Railroaders' Nostalgia > the waiting game...

…take a number, son!

You railroaders out there with any amount of road service at all will know right off what this image is all about. You’ve gone across your own railroad without a hitch. But now you’re at the mercy of a ‘host’ RR to let you make your next move. This is a regular occurrence that happens daily all over the country in any number of scenarios.* But the bottom line is you have no choice but to just sit still until the other guys say you can “make your move” over their trackage. 2 radio communications you DON’T want to hear in this situation: “I’ll get back to you” & “How much time do you have left to work?”...

This was the scene yesterday (March 3rd): The K&O boys have made the transit over their (ex-Mop) branch down to Newton, KS. Normal procedure is to yard their train in BNSF’s Sand Creek Yard, then get on another train already made up for a return up to McPherson, KS. But sometimes getting in & out of ‘the Creek’ can be a frustrating experience. They actually have a lot shorter train than normal here, and could easily be thinking the BNSF boys are just messin’ with them. But what they can’t see down on the BNSF main line is the 3 eastbound trains in fairly close proximity. And totally unknown to them is an incredibly late Amtrak Southwest Chief is due within the hour.

1. K&O 3906 waits at 12th Street in Newton, KS on March 3, 2015.

Thanks for being patient!
Lance Garrels
santafe199

*I’ve no doubt many of you rails out there have you own (horror) stories about waiting to make a move over some foreign RR…



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/15 14:58 by santafe199.

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With apologies to Bob Hope, "Thanks for the memories". It's funny that the same thing happens not only in major terminals, but
in the smaller terminals as well. My favorite was delivering to the Santa Fe in KC. Everyone says the Santa Fe kept up dignity
and class service on their passenger trains in their final days. They also had class in their freight operations. AND, they had
a sense of humor.
I remember delivering loaded coal trains for Tecumseh/Lawrence, KS to the Santa Fe's Argentine yard in KC. We would pull up to 10th
St. All red. Call the Santa Fe Yard Dispatcher. "UP CMBTL at 10th St. We're dead in two hours". Response, Loud laughter
coming back on the radio. "Pull up to AY and we'll take over".
Another time, when they actually let us in the yard, as we were pulling into Track R-27, (Receiving Track), I mentioned to the
Yard Dispatcher that she might want to tell the outbound crew that this train has a "Kicker". ((Dynamiter: the train goes into
Emergency every time you set the air.) Silence. Then a yard crew comes on the radio: "Do you know what a Kicker is?" The Yard
dispatcher came right back. "Yeah Benson, I know what a Go$%# Da$%@ Kicker is". Lots of laughter on the radio.
Santa Fe. Class ALL THE WAY.

Great shot by the way.

Bob Helling
PRose

I was working a track rights job over the b.n.s.f. from Dalhart Tx. Childress Tx. and the Rio Grande men brought us a coal load out west elk down thru Pueblo to Dalhart and we got on the train and I rang up the b.n.s.f. ds. and told her we were ready to go could we get a warrant to leave she asked if I had ever heard of the big picture before and I told her I had and she told me we were not in it turned out she was right.

I was working for Uncle Pete back in the day, before the SP merger, and we got screwed by Santa Fe on a regular basis between West Riverside and Daggett. But I have to say that UP was their own worst enemy on this subdivision. The trains were always at the minimum HPT and maximum TPOB so the Santa Fe, with their short, fast model, would stick us whenever possible, usually to get us the hell out of the way of one of their equally important, but faster running trains. I could never hold it against them too much but I hope some payback was issued after the UP-SP merger over Tehachapi.

Hell Lance, I worked for SP. NOBODY screwed us worse than we screwed ourselves.
EO

The job I'm on starts each night making a move across the UP. Once we get our power on, test FRED and get our own track warrant the next call is to UP. The good news is that Amtrak is due at 1943 each night and we usually are ready to cross right behind them but there are Z trains and Q trains that, for some reason, get preference.

Running foreign line trains on "your" property used to get interesting. Now everyone has to make "nice" so you sure cannot use a railroad form of "blackmail" any more. One night before the Grand Island, NE crossing with UP and BN was replaced by an overpass the UPRR dispatcher in Omaha kept telling me he'd take trains only to have them stop at the crossing. The night in question we ere going to have to start relieving trains under HOS. Finally the on duty Coal Superintendent (now long retired) called his counterpart on the UP and asked how many coal train loading slots they wanted to lose due to the pounding we were getting in Grand Island.Shortly after that stuff starting moving again.

Another time the Rock Island trainmaster at Muscatine, Iowa instructed the Culver Tower operator to hold eastbound Milw train 64 for a switcher. One of my train dispatching mentors was working as the Milw Ottumwa dispatcher that evening. He told the Culver operator to call the trainmaster and inform him that for every minute 64 was held at Culver a hot Rock Island westbound 91 would sit 2 minutes at Polo, MO and believe me he meant it.About 10 mins later number 64 was OS'd b y Culver and 91 was given a signal to leave Polo.

I worked with a Milwaukee Road General Yardmaster in Kansas City, MO whose mouth operated long before his brain kicked in. He got in some sort of tussle with the Kansas City Terminal Railway over handling of the MILW/KCS transfer runs to other yards. Someone at KCT got mad enough that they researched the operating plan agreements and found that the preferred route for these transfers was not via Kansas City Union station but via the Missouri Pacific's Broadway Tower route on the north side of KCMO. By this time Amtrak had come and the traffic thru KCUS dropped and 4 main tracks handled things way faster than trying to get through Broadway Tower which was always congested. KCT kept this up for several weeks until more senior management at the MILW/KCS Joint Agency smoothed things over.

Santa Fe also screwed their own crews on occasion. I can think of at least two especially irritating examples of which I will only mention one. Westbound out of Barstow, CA, half of a short inbound intermodal train went south (LA basin) and half went north (Bay area). I caught the south portion with four big jacks and seven pigs, four went to San Bernardino and the other three Hobart yard in Los Angeles. Of course right off the bat followed another slower westbound train all the way to San Bernardino (81 miles) where the set out went fine, BUT on arrival at Hobart yard in Los Angeles the instructions were, after the train in "straddle buggy" one IS LOADED THEN DEPARTS, spot the three cars on the west end of straddle buggy one. With at least two yard jobs a shift assigned to Straddle buggy duties as well as plenty of places to stash three pigs this definately didn't set well with this hogger. After four hours and within sight of my car the entire time the trip finally ended with the yarding of three pigs and tieing up taking as much as the entire trip from Barstow to LA. Such is life on the railroad.
JB

I've stated several times before that my late grandfather (my dad's dad) was a UP locomotive fireman and hogger out of East Los Angeles. Before he had enough "whiskers" to hold down a chain gang East LA - Yermo run he worked whatever fireman's jobs he could work off the extra board prior to being promoted to engineer. He got to know Santa Fe Summit operator and railfan Chard Walker from working the UP Cajon Pass helper jobs as a fireman.

From listening to his stories it was apparent that it could be an extremely frustrating experience working for a railroad that had trackage rights over another. He said he got to know every inch of every siding on the Santa Fe between Daggett and West Riverside. According to him there were 4 places Santa Fe liked to stash non-expedited UP freight trains: old Barstow Yard, Victorville, Summit and Ono. To him the most frustrating was being on a westbound out of Yermo: you could get the signal at Daggett to enter the Santa Fe mainline, thinking this MIGHT be a good run up the hill to Victorville, or Summit, only to have the Santa Fe Barstow yardmaster send the train to the "UP tracks" in the old Barstow Yard. And there you sat, even if there weren't any passenger trains close. As time went on he developed a pretty strong hatred for the Santa Fe and it was still strong after he retired.

Of course Santa Fe took it in the shorts from SP on Tehachapi, especially in the 1970's and early 1980's when traffic levels were high. This was when SP tried to drag as much tonnage over the mountain, in one train, with one crew, as they could. An SP monster could leave Bakersfield with zero Santa Fe trains behind them, but by the time the SP train reached Tehachapi Summit to cut helpers out 2-3 Santa Fe trains had caught up.



Allen



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/15 10:41 by bradleymckay.

This is a story told to me by a friend who was the night shift chief dispatcher in Roseville for the Western Region of the SP. Time frame, IIRC, is early 1990's.

One night the Santa Fe dispatcher who controlled the Colton crossing was not letting any SP trains cross, east or westbound. After this had gone on for a couple of hours the SP had trains backed up on both sides of the crossing.

The situation came to the attention of the chief in Roseville who then went to the dispatcher controlling the Bakersfield to Mojave line, on which the Santa Fe has trackage rights. "How may Santa Fe do we have on the mountain right now?" he asked. Three was the reply. "OK, put them into the next siding and hold them until further notice" was the chiefs command.

He then called the Santa Fe to inform them of the situation and say that no Santa Fe trains would move on the mountain until the backlog at Colton was cleared up. It didn't take long for the SP trains holding at the Colton crossing to begin moving.

So here was a situation where the Santa Fe indirectly screwed their own crews by their actions against the SP. And the Santa Fe crews had no idea what was happening to them, being told they were stopped "until further notice".

Bruce Perry
Tehachapi, CA



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/15 10:30 by BDPerry.