Railroaders' Nostalgia > Performing a "Flying Switch"

I think this is an old term used for pulling a car or a cut of cars toward and into a siding on their own.   

As a youngster living at Haviland, Ks in the early 1950's and while being with my dad at my uncle's Chevrolet garage on Main St. near the Rock Island tracks, I observed this operation many times.  The mainline enters town from the west on a slight downgrade passing through the Main St. crossing and nearly 300 ft. beyond the east passing-siding switch before beginning an upgrade climb for about 1/3 mile.  This passing siding was to the south side of the mainline.  When a westbound train was setting out cars to the Farmer's Coop's elevator track, they had to first pass through this switch, and consequently, it was a slight uphill climb for the car(s).

The operation was performed as follows.  Once the locomotive and car(s) had their momentum up, a brief slack let the riding brakeman on the lead car pull the uncoupler while the loco then hurridly gained speed, getting past the switch points on the mainline.  While the car(s) were quickly approaching, the other brakeman threw the switch to the siding allowing the car(s) to enter.  As the cars entered the siding, the riding brakeman was either climbing the ladder toward the brake wheel or if the brake wheel wasn't at that location, he would board where a wheel was next available in order to stop the car(s) clear of the main track.  The loco was then backed past the switch points on the main track, then entered the passing track to push the car(s) into the elevator track.

I never knew of any injuries at this location from this maneuver, but I know it's no longer allowed by the FRA.  I'd like to hear from other railroader's experiences or stories of executing a "flying switch".

We did this on the Ventura County Railway everyday. Most of the time it worked fine. Every once in a while we'd have a car frog us and would have to get creative to get it clear. On those rare brainfart ocassions, the brakey would not be looking at the gap between the car and loco and line the switch either under the engine or car, resulting in a rather pissed off engineer. and management. Now the fun manuever was the combination dropkick. The S6's were great for that.

We called them drops on the BN. There were also Dutch drops where you'd kick a car up an incline.
 

>We called them drops on the BN.

Same on the SP, although in the area where I worked we referred to a "dutch drop" as a "jackass drop", particularly if it was done on level track, which required a lot more room to get the cars rolling and enough time to stop the engine and reverse its direction to get out of their way.

Here's much more on this subject...

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3138309,3147774#msg-3147774

And here's a whole lot more on the subject if you have the time...........

     http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3636729,page=1
 

The wildest example of a flying switch I ever saw was on the CN at Pelletier, Quebec, circa 1986. I was following a westbound intermodal hotshot (205 or 217, I forget which number it was back then) powered by 3 MLWs when he stopped in the CTC siding at the summit of the grade over the Appalachians, at Pelletier station. There was a lot of radio conversation (in French), most of which I could not make out. After a while, the power cut off and started down the west side of the hill as a light engine. What the .... ????

About a mile down the hill, on the 1.2% or so grade, an eastbound powered by 5 units (208, if I recall correctly; it had lots of intermodal plus some carload) had stalled out. One of its units was dead and another was not loading. (If I recall correctly, they were both GMs. The other three units, MLWs, seemed to be OK.) The power off the westbound tied on, both engineers opened their throttles, and 208 was on the move up the grade. After about a half mile working back up the hill, the power for the westbound uncoupled and raced ahead back into the CTC siding. The power switch was re-set for the main line. Meanwhile, 208 struggled up the grade on its own, going slower and slower. And slower.

The lead unit on the eastbound made it as far as the top of the hill alongside the eastbound standing in the siding. Running wide open with sanders on full, it stalled again right there. But now the westbound was of no help, unless if backed its train down the east side of the hill past the east switch (a dubious proposition). By this time it was after sunset, and I was expected in Quebec city that night, so I took off, leaving this jackpot behind.

I later learned that the lead unit on the westbound had burned the main-line rail right down to the webbing when it stalled out the second time.

In retrospect, a flying switch, attempted uphill on a 1.2% grade with a ~6,000 ton train, seemed like a pretty crazy idea.

Best regards,

Rob L.

I have a DVD (original release was VHS) from Rail Innovations that shows a CP helper crew on Roger's Pass doing a drop with the helpers. Two 6 unit helper sets of SD40's ran down the hill together after pushing their respective trains upgrade. Coming into Rogers, the crew of the lead helper set was assigned another push, so they cut off on the fly, then ran ahead to allow the trailing helper set to pull into the helper pocket and go for coffee.
-Trevor

I used to love making a drop.  Working in Salinas back in the day, we made plenty of them.  Think I only got hemmed in once when a new brakeman started tying the handbrake too soon.  When everything worked, it was a thing of beauty.

>Running wide open with sanders on full, it stalled again right there

Running with the throttle wide open at this low a speed is guaranteed to stall a train because it tires to force too much current through the traction motors, causing the slip slide control to reduces tractive effort below what it would be by simply backing off on the throttle, particularly in the days before IDAC and Super Series control. On the other hand, this is no sure-fire cure because train resistance might exceed the ability of the engines to pull it.

We dropped cars all the time. Had to in order to get them to the right spur and not have to shove them ahead of the engine for miles on end. Only place we "Dutched" them was San Ardo on the Coast.  You would be headed east, stop back at the house track switch far enough back to hold the pick up plus the a little more. You would cut the power off go up to the loads on the beet track and make sure they were  all together. Then when the move was ready, the man at the switch would give you a small highball. Then a pin sign, then a big highball to the switch. Once you were over the switch with just the power he would give you another a-head back up the main to clear. The cars would roll by you, out to the main, you would back up and make a joint and you would be ready to go east towards SLO. There was always that "Pucker Factor" getting the engines back in the clear the other way. 

I worked a midnight goat at the east end of Brooklyn yard that switched to dairy and other places down towards the steel bridge. It was a regular crew until one night we got a new "Forman". I don't know why he would ask the engineer but he asked how we got cars into the dairy and I told him we dropped them. I thought he knew the area but I guess he didn't.. Its up hill from the steel bridge to Brooklyn yard.  Before you get to the dairy there is a switch that goes into the plant and it crosses another spur on a diamond. Trouble was at the diamond, the grade reverses to a steep downhill to a sump and then up hill into the plant. He gave me a kick sign and would them up, then a pin and then a highball. The car went right on by me as usual but nobody was on the brake.  Well the car hit the ones tied down, went straight up in the air and kinda of tipped over.  Early quit.  This same trainmen did the same thing 3 nights later but rode the car. Trouble was he never checked the hand brake and it was B/O. He bailed off just before a repeat of the same thing. 

The old heads really knew how to get over the road and this stuff was nothing to them. I couldn't beleive how a 65-70  year old guys could drop off at the east end of Chorro, run across the pasture to the west end of Goldtree as you went around the big horseshoe, unlock all the switches, get the cars ready and the moment you entered the siding would start rolling the pickup down to the derail at the east end. You were coupled up before you knew it, made the air and picked him up on the hack and were on the way to SLO in 10 minutes or less. The dispatchers knew