Railroaders' Nostalgia > Jerry on a Hot and Cold Z

    As many did, I thoroughly enjoyed Crackerjackhoghead's 02/28 post of "Tomcat and One Hot Z." Crackerjack had told me this story many years ago, and now it is recounted for all of us to enjoy. It brought to mind a memorable Z train trip of my own, a few years after Crackerjack's fireball of fun.
    My timebook shows the following occurred on November 6, 1993. I was called off the Extra Board for the LANPZ-06 at 21:45 hours, with Conductor Jerry Renfro. I had not met Jerry yet and was still fairly new on the railroad, appproaching 3 years employment and only 6 months as a qualified Engineer. I met Jerry in the crew room. Jerry had a cowboy hat on and a bulky ski jacket as we busied ourselves with paperwork, then a crew bus out to the train. Our power was 2 SD60M's, the UP 6313, and UP 6127. In a few months I would start taking more detailed notes on my trains, but not yet. Two units were deemed adequate for tonights trip to Yermo and on to North Platte, and these trains move, so it must have been light tonnage.  We were soon ready. Departing East Los Angeles at Vail Ave, I put the power in run 8 and we blasted out of Montebello. Eastbound out of LA and all the way to Ontario, about 30 miles away, the grade rises in a step and bench fashion, somewhat flatter, then a rise, flattens out again, and rises up. High greens and quiet radio while watching the needle tease our "Maximum Authorized" on the speedometer face.
   Up out of Spadra, the grade is steep, but then eases up at the West end of Pomona about where the SP Main joins up to run alongside. We gain speed to the middle of Pomona at WO Tower, and that is when I do it. I drop the throttle to Run 7 for the first time since departure to ease up for the coming speed restriction at Ontario over the SP Diamonds. The 6313's engine goes from roaring to completely silent followed by alarm bells.
    Jerry is looking right at me with "that look," the "What did you do, kid?" look. I shot back the "I didn't do anything!" on my face response, with shoulder shrug and hands out for added effect. Okay, so we still have 6127, I can hear it back there, so I plan a stop between switches on the main at Montclair, now coming up in the window. Call the Dispatcher, let him know we lost an engine and the hoghead is gonna look it over. We stop, I go back and open the engine start station door. Hmm, low water button out, but plenty of water in the glass, no other apparent problems, but the engine overspeed has tripped.  I reset it and try to restart. Starts up fine and revs up to high idle as expected for a hot engine. As I get to the cab, the engine is revving higher and higher, slowly climbing in RPM's. Thats not right. Now it sounds like Run 8 and bam, engine dies quickly and all silent. Great, now what? Jerry says to try one more time.  I do, same result. Again, now what? Hot Z with troubles stopped on the main, 30 some miles into the trip.
  We confab. I don't remember the direction the trailing 6127 was facing. If it was also facing East, we could switch it out and put it as a leader, transfer our grips, clean it up, air test the power, dial in the EOT, etc, as Montclair has a yard we could use, or if it was West facing, we could wye it at Pedley, another 8 miles away, and do the same work, and its already nearing midnight... No, too much work says Jerry. What if we go with just 1 unit and let Yermo Mechanical deal with it after we get there? Well, we might do it. Subtract 3800 HP from the train, add 200 tons dead locomotive for the new horsepower per ton figure, and - "Yeah, lets go" he says. We will be going up the hill pretty slowly, but flat and downhill will be fast, so, "Forget all this work, lets go!" Okay Jerry, but it might get pretty cold up on Cajon Pass and the Desert. "S'all right, Lets just GO!" Okay, alert the Dispatcher who will alert Yermo and the Santa Fe DS too, and we roll. The night is cool down here,  but further up the pass? On to Santa Fe at Riverside, and through San Bernardino. No helpers available, we don't really NEED them, so up we go.
    I've been on moving train with the lead unit in Idle when not needed because is it is much quieter, the trailing units doing the work.  But not a dead unit controlling the trailing units at speed. With no engine running, there is no Auxiliary power for the cab heater and fan or the strip heaters along the cab wall, or heated air coming in the cab from the electrical cabinet. I put my jacket on, Jerry is already hands in pocket. I eat, he does not. "You okay Jerry? "Yeah, doin' okay, getting cool though." I got an idea, this batch of SD60M's has the resistor for the headlights inside right next to the nose door, and has a protective screen over them. A flat, warm place for heating burritos or something. Hmmm. Bottles of water maybe? So I put two up there and see what happens. Keep climbing, Keenbrook, Blue Cut, Cajon, and finally Summit. Slowly we get there. Whatever latent heat was in the cab from the bottom of the pass is now gone, it is quite cold up at the top and now we are going to be going fast downhill.  Fifty down the backside slowing to 35 by The Narrows before Victorville. I look over at Jerry. I can see his ear only, he is hunched up inside that jacket with his cowboy hat tight around his head.
    I retrieve the water bottles, while not hot, they are mildly warm and ask Jerry if he wants them. "Yeah, please, I am freezing over here." One in each pocket, I don't need them yet, although I am getting mighty cool in the seat. Two more bottles on the headlight resistors and we are through Victorville and Oro Grande looking for 70 MPH on the Flats. Now I'm beginning to shiver. "Jerry, ya Okay?" Jerry is a cocoon now, a quilted mass of jacket and top of hat, I can't see any part of live flesh. "Damn, I'm f-f-f#*&%^ freezing over here." Yep, me too but we are both awake and getting toward miserable on the comfort meter.   "If Santa Fe keeps us going, we should be in Yermo pretty soon." "Yeah %*#%@" I hear back. Through the Black Hole of Barstow, off the Santa Fe at Daggett, and pull right into the fuel rack at Yermo. Blue flags on, we uncoil ourselves and stiffly get off that cold beast. Everyone has been alerted and Mechanical is on it. Swap crews, but I don't know what the plan is, we just get in the crew bus and want to head for the Beanery and some warm, beanery food. Jerry says, "Hey Brian, I am never gonna do that  @&#$*  again." 
    I found out the next day the problem was a stuck injector causing the diesel engine to overspeed and shut down.  I never did have any more adventures with Jerry on a Hot and Cold Z.

