Railroaders' Nostalgia > Was this a "Sting"?

As I give more thought to those events at SP's Dolores yard back inthe 1970's; see:http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3985726
I wonder just how did the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department get involved?. Obviously someone observed 'Lantern Smasher's' activity.
Was it a SP special agent? Maybe one of the brakemen? I do know it wasn't me. CCDeWeese's comments about a switchman stealing
toy TV's reminds me of another occasion.

At Taylor yard in Los Angeles the SP special agents had an office that was located in the north end of the yard office building with
windows and a door that opened out to a parking area. One fine morning I was called for an eastbound train to W. Colton. On this
day we were instructed to take our engines from the roundhouse and proceed to the top end of the "A" yard (TEA yard) and there we
would receive further instructions. At the time the two closest tracks to the yard office were the 'Outbound' and next to it the 'Inbound' engine leads.
At the north end of the 'Outbound' was a signal, controlled by the herder (maybe the yardmaster?) at the TEA yard. The signal was dark. When
the herder/yardmaster wanted you to move they would light up the signal to begin flashing a lunar aspect which was your authority to move
up to the north end of the yard. This signal also just happened to be about 5-8 cars north of the yard office building and essentially right
in the "lap" of the special agents windows. I pulled up to the signal and waited.  We sat there for several minutes and as is often the case, the longer you
sit somewhere the more your attention is drawn to details that at first go unnoticed.

The nearest yard track to where I sat held a cut of boxcars. Nothing unusual. Eventually my eyes wander to one particular car whose door
is partially open; maybe 4 feet or so. I look further and see cardboard boxes of television sets randomly positioned as if someone had pilfered
the load. I said to the brakeman: "Look at that. Somebody broke into that load of TV's and here it is right in front of the special agents office
and they don't even see it!". 

I lift the radio off its cradle and call Station 86, the radio call sign for special agents. "Hey 86, look out your window. Up here on track 27
right across from your office is a...... yada yada yada"  Very quietly the officer replies: "We see it. Were keeping our eye on it, out".
Was it a sting?  Probably a convenient mishap that the agents turned into an opportunity to observe the human condition.

Charlie



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/16 10:59 by cewherry.

Charlie,
We had something going on like that at SLO in the late 60s. It was the autos on the Zipper, No. 373. Everything had been checked leaving LA and rolled by the Special Agents at Oxnard, Santa Barb and coming into SLO. Never found anything. But when the train would arrive at Wat.Jct, it was starting to get light out and you could see hoods up, etc and the cars stripped, even some transmissions.

Well this went on and they couldn't figure it out. Well, one Friday night they had a ball game at Cal-Poly and the stadium was at the corner of Foothills Blvd. And the SP tracks on the land side. Well they had the nice big bright lights on and here comes #373. As it went by, the lights showed the train up like a drive in movie.  Here were about 10 to 12 guys leaning over into engine compartments with hoods and trunks open doing their best to get what they wanted. There were a couple of Sheriffs at the game and they called the SP. (BI Telegraph).  They had the train slow down a bit and got enough cops together to meet in Margarita.. They had the engineer stop the cars involved right where they were set up. Busy night at the lock up.

It turned out what they did was strip the parts they wanted and then throw them off in a few places they could get a car or truck into like, Goldtree , Chorro,  and Serrano. Then they would kick back inside the cars until the train made a stop. They would de-train and a member of the gang would be following the train with a CB radio and would pick them up.  Well, when they were stopped in Margarita, they didn't have any tools or parts on them. But, "Film At 11:00" got great pictures of them auditioning for their staring role during the ball game. They were finally charged and deported back to Mexico.

There were Poly students that loved to jump on a west train on the weekends when we were cutting in the helpers and party over the hill to Margarita. We would stop and cut the helpers out at the 76 xovers and their friends would pick them up. Well, one night they didn't stop and took the helper thru to King City that was the first stop. It was a very cold night and their warming fuel had run out. Don't know if they tried it again.

