Railroaders' Nostalgia > Quite a quandry, eh?

No, I am not running out of tales to tell....Just been busy but recently a post on Train Orders reminded me of a series of incidents that occurred on Santa Fe while I was based at Winslow, Arizona, from December 1968 thru July, 1971.  One of my many duties at "Transportation Inspector" was to oversee the work at the 27 open stations on the Albuquerque division.  In that era, many different departments issued instructions to station agents and clerical forces.  For example, the Chief Train Dispatcher would oversee the staffing of stations when vacancies occurred, and train orders and messages to trains were prepared on the dispatcher's instructions.  The accounting department had their set of instructions about selling tickets and issuing freight waybills, damaged or lost shipments were reported to the Freight Claims Department, and on and on.  Seven or Eight of the larger stations had supervisory agents who were knowledgeable about all the arcane requirements of the many departments.
   You can well imagine the problems, though, in trying to insure that the records prepared at a one-man station such as Aguila,  Salome, Clarkdale, Williams, Arizona and Grants
N.M., were somewhat correct and filed when due.  We had a one-man station on the Phoenix line at Hillside.  This station was 50 miles from the nearest store by dirt roads.  The agent at Hillside, old Tommy Reynolds,  had been there for who knows how long, but many years.  He lived in a company house next to the station.  He had no wife, but a menagerie of animals such as dogs, cats, horses, goats, cattle and chickens.  The station existed for two reasons, to handle the inbound and outbound freight from a copper mine located at Bagdad, Arizona, some 20 miles up the road and to copy and hand up train orders to passing trains.  Everything that came in by rail for the mine was unloaded and trucked to the mine, and the outbound copper concentrates were loaded in gondolas and special dump cars.  Tommy conned the mine loaders to dig a small pond so he could host the ducks and geese that migrated back and forth twice a year.  Nobody ever digs a small pond with a CAT 988 or 992 front end loader.  It just isn't done that way.  Well Tommy got his pond, about 100 feet across and three or four feet deep.  Then Tommy needed water.  Water was supplied to Hillside and many other points on the division by tank car.  Usually, Tommy got one 16,000 gallon car every 10 days or so, but suddenly he ordered 8 cars.  I was dispatched to find out why.....
   While I was there, I told Tommy to clean out the old freight house, a wooden building about 20 feet square, next to the depot.  It was full of old, old, old, musty, dusty old records.  I told him to write to the relevant departments and get their permission to destroy these old records.  Side note:  The ICC required that railroad records such as freight bills and demurrage records be retained for many years, usually at least 8 years.  Just a few days after returning to my office in Winslow, Tommy was on the phone,  "Mr. Orfall, I got rid of all those old records like you wanted!  I burned them all!" 
"Oh my, Tommy.  How did you get permission so quickly?"
"Permission?" he asked.
   As I toured these stations, I quickly became aware of all sorts of antiques and station equipment that was hidden in unused closets and desk drawers.  Really classic adding machines and typewriters, scales, roll top desks, ticket daters, and much more.  Unfortunately, in that era, Santa Fe was suffering from the effects of cases where some employees didn't always keep the company's interests at heart.  We were repeatedly warned that you could not take even a pencil home.  There was simply no leeway.  So here I am, closing stations and having no way to preserve these priceless antiques.  I did take a few items back to the closet in my office, but many things were discarded that I would love to have preserved.  And so that was my quandry........what should I have done with the wax impression seals I found at Grand Conyon while closing the depot in 1969?

TIOGA PASS
 

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/15 23:56 by aronco.

When the new Union Pacific headquarters was ready to occupy in downtown Omaha several years ago we were told there wasn't much storage space in the new digs and were told to clean out a storage room just down the hall from our public relations office, then on the 4th floor.  We had some rubber tubs brought up and started with a vengeance to fill them.  I looked down the hall at lunch time and saw several employees "dumpster diving" the tubs for goodies.  Those tubs were being emptied almost faster than we could fill them.  

We had to do the same thing several years before when we lost storage space in the the "Wesco Building" warehouse just east of the old headquarters.  As I recall the Union Pacific Historical Society was meeting in town and we opened the warehouse to them, offering boxes of black and white publicity stills, pallet loads of the UP scenic prints once used to promote western travel and numerous other treasures.  It was quite a scene.  

Over the years I learned that a lot of railroad goodies ranging from locomotive bells to (          ) disappeared and ended up in the rec rooms and basements of more than a few UP employees.  There were a lot of fans on the payroll it seemed...

John Bromley



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/15 12:21 by Copy19.

A lot of caboose markers and old switch stand laterns found new homes too.

I know of a few clocks that found new homes when depots and yard offices closed.