I get the Renfros confused. Wasn't there a Carl too?

Helluva story Brian. I gets damned cold in that desert, especially at speed.

I remember when the "safety cabs" started showing up in the late 80s. The SD60Ms were first IIRC. They had forced air heat, no strip heaters. Total crap, barely kept the cab warm in the winter and the tops of them were sloped at nearly a 45 degree angle so you couldn't even put any food on them to warm it up if you wanted to. We used to get a lot of trains with two or three of these leading, usually on the APL Z trains.

I used to make breakfast burritos at home for the road and I wrapped them in several layers of aluminum foil. When it was time to eat, I'd go to the second unit, get a crew pack and remove the Bad Order tag and take the wire off of it, put the headlight selector switch in lead, tie the burrito to the outside of the headlight on the nose with the B.O. tag wire, pretty much covering the light up, then I'd flip the headlight on bright.

Made an excellent heat lamp and got that burrito steaming nicely in no time, even on a cold night.

Whenever those old SD-40's would come into Yermo with the windows and doors taped up, I used to chuckle to myself as I imaginged those guys in Utah and beyond, trying to explain, at an IRS audit, why they had written off $5,000 worth of masking tape as a business expense! Mike is right, those engines with no side wall heater are terrible. It's a tough call whether the forced air units produce more heat or noise. I usually get tired of listening to then and turn them off. But then, it still beats the first locomotive I ever worked on, a 1939 SW-1 with a radiator for heat. No matter how hard you worked that engine, the radiator never got warm!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/16 13:10 by crackerjackhoghead.

