Railroaders' Nostalgia > A Horrible Meet

   Recently, a thread dealt with horrible meets and DS snafus.  Here is a story of the worst meet I ever encountered in my 40 years of train service on the SP/UP around Southern California.
   I worked the brakeman's extra board in the very early days of the Colton-Palmdale cutoff.  It was dark railroad (no block signals) and was operated by timetable and train orders.  At the time, there were no intermediate train order offices on the entire district.  The train order offices at Hiland and Dike were established later.  There was no provision in the rules for transmitting train orders by radio at that time.
   On the day in question, I was called in the early afternoon on an eastbound out of Palmdale.  The conductor was Everett Craig, John Keefer was the flagman, and Walter Nelson was the engineer.  When we examined our train orders at Palmdale, it looked as though we were to head in the siding at Wash, the first siding east of Palmdale for three westbounds.  We headed in the siding at Wash and waited...and waited, and waited.  Seems as though the first westbound who wasn't even to 
Hiland yet when we left Palmdale had somehow derailed something while setting out a bad order car at Hiland.  By the time he got that fixed up and was ready to move, his 16 hour law ran out  So did the 16 hours on the two other west bounds behind him.
   There we sat.  we requested that the Palmdale carryall or someone come out to us and take us to get something to eat.  Can't do it.  The carryall driver who was also the crew dispatcher was busy.
   John walked up from the caboose, and he knew I was a chess player.  He carried a little chess set with him, so we played several games of chess.  After that, he walked back to the caboose.
   The first westbound finally showed up but we still couldn't go anywhere.  The carryall brought us additional orders from Palmdale so we could move, but by the time the too busy to take us to eat driver got them out to us, they didn't do us any good.  Walter didn't have a lunch, so I shared mine with him.  Everett didn't either, so John shared his.
   Finally, our 16 hours ran out.  No patch crew available, and they wouldn't come out and pick us up!
   After 21 hours in the siding at Wash, they brought a patch crew out.  When we got in the carryall, we requested the driver, Ralph Flores take us to eat.
   "No, gotta take you back to Palmdale.  Got things to do."
   "  We went into orbit!
   "No you're not!  You're taking us to eat!"
   "Okay, okay!"
   He took us to a little place up on Hwy. 138, and a meal never tasted so good!
   At that time, there was no provision in the HOS for this limbo time nonsense as it is today.  This was a clear violation of the HOS when we saw crews had been available to relieve us in a timely fashion.  Craig was the nervous sort, and was afraid to turn it in to the ICC fearing retaliation.  Keefer took care of it.  We never heard any kind of an explanation from any official as to why we'd been treated like that.  In fact, we never heard another word about it from anyone.

Brian Black
Castle Rock, CO

Any truth to the story someone went to Phelan for a meet only to find there was no siding, only a station sign? The SP didn't add the siding until after I left in '79

Charlie

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/16 23:07 by cewherry.

   Never heard about a crew trying to make a meet in a non-existant siding.  I'm sure that if the DS tried to set up such a meet, the crew would have called it to his attention.  You are correct that from the time the railroad opened until CTC was installed in 1979 and the Phelan siding was built, there was a station sign and a station listed in the timetable.

Brian Black
Castle Rock, CO