Railroaders' Nostalgia > ...more like IN the ground

One night back in the early 70s, I was 2d trick B&OCT Chief. Just before quitting time, the Lincoln Street (Robey yard) roundhouse foreman called to tell me that there was an engine (Alco switcher) derailed at Lincoln Street (the old coach yard). It split a switch and there were a couple of wheels down. He told me that the car foreman was on the way over to rerail it. I made a note and put it in the live file.

Soon after I got in the chair the next afternoon, the Superintendent came through the door and bellowed You! My office! Now!

I followed him to his office and he immediately dove into:

How can you have an engine turned over and not bother to call me or even the Road Foreman?

Uh...engine turned over. I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

You derailed an engine last night.

Yeah, the 90__ split a switch at Lincoln Street. There were two wheels down. When I went home, the car foreman was on the way to rerail it.

He slammed a thick file down on his desk. Well, they managed to turn it over!

How did they manage that? The engine split a switch and there were two wheels down. It was at Lincoln Street. The car foreman and roundhouse foreman were right there.

I don't know, but I don't want your excuses. If there is any incident involving an engine, you call the Road Foreman immediately. Get out of here!

OK, fine. There were a lot of incidents involving an engine in some way. 99.999083% of them were completely non-events. I made a lot of completely useless calls to the Road Foreman (who was Really Good and finally quit when integrity got in the way of the job).

The dispatchers office was on the second floor of the brick building on the south side of the tracks east of Halsted Street at Barr Yard. https://goo.gl/maps/pLeqifPvCum (the office was directly above the two empty parking spaces in the picture, in front of the building). We had a front row seat to switching in the Eastbound yard and to trains leaving (at which point, the yard could no longer lie about "New Yorker's leaving, etc. in order to show on time).

One evening, there was a very loud repeated boom boom boom, then silence. I got up, walked around the desk to the window and saw a B&OCT switch engine on its side, half buried, the front facing the window, and three covered hoppers on top of it.

Long before, in the old format, pre C&O/B&O timetable (8x10"), there had been a special instruction that in Barr Yard, all movements were to yield to the lead engines. Somewhere in moving to the C&O/B&O standard format timetable, that instruction disappeared, but it was still an "unwritten rule" at Barr Yard. That worked well when everyone running to and from Barr was older than dirt. That was changing in the early 70s. There was a lot of hiring and a lot of new management on the scene. C&EI was showing its MP colors and there was a lot of "we don't care how you used to do it."

The C&EI transfer was ready to leave town, back to Yard Center. The B&OCT job was down in a track getting a cut to bang out (which was always done at lightning speed at Barr, where it was not uncommon for three lead jobs to be working the same lead simultaneously, choreographed by the yardmaster - with no radio!). The C&EI head man walked to the switch that was against them, lined it for their track without looking for the lead job that owned the lead, and they took off for Riverdale. They didn't get far. They were about half way out of the track when the lead job came smoking down the lead, the engineer looking back at the switchmen for signs (I don't remember for sure, I think they were going to stop short and make a move on the way out). The way that it was supposed to work was that with the switches lined for them all the way out the ladder onto the switching lead, it was their railroad. BOOM! The yard job went right through the C&EI, the engine winding up under a couple of cars from their cut and one from the C&EI. Somehow, the B&OCT engineer managed to walk away from it under his own power.

I walked around the desk, picked up the phone, and dialed the Road Foreman's home number (actually his railroad home number - I was one of the very few who knew that he had a secret, unpublished home number).

Hi Jim, I'm going to need you down here right in front of the office. You're going to be a while.

On the ground?

Mmmmm, no, not really. In the ground is a better description.

Oh - (long silence)

I described the debacle to him.

OK, see you in a little bit. Make sure you call The Boss.

Oh yeah, he's next.

Years later, I worked for a Superintendent who demanded that call him first for every incident before doing anything. Yup, I can do that. For every call about an incident, the conversation went

OK, know anything else (in response to We're in the ditch east of Gold Bar, etc.)?

Nope.

What have you got going?

Nothing.

He was a slow learner, but after several incidents, he finally told me that instead of calling him first, I should find out what was going on, do something about it, THEN call him.

TAW

Another great story-----thanks for taking the time to share it!!

Man, I am really diggin' the TAW stories. Please keep them coming.

I really think that TAW should collate all his dispatching / operational tales into a book. I would be in the front of the queue to purchase one even though I'm from the other side of the pond.

Corpach Wrote:
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> I really think that TAW should collate all his
> dispatching / operational tales into a book. I
> would be in the front of the queue to purchase
> one even though I'm from the other side of the
> pond.

I second that motion!

Posted from Android

And I third it!

Thanks SO much TAW, for all your fascinating and very
well-written stories here.  Please do write a book!

Kinda reminds me of the time the H BARPAS crashed and burned at Bieber. Open switch into the house track with loaded grain cars. Anyway they had engines sideways, upside down, on fire you name it. It was all the conductor could do to get his portable and dial 911. When the ds came on he said "call me back when you can get to a better radio", casually and almost sarcasticly. Welcome to railroading in the 2000's : /

GN599 Wrote:
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> Kinda reminds me of the time the H BARPAS crashed
> and burned at Bieber. Open switch into the house
> track with loaded grain cars. Anyway they had
> engines sideways, upside down, on fire you name
> it. It was all the conductor could do to get his
> portable and dial 911. When the ds came on he said
> "call me back when you can get to a better radio",
> casually and almost sarcasticly. Welcome to
> railroading in the 2000's : /
~~ Yeah that was quit a pile up and was sooooo loud. It happened right about 200 yards behind my house their in Bieber(Nubieber) about a month afterr I moved there. Right after that BNSF sure put those switch point indicators in quick. I always have wondered who left the switch lined in that position and hoped that it was the last of the Bieber derailments but the one the next year right their was also bad and we were evacuated for 10 hours.  I have photos of both derailments. 

Bill Williams
Cottonwood, CA

I remember looking out that 2nd floor B&OCT dispatcher's window trying to find the eastbound that the yardmaster had just called and said he was out and running.  After about five to 10 minutes the train would finally roll past us on the South Open.  I never did have the "pleasure" of seeing an engine on its side, but I do remember the night that the yard didn't quite clear the Halsted Street bridge and turned the top row of Lincoln Continentals into convertibles....