Love that hanging burrito on the headlight trick! And masking tape too, I kept a roll in my grip for years. I learned the hard way while braking after sitting in the cab seat right next to the front door all the way to Yermo. It took weeks for my legs to feel normal again!

crackerjackhoghead Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Whenever those old SD-40's would come into Yermo
> with the windows and dorrs taped up, I used to
> chuckle to myself as I imaginged those guys in
> Utah and beyond, trying to explain at an IRS
> audit, why they had written off $5,000 worth of
> mashing tape as a business expense! Mike is right,
> those engines with no side wall heater are
> terrible. It's a tough call whether the forced air
> units produce more heat or noise. I usually get
> tired of listening to then and turn them off. But
> then, it still beats the first locomotive I ever
> worked on, a 1939 SW-1 with a radiator for heat.
> No matter how hard you worked that engine, the
> radiator never got warm!

When I started all we had were NW2s and SW9 with radiator heaters. The trick was to cover up the front radiator screen so the heat would build up. Some of the units had canvas covers that rolled up and down but newspaper worked just as well in a pinch.-BMT

trainjunkie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I get the Renfros confused. Wasn't there a Carl
> too?
>
> Helluva story Brian. I gets damned cold in that
> desert, especially at speed.
>
> I remember when the "safety cabs" started showing
> up in the late 80s. The SD60Ms were first IIRC.
> They had forced air heat, no strip heaters. Total
> crap, barely kept the cab warm in the winter and
> the tops of them were sloped at nearly a 45 degree
> angle so you couldn't even put any food on them to
> warm it up if you wanted to. We used to get a lot
> of trains with two or three of these leading,
> usually on the APL Z trains.
>
> I used to make breakfast burritos at home for the
> road and I wrapped them in several layers of
> aluminum foil. When it was time to eat, I'd go to
> the second unit, get a crew pack and remove the
> Bad Order tag and take the wire off of it, put the
> headlight selector switch in lead, tie the burrito
> to the outside of the headlight on the nose with
> the B.O. tag wire, pretty much covering the light
> up, then I'd flip the headlight on bright.
>
> Made an excellent heat lamp and got that burrito
> steaming nicely in no time, even on a cold night.

Yeah, Mike, Carl was Jerry's younger brother. Railroading was just a job to Carl. His main interest was baseball. He could tell you anything about any team and I believe he was a scout for Peperdine College looking for up and coming high school players that they could recruit.
Jerry was a Trainmaster when I hired out in '78. He was always a nice guy and never messed with you as long as you did your job. He went back to the craft in the lat '80s or early '90s. Jerry injured his knees when a grab iron on a boxcar let go and he fell to the ground on both knees. Last I heard, he had gone back to teaching (he was a teacher when he hired out on the railroad and did both for a while from what I've heard).-BMT

Brian, thanks for the info on the Renfros. I thought there were two of them but I couldn't quite remember. Too many moons ago for me. ;-)

I took a spill off a RailBox car in Yermo once when the grab iron let go. It was night and I climbed on to tie the brake when we got stopped and I didn't notice the rivet holding the right side of the grab to the vertical rib was completely missing. So when I grabbed ahold of it to pull myself up, whoop, down it went until one end was pointed at the me, now laying in the ballast watching the train roll to a stop above me. 

I got lucky. I landed on my feet and when I ultimately fell on my ass, I was clear of the rail. I dusted myself off and got back to work, and reported the defect. But crap like this can happen to anyone. Such a shame that it ruined Jerry's career with a knee injury. 

trainjunkie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I remember when the "safety cabs" started showing
> up in the late 80s. The SD60Ms were first IIRC.
> They had forced air heat, no strip heaters. Total
> crap, barely kept the cab warm in the winter and
> the tops of them were sloped at nearly a 45 degree
> angle so you couldn't even put any food on them to
> warm it up if you wanted to.

A few years ago when I was a junior engineer at CN, I was forced to Hay River, Northwest Territories, one winter, which is located on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, north of the 60th Parallel.  This was and is still to my knowledge four axle only territory. GP40-2W's were the most common power, with the occasional GP38-2, in both Spartan and wide cab designs showing up. The GP40-2W's didn't have strip heaters, just a blower heater, whereas the GP38-2W's had both. 