I carefully preserved the receipt for this clock when I purchased it from Santa Fe in 1969.

Norm

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

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aronco Wrote:
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> I carefully preserved the receipt for this clock
> when I purchased it from Santa Fe in 1969.
>
> Norm

My first railroad pocket watch, a Hamilton 992B,  has a dial identical, (without the Santa Fe System and Seth-Thomas info), to your clock.
Fitzjohn's jewelers, the authorized SP watch inspector in Temple City CA,  told me the dial with every number from 1-60 shown is
called a "Montgomery".  The name might apply to wall clocks as well.
 If that's a recent photo, it looks well taken care of. How long will it run between windings?

Charlie

Last September I posted a picture of my secondary clock acquired from the Santa Fe Gen. Office Bldg in Topeka, along with a picture of the receipt for it.  I do also have a receipt for my switch stand but I sure hope no one requests to see it cause it would take quite some time to locate it.  Now for my date nails..................... what receipt?

A little story about date nails:  While working as a brakeman on a work train on the Anthony branch in southern Kansas in '69 we were going to be a one location for quite some time and I was bored so told the conductor I was going to retrieve my hammer and pry bar from my grip and hunt for some date nails.  He said he had already walked the entire branch twice before and that I wouldn't find anythiing worth while.  I hadn't gone 2 or 3 car lengths and saw a nail bent over.  Straightened it up and it was a "2".  Went back to the caboose and showed the conductor and he went ballistic.  Said he had looked for a "2" for years without finding one and I found one in less than 5 minutes! 

Mark Cole
Temple, Tx 

cewherry Wrote:
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> the authorized SP watch
> inspector in Temple City CA,  told me the dial
> with every number from 1-60 shown is
> called a "Montgomery".  The name might apply to
> wall clocks as well.

U.S. Design Patent #55523 covers a timpiece dial design filed in 1918 by H.S. Montgomery.

 

I'm sure you did the right thing.
TAH

KskidinTx Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A little story about date nails:  While working
> as a brakeman on a work train on the Anthony
> branch in southern Kansas in '69 we were going to
> be a one location for quite some time and I was
> bored so told the conductor I was going to
> retrieve my hammer and pry bar from my grip and
> hunt for some date nails.  He said he had already
> walked the entire branch twice before and that I
> wouldn't find anythiing worth while.  I hadn't
> gone 2 or 3 car lengths and saw a nail bent
> over.  Straightened it up and it was a "2". 
> Went back to the caboose and showed the conductor
> and he went ballistic.  Said he had looked for a
> "2" for years without finding one and I found one
> in less than 5 minutes! 
>
> Mark Cole
> Temple, Tx 

In the early 70's a friend and I were in Arizona and stopped at the Skull Valley station.  It was still there, but closed, probably by Norm.  We walked the track some distance looking for date nails.  Didn't find much.  On our return to the car parked at the station we split up and each took one side of the fence line along the right of way that used old ties for posts.  I didn't find anything but my friend found a 1, pulled it and it turned out to be a stubby 1.  I found a fair amount of single digit nails back in the 70's, but never a stubby 1.

Here's mine. Purchased from the company in 1972, the Santa Fe Form 1649 tag shows it was last in service in the Div. Special Agent's office - Ft. Worth, TX. It will run about 8 days on a wind up.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/15 10:45 by Chico43.

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So, why did he suddenly need all that water?

I remember in the 80's/90's a Santa Fe Special Agent took me on a tour through the dispatchers' offices in San Bernardino and their was a bunch of similar looking clocks that had just been delivered to the offices lying around waithing to be hung up.  Nice looking and new.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/15 17:20 by whistlepig.

He needed to fill the pond - it was late summer and he would soon have winter visitors to accomodate ( Canadian Geese).  I thought the division superintendent would never forget those eight cars of water.  His favorite dig at me was have you checked the depth of Tommy's pond this week?

Norm

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

Norm did you also import rainbow trout for stocking the pond?  aronco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> He needed to fill the pond - it was late summer
> and he would soon have winter visitors to
> accomodate ( Canadian Geese).  I thought the
> division superintendent would never forget those
> eight cars of water.  His favorite dig at me was
> have you checked the depth of Tommy's pond this
> week?
>
> Norm

Seems to me that the Hillside station sign and perhaps a cross buck crossing sign ended up at a restaurant/antique store on Iron Springs Road outside Prescott, AZ.  

Hi Norm.. am interested in making the trip from LAUPT to Santa Barbara on September 10th. Terry might be coming or a friend of mine.. please save space if the leg is not sold out. Terry and I really enjoyed the trek to San Diego .. great fun..let me know... Jim

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