Railroaders' Nostalgia > Problems or confusion?

I am not sure what to title this,nevertheless here it is.
In October 1972 at Tampa,Fl.I was promoted to car foreman at
Sanford,Fl.where I spent the next seven and a half years until
the shop was closed in 1979.

During the time at Sanford the SCL decided to by-pass Jacksonville
Yard with certain trains and send them straight through to Sanford.

Sanford was a busy place.We had branches in almost every direction
mainline through freights,eight passenger trains and various operations.
Not to mention a 150 ton derrick.
Orlando was not the place it is now and I had two men to cover the
operations there.

The yard was a 24/7 operation and I had at least two men on each shift.
About twenty working the rip track,a couple of apprentices,an electrian
and a machainst,about seven laborers,second shift foreman,a swing foreman
a clerk and my boss,a General Car Foreman.

I am starting to ramble,so on to my story,that is lots of work with few people.
Because certain trains were by passing Jacksonville,our yard was over come
with cars AND BO's.The shop was loaded with so many BO's I could not get
them repaired in a timely fashion and I had everybody on the railroad wanting
to know,"where is my car"? Something had to be done.The mechanical people
sent two men in upper ranks to Sanford to "fix" things.Those two whom I called
"Snag" and "Baldy" (If you saw them you know what I mean).Being "green" on
the job,I was nervious and since I was the "boy" I had to do what they told me.
Ah,one of them said,"let's cut off the top two corner oppossing grab irons" they
don't need them.The other agreed.(I should say here the cars were BO for bent
grabs).The ones to cut off were the worst.So they smiled and went back to
Jacksonville.Well my car inspectors are no dummbies and as soon as a car was released
from the shop,it came back like a boomarang,Guess what? I  now had twice as many BO's!
It did not take long for someone with authority and sense to change everything back to
the way it was before.I can't remember the exact dates of the problem,but I was glad
it was over.

Uncle Joe,Seffner,Fl.

PS Please forgive my spelling.I can only do one thing at a time,the story came first.

It would take a switchman to understand what a serious mistake those 2 guys caused. They created a railcar with a Safety Appliance Act violation which would probably have been caught at the first interchange with another railroad, but sounds like it was found even earlier. That is the type of thing that seems minor when done but can later result in someone's death.

One of the few pleasures of being a union officer was the ability to call officers jackasses when conditions warranted.

EO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-K.

I don't understand exactly which grab irons these were. Were they on a boxcar with full height ladders?

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

Cant remember what year - late 1970's I think. BN started running empty coal hopper trains through Alliance, NE and not setting out cars with Federal b/o's. Crews were instructed to take out on line and switch cars to set out track as direected by the train dispatcher. A few calls by the UTU and BLE to the FRA office in Omaha got that stopped.

funnelfan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't understand exactly which grab irons these
> were. Were they on a boxcar with full height
> ladders?

Sorry,Ted.
I did not explain.
These were bulkhead type flat cars common in the South for loading pulpwood.
If you need to know about pulpwood.PM me.
On the BL and AR corners there about six ladders rungs.These get beat up and
smashed all the time.Pulpwood is not a fragile product and is handled roughly.
The "bosses" said,"if we cut them off,they won't get bent".Well as you know,you
don't cut off safety appliances!

Uncle Joe,Seffner,Fl.