Railroaders' Nostalgia > Tails from the shop

The first subject covered my early years in Denver Colorado working for the CB&Q now BN, merger has happened. I,am now working as a Electrician in the Diesel shop. Some time in 1980, the Master  Mechanic Mr. Lehr called me to his office to talk about me covering the midnight shift at 7th the old C&S roundhouse as a foreman.

I thought that this would help me in further positions with the railroad so I said yes I will take it. As some may know the 7th was the last place one could find steam in late 1958 and the narrow gauge to South Park had there little teakettle engines serviced in the 1930th some 3 rail could be be observed  where the narrow gauge roundhouse was.  

So my shift began at 11:30 P.M. first item was to check inbound line up for locomotives to arrive from now to 7:00 A.M. Most nights we had around 5 in bound consist to service and fuel I would call the Trainmaster to see what was going to run on my shift.  A normal night was the Beer Run at 6:00A.M.with 3 SD9`s came in on my shift and 2 south bound frights to Texas and the North Local to Fort Collins  I would have to call the BN power board In Kansas City at that time now Forth Worth  to get locomotives assigned to the trains.    

After getting the power Line Up I would have my employees informed on what locomotives we need for out bound trains I has 2 machinists 1 electrician and 4 labors. Every one hosteled locomotives as C&S gave up there hostel rights.  Next job was take a labor the the waycar track to clean them we drove the the company pickup about 1 mile to the track. After dropping the Labor I noticed that the 3 waycars had all lights on and several men were very drunk and having a party  got the Labor back in the truck called the Trainmaster who was home asleep to inform him, he said handle it or call railroad police HA!!!   So off i went with the Labor and after around a hour the waycare party had broken up by itself.

One job that i did not like was to check the oil level on the yard air compressor that was in a old abandoned power house with  huge FareBanks coal fired boilers  that had not been used in years, and with  one lite that was about 20 feet high, this places was spooke.   

Wes


      

Neat story!

Sounds almost like a ghost story!

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR