, and an extra man living in Centralia was working a vacancy in Bellingham, 10 miles from my house.

L called one day to tell me he was sending me a student. I told him it was a hot job and I wouldn't have time to deal with a rookie. He assured me that this student had main line experience and only had to learn the job. OK fine.

The next night, a very young woman, my student, showed up at transfer time. We took the transfer and I started her on copying slows. I had a couple of trains fixed already and went out to hang one on Main 2 and hand on on Main 1. I came back and she was repeating a slow. So far, so good. I had her doing some message work and handled the dispatcher phones with a couple of additional clearances. I got the orders and clearances together and another dispatcher rang. I handed the student the orders to string up in hoops. I was in the middle of copying another when a south man was shining. I said to the student "You've handed on orders, right?"

"Oh yes, quite a bit."

"OK hand on this one while I copy."

She took the hoops and went out the door behind me.

As I was copying, I watched out the window as she walked to the edge of the platform and stepped one foot off into the track at the edge of the ties. The south man was coming through the reverse curve, blowing for the Maple Street crossing at the north end of the platform. I said "BK CN" (break - stop sending, Centralia) as I pulled the headset off and bolted for the door. I ran across the platform, grabbed the student by the arm with one hand, yanking her away from the track, and grabbing the hoop out of her other hand and sticking it into the air hopefully high enough for the engineer to reach it. In a split second a Very Big yellow [UP] engine flashed by in front of me. The engineer managed to get the orders. Two toots after the engine went by told me all was good. My student was regaining her balance about five feet away, looking a combination of puzzled and scared. I took the other hoop from her and handed up to the UP caboose.

When the train was by, I said in a mildly agitated tone of voice "I thought you knew how to do this! You're supposed to be experienced!" The student was still traumatized and almost speechless.

"I worked in Cheney. I gave orders to the train every day."

"The train?" It turns out that although Cheney was on the main line, the dispatchers never stuck out anything for main line trains. There was a local to Spokane every day.

"I stood like that and Charlie would stop the engine along side me and get the orders."

We walked back to the telegraph office. I put the cans (headset on) stepped on the pedal and said "CN go ahead ...(whatever the last word that I copied was). I finished copying and repeating. The dispatcher made it complete. I OSed the UP. There was a free moment.

"OK, tell me all about what you have done and where."

"Well, Cheney is the only place. I copied the order for the train (Eng 0000 run extra Cheney to begin CTC Marshall...the same one every day). I walked the yard and made a list for the train and gave the conductor the bills and paperwork. That's about it."

Needless to say, I kept my student on a short lead the rest of the night. Within an hour or so, she was completely overwhelmed. I took it slow and only showed her a few things as she could handle them. We had a couple of lessons on how to hand on to a 40 mph train, but I wasn't about to leave her alone to do it.

In the morning, at promptly 7am, when L came to work at King Street Station (Seattle...WA), I called. It was a one-sided conversation. Never piss off a train dispatcher and surely don't piss off the chief. I wasn't one on BN yet (on the extra board but hadn't worked my first pay trip yet), but I had been both. After melting the phone and hanging up on the boss, I went back to the hotel.

That night I went to work. There was no student. There was a wire addressed to me and to the student. She was sent to another branch line station somewhere.

TAW

I was freight agent at Charles Town, WVa. and had a clerk-operator with 30+ years seniority. We were sent a student to learn the clerk-opr. job. There were no orders involved, but there was mail or messages for the head end. We gave the student the job of handing on. He said "where should I stand" and we said "stand between the rails."
The train moved slowly through town. There was a street crossing at every street. Hearing some extra whistling, we looked out the window, and sure enough, he was standing between the rails.
A quick dash for the door got him in the clear.
He did not last long as a student. Don't think he ever worked on his own.

And you pulled him out from the middle of the rails why ? ? ? ?

Because there would have been an awful lot of paperwork!

Interesting story. Brings back memories.

When I was a train order operator at Santa Fe I always wanted to protect a temporary assignment they put up in the cool months every year on the Needles Sub. Back then it was Rule 251 Current of Traffic ABS territory. They would do track work and, with "single tracking", had a need for two operators at both extremes of the work site, working out of wayside phone booths, to issue numbered clearance cards to trains running past the segment of track that was out of service account maintenance.

The jobs were high seniority because, in addition to the wages of the job, they paid mileage from Barstow or Needles. I never had enough seniority to catch one of those jobs, but a friend of mine did and I went out there and photo-documented his adventure. He was staying at some dump of a motel in Amboy which has long since closed. Buster Burris, the desert rat who owned and operated Amboy, was alive back then and on the scene. I could write volumes just about HIM!

BTW, at Santa Fe we used to call it "handing UP orders," because, with the difference in height between you and the guy in the cab, that's exactly what you were doing.

Before reading this I had never heard "handing on" orders. Like on the ATSF, on the UP we always said "handing up" orders.

Great story.

Best regards,

Rob L.

It's great to read all of these stories, and the various local nomenclature for handing UP, or ON orders. Where I work, we called it HOOPING up orders...that's in Indiana and Ohio's former Conrail territories...just to muddy the waters a bit!
:)

I, too, called it Handing Up. I never worked a job that had an order stand. Being 5'6" I had to "Hand up" as far as I could reach. Just remembered a dispatcher who had been ringing for an operator, and when he answered and asked where he had been, he said "down on orders, handing up the ground"

It was handing UP orders on the RI as well.
As long as I had a good place to stand, it never bothered me no matter
how fast the train was moving. I generally worked 3rd trick and some
of the engineers would shut their headlight off (thinking it would make it
easier for me to see). I preferred them leave it on bright.
zr190

While in High School and after, a group of us railfans used to hang out at a B&O tower on the east side of Cincinnati OH on the Ohio Division. With the shrinking of manned stations and depots, trains from Cincinnati to Columbus (via Midland City OH) would pick up clearance cards and orders at this last manned tower before proceeding East about 35 miles to head off the main line to Columbus.

One of the problems with this was that the 'Northeasterner' (later #104) would always have pulpwood racks just ahead of the caboose. I'm sure everyone has seen pulpwood cars with their uneven ends hanging past the sides of the cars, and worse untrimmed branches and sometimes brush sticking out.

These cars were quickly dubbed 'order snaggers' by the crews, and the train would notify the operator that they had some in the train make-up.

This tower had East and West bound order stands with the usual flood light at the top of the mast, but to deliver to the Eastbound trains, you had to cross the tracks to get on the 'wrong' side (away from the tower) of the track.

One night, after hanging around for months and observing the proceedings, I offered to the op "I'll hand them up for you". He agreed, and I got a quick course on how to tie order strings with slip knots ("Leave about this much tail on the strings" he said, indicating the length with a thumb on an unlit cigarette), and stringing them with the clip facing away from the oncoming train. He also showed how to fold the orders over on themselves in a Vee to prevent the wind from the train from 'windmilling' them off the fork.

The head end was the easy part, as you could place the first set of orders in the fork for them in the high position, leaving you holding the fork for the rear end.

I'd been through this before, but like the rookie in the original post, the hand-ups were to a slow moving yard/local crew; not too much drama.

This tower was located at the foot of a 4-mile grade of up to 2.0% to climb out of the Ohio Valley. Trains leaving Cincinnati would be getting a run for it when heading East.

I'm sure the old heads on here know, but for the uninitiated, the technique was to stand broad side to the oncoming train and hold the fork handle at arms length, then touch the lower fork to the end of the ties. You would then raise the fork up to the perceived level of where the guy's arm would be. You also held the fork with a relaxed grip in a cupped hand, without your thumb around the fork handle, in case the clip didn't release the knot the guy would end up with the fork. They would pull the order out and throw the fork back on the ground (like the older 'hoop' type delivery where they deliberately took the whole hoop, unclipped the paperwork and threw the hoop to the ground).

You also held the fork with a slight angle in the direction of travel of the train so you didn't 'impale' the order receiver if he made a bad grab.

So on this night, the Northeastern was on the bell and I scrambled down the steps to put the orders in the stand and hold the fork for the rear end. On the long tangent here, you could see 'em coming for about 1.5 miles. Standing in the pool of light from the flood light to be clearly seen, the Eastbound bore down and about 1/2 mile away snapped his headlight to Dim.

There's nothing quite like standing next to the track when a train is bearing down on you at 40-45 MPH with a dim headlight and numberboards. I seemed to notice every detail, of the front of the train, the ever-louder rumble, the hogger leaning down a little with an extended arm, the sproing of the spring arms of the fork flying apart, and some obscured-by-sound yell from the head man. The turbo whine of the lead GP40, another, another, then the babbling noise of a trailing GP38; all wide open.

A seemingly endless string of cars flying by, with different smells, and sounds. A tank car with that 'someone-putting-an-aluminum-extension-ladder-away' rattling sound that some make. Of course, this was right by a diamond too, so the noise of different wheelbase cars clattering over the diamond lended a sense of urgency.

These guys were usually 80-100 cars long and it seemed endless. You could see the green light of the marker on the 'standard' B&O Chessie bay-window caboose, and you knew that your time was getting close. The green marker looms up out of the dark, and right in front of the rear end is your nemesis...a loaded pulpwood car with flailing twigs, branches and leaves fanned by the progress of the train.

Right at the end of the bulkhead flat, you move your arm to the pre-programmed position just as the leading steps of the caboose go by. It seems you have about 100 milliseconds to get the fork in position, and you look up and see the Con with a yellow Chessie baseball cap on casually reaching out the window. You feel a quick pluck at the end of your fork, spin around to see the order twine going in the window and watch the red markers trail off into the night.

Phew! After watching for a minute, you scurry up the steps and hang the fork back on the wall. "He get 'em?" the op asks.

"Yep!", you say and file the experience away for a lifetime.

There is some seriously good writers on this site.
Not only telling us great RR history and folklore, but writing and story telling equal to any.
Thanks, guys.

railstiesballast Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There is some seriously good writers on this
> site.
> Not only telling us great RR history and folklore,
> but writing and story telling equal to any.
> Thanks, guys.


So how about it, Mike. Continue your tales?

Thanks to everyone contributing stories to this thread. penncentral74, I was "by your side" all the way.

When I was a student engineer on the BN we had to get orders westbound (to Lincoln) at Napier when we left CTC (St. Joe to Napier) and entered ABS. It was in the middle of the night and my first time to hang out there and get them. Sure enough my hand hit the fork and the orders sprang off into the wind. I brought the train to a stop and walked back toward the office. Lo and behold there were the orders in the string on the ballast as they were sucked along with the train.

Kennard Britton
Bedford, TX

I'm with railstiesballast...excellent story telling by penncentral 74. I've never "hooped up" orders as a RR employee or as a helper, but I really appreciate the experience and I feel all of the excitement as I read this in my easy chair. Great job and please consider writing more on TO!

Steve West
Fort Wayne, IN