One particular trip I had northbound from High Level, Alberta to Hay River was with a wide cab GP40–2, that had a great blower, except no heat. The temperature was around -40C/F outside, and all we had to keep us warm, was the heated windshield and the hot plate. I remember I had an engineer trainee with me as well as a conductor. Track speed averages at 25 mph most of the way, so we battled the cold for 8-9 hours. I don't think I once took off my parka, and our conductor never took off her gloves or hat. 

But we managed to make it without any hypothermia! I booked the unit with the MSREP for a bad order heater. It sure took a while to thaw out when I got back to my hotel room.........


Next trip south was a lot nicer with a GP38-2W leader.......this time I had to shed the parka, and heavy winter boots! 

Locotrol2
 

Jerry is a baseball coach at the University of Redlands. The railroad made Jerry go into engine service after he came back from the injury in Yermo while working as the conductor on the Yermo local. He was Bob Reginneter's fireman and I made a bunch of trips with them. I would watch Jerry rubbing his knee as it caused him a lot of pain. The railroad finally let him go.Carl is a baseball coach for a college also.  The first and only time I worked with his brother Carl was a yard job in UP East LA Yard. It was his first shift after being fired for a long time. It was also opening day of Major League Baseball season and Carl had his Sporting News tucked under his arm the whole shift.I think he was a scout for Kansas City and he was showing me the players he had scouted for the team.Mike Axeloff was our engineer that day. We were in the crest shanty and I D Quinn was in there also. He had just been promoted to conductor and had changed his last name from Nang something to Quinn. He was from Vietnam so Mike and Carl started joking with him about changing his name to an Irish name.He replyed," I might want to go home some day and they won't be looking for a Quinn but they are looking for Dagn Nan." He was a South Vietnam Naval Captian with his own gun ship. At the end of the fighting the North got a hold of him and he spent 7 years,7 months and 2 days in a prison. He said that one night he escaped and followed a small stream until it got larger and larger and emptied into the sea. At the shore he found many refugees and he taught them how to build a "raft" and at night they set off into the sea with him sailing by the stars. They were picked up by a merchant ship. That stopped Carl and Mike from laughing at him. Quinn left the railroad a year or 2 after merging with the SP railroaders and joined the Peace Corp with his wife. He was an interesting guy but not as interesting the other  Vietnam railroader HA Vo. One hell of a charecter.

The best Vo story happened many years ago at the end of Berth 46 in San Pedro where the Kaiser coal dock was. Fred, care to share it?

trainjunkie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The best Vo story happened many years ago at the
> end of Berth 46 in San Pedro where the Kaiser coal
> dock was. Fred, care to share it?

  And noone tells it as good as Vo!

Oh, come on --- please tell it!!

Love your stories!  You guys could write books!
And I'd buy 'em!

Almost every one working in the L.A. Basin knows the story about Mr. Vo and the "cars in the ocean". I'll have to let Fredo tell it being as he's a great story teller. And just to note, these aren't just stories, they are real incidents that have occurred.-BMT

UPNW2-1083 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Almost every one working in the L.A. Basin knows
> the story about Mr. Vo and the "cars in the
> ocean". I'll have to let Fredo tell it being as
> he's a great story teller. And just to note, these
> aren't just stories, they are real incidents that
> have occurred.-BMT

  Yeah, Fred probably remembers it best. I'm hoping he'll tell it. I really wish somone had recorded Vo telling it, his accent and broken english put it over the top!

I hope Fred tells it too. I've told the story verbally many times and it works because I can do a respectable Vietnamese accent. But I'm missing a lot of the details that I'm willing to bet Fred knows and that would be crucial to relating the story in writing. It actually happened before he or I hired out but he would have a better recollection of the story as it was told to him. What do you say Fredo?

Fredo, c'mon, let us all hear it again. Your mind is a steel trap of details, Start typing!