We used to get a lot of stuff at derailments. If they were going to walk over it with a Cat, they would give us some time to salvage what we wanted. On a derailment at Sudden there was a box car full of Folgers Coffee in cans and Kellogg Cereal's. We packed the caboose and engines with coffee and unloaded it at the SLO depot. They drank free coffee for many, many years and a lot of guys kids ate free in the mornings.

Of course you would have derailments that had expensive stuff and the Special Agents would stand guard over it. Went in the ditch at the west end of San Lucas on an east bound LA. (burned off journal on a roller bearing truck ??) In the consist were a few cars full of bonded Whiskey..  Well then the Feds got involved and had the booze dragged up on a side hill above the tracks on the land side and had their guards posted. They got a guy from San Ardo that had a Cat D-8 K and had him come over and dig a trench, shove all the bottles, card board, etc in, and then walk over it, breaking all the bottles. Talked to the dozer operator later and he said it was enough to make you cry. The SP did this so they only had to pay the cost of the booze, not the taxes. Back then Canadian Club and VO was selling for about 10 bucks a bottle and they only had to pay about 9 cents a bottle without the taxes on it..


Nudge



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/16 15:35 by spnudge.

One account that I remember being told of was loaded auto racks originating in the Bay area showing up
at their destination with their cargo of autos minus engines and transmissions. These shipments originated at either Warm Springs
or Fremont; I'm not familiar enough to say which. SP had movies of the autos being driven aboard the racks so
they knew all was OK coming out of the manufacturing plant.

After much investigation it was determined the perps swung aboard the cars while the train was stopped around San Jose during
a crew change. Does that sound right ? They were very sophisticated, carrying all the necessary tools and even 'A' frames with
block and tackle to lift the heavy stuff. The next stop was Watsonville Jct. for another crew swap and that's where the loot was
thrown off the cars into a dark field opposite the yard office to be picked up by their fellow miscreants.

Charlie

Is there any truth to the version I heard that a Cal Poly professor had organized some students to strip the autos on 373 going up the hill?

Two high value wrecked freight stories from the 70s on the SP:
A trailer had broken open on a Saturday.  Among the cargo were dozens of roughly cube shaped boxes from the US Government printing office.
About noon Monday the US Postal Inspector showed up and saw we were using these boxes for seats, tables, etc around the periphery.  He was shocked: they were full of IBM card blank US Treasury Checks.  A box of those and a typewriter with purple ink would have been all you needed to finance you dreams...
A boxcar of distilled spirits (whisky, brandy, vodka....) was in a general pile-up when going perhaps 50 or 55 MPH.  The freight recovery effort was done with care.  I would say that none of the cartons in the interior of the car, or on the middle of the sides, was damaged.  Only the corner cartons had damage and of them I am guessing over half the bottles were intact.

They did have a wreck of #373 at the east switch at Capitan in the first part of 1969.  Just beyond the east switch going east there was a small cut and a fill. Frank Jackson was the engineer and he dimmed his headlight for a east train in the hole at Capitan. Well the fill was water soaked and just gave way. The engines were all covered wagons and the lead one made it over and the others went in the ditch along with a bunch of auto racks and pigs and a cut in caboose.. (More on that later. About that time Chuck Chambers the hoghead on the east man called frank and said, "Hey Frank. It looks as if you have fire on the land side." At the same time the red Mar's came on and everything came to a halt.
About that time the MofW at Goleta had been called out to check the culverts. They stopped at Bray's to coffee up and arrived when the train did and the fires were getting going.from the wreckage. Everyone was okay on #373.

( A side note that  during that time of year, train and crew counts had been done and there was a swing brakeman's job put on SLO to Santa Barb. and back and another swing brakeman from SLO to  Margarita.  There wasn't any place to get out of the weather there, so if the helpers went back lite, they would go to Paso Robles to wait for a east man.)

Well, "Squeaky" Milsap was the swing man on  No. 373 and had gone back to the second unit to ride. Well, he had a ride to tell about. When the air dumped he felt the unit roll a bit before everything came crashing down. He had just moved from the center jump seat and went to look on the fireman's side of the unit. When everything stopped he looked over towards the engineers side and there was a large piece of rail that had come up through the floor and through the seat he was sitting on a few seconds before. Well, the fire trucks started showing up and the Big O was given a ride up to the head end. Well, the comm lines were down and no radio until Arlight where you could talk to Surf. There was nothing for the two crews to do so they left it to the MofW. Franks engine was okay so he pulled by the east switch and Chuck came out with his power and put them on top of Franks engine. They went on down to the west switch and grabbed the caboose. They used Frank's head rights to go all the way to SLO.

Now the bad part. Well the fires were burning pretty good and there were a lot of automobiles destroyed.  They finally got the fires out and before they cooled down, here comes a  bunch of General Motors Guards. . There were two SP Special Agents and the rest GM folks. Well they put up a guards and surrounded the whole area. Nobody was allowed to go beyond their people and they had the force to prove it. side arms and long guns  Later in the day when the wreckage cooled, GMs people went in to destroy every automobile with a torch.  They cut holes in the engine blocks, carbs, transmissions, rear ends and axles, everything so they could not be used except for scrape. Even seats, radios, etc.

It took them a long time before they were done so SP could get in and clean up the mess. The sad part was finding a body in the burned caboose that was cut into the train. It was at the bottom of the mess. What they did was to cut in a cab after the City cars and there was one on the end. The train would stop at San Jose, switchman would make a cut behind the cut in caboose,  air test and the head portion would head up DT to Mission Bay. They would put power on the rear part and it would be off to Oakland. Well, it turned the male that was riding the cab was a rail fan and knew all about the move. He would go down to LA and see his friends and then sneak onto the caboose for a ride home. He had already done this a few times. It took awhile to ID him and find out where he was from.

A side note a lot of car numbers didn't jive with the wheeler when they were picking up the mess. There was a semi trailer off a pig flat that was burned and it showed being an mty. Well they got down to cutting it up and it was full of Budweiser Beer. Because of the fire it was destroyed on the spot.

Nudge

 

   In my career as an SP/UP brakeman/conductor, any dealings I had with the PO's were friendly and professional...except for this one time.
   I was the regular conductor on the LA-Mojave oil cans for most of the time it ran.  One afternoon, we were in the siding at Ansel waiting for some eastbounds to go by before we could go over to the plant at Fleta and do our work.  My brakeman was down on the ground walking around when he called me on his pakset, "hey Brian, come down here and take a look at this."  I went down there and here were several boxes of used computers and computer parts.
   "What do you want to do," he asked.
   "You stay here and watch them.  I'm going to tell the DS we're going to load them on the second unit and bring them back to LA with us."  I wanted to make our intentions clear publicly on the radio, since I'd heard about these "stings" before.  The DS said OK, and he'd have the PO's meet us when we got back to LA.
   We loaded them up, did our work over at the loading racks, and headed back to LA.  When we stopped at the Hole in the Wall in LA to change crews, a very grumpy PO met us.  I'd never seen this guy before.
   "Well, I see your consciences got the better of you,' he snarled.  I didn't say anything, but needless to say, my crew and I didn't help him unload them.

Brian Black
Castle Rock, CO

My late uncle, T.J. (Tom) Gill, told me about a derailment at K Yard along Alameda St. in South L.A.  Tom took a few for his family, only enough that he could easily slip them into his grip.  So did another SP crew member, but when they got back to Taylor Yard, he gave them to Tom instead.  So Tom managed to carry a bunch to his car without getting caught and gave them away to neighbors and friends.  He felt later it was a risk he shouldn't have taken.

mapboy

Not rail road related, but semi similar situations. I know a lot of people in the Southern California trash hauling business. BEFORE the big corporations started muscling in. There were times where they would haul a rolloff from some manufactor full of brand new product but for what ever reason could not be sold, so it had to be trashed. The manufactor would send a gaurd to follow the truck, watch it dump the load up at Puente Hills land fill, and watch the CAT D-9 operator walk all over it and cover it up, then leave. Unbeknownst to the manufactor, those D-9 operators were the best. They knew how to walk over it but not break everything up. Wait about 30 minutes to make sure the manufactor's gaurd was gone, and they would push the dirt out of the way and split up the unbroken goods.