Railroaders' Nostalgia > A short story...

In March, 1973, I was promoted to assistant trainmaster at Fullerton, on Santa Fe's Los Angeles Division.  The railroad has eveolved a great deal since those days.
There was no computer system at all to prepare switch lists and work orders for the four switchers working out of Fullerton.  All of the lists were hand written by
the car clerks.  Within a year, the first of a series of automation projects would appear to be known as "CLIC" - Car Location Inventory Control.  All supervision on the region were invited, er, ordered to a staff meeting in Los Angeles to explain and introduce this new system which would gradually produce a car inventory and print switch lists and train lists.  In that meeting of 200 or so operating supervisors, an old time trainmaster from the Valley Division, who was very close to retirement, listened patiently to the long distribe
by the computer folks about the new system.  Finally, he raised his hand, and when the General Manager recognized him, he asked if "CLIC" stood for "Come Let's Institue Chaos,"
or did ti mean "Cars Lost in California?"
The meeting really sort of broke down for a few minutes........

Norm

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

Those are some new SPINS on CLIC. Clever names, more so than Z-T-S (zone, track, spot).

Did ZTS work well or evolve into something more workable, if not? Was it less or more cumbersome than "spot that car at Door 3 at Henderson's warehouse?" You'd think that once a car was routed to the correct yard, the local guys would know where all the spots were without assigning them codes.

The CLIC system would eventually evolve into a means of doing some of the accounting for inplant switch moves and demuurage ( car detention) but its main purpose was to speed up the preparation of switch lists and train consists and eliminate walking tracks ro get and check lists of cars.   Before CLIC an empty car would be manually listed to be pulled from the industry, then manually listed on a list of a yard track, and then listed again when lined up for an outbound train.  All of that was very prone to error and slow and expensive.

Norm

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

   Norm, do you remember when you worked for the Espee an old head trainmaster at Colton, Percy Dornfeld?  When the TOPS, which was the Espee equivalant to the CLIC was coming on line, Percy asked if he could transfer to Carlin, Nevada.
   "Why do you want to go to Carlin, Percy?"
   "To get away from this TOPS thing," was his reply.
   " But Percy, Carlin is going to have TOPS too!"
   Fine old man.  If you messed up in his territory, he would tear you a new rear end, but he never took formal action against anyone unless he was absolutely forced to.   MDO, I remember you at Colton and Kaiser very early in your officers career.  Did you have the opportunity to work with Percy?

Brian Black
Retired SP/UP Conductor
 

To get the actual time of the placement or pull..the engine foreman would
complete a Form PC16 (Pacific Car Demurrage Bureau).    In my time,
there were about 14 PCDB clerks in the LA Agent's office at 3rd and Santa Fe.
They had their own area in the SW corner of the office, and also clerks from
the Western Weighing and Inspection Bureau.

At that time I was assigned as Head Clerk on duty on Saturday and Sundays.

Bob Drenk



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/15 14:37 by RD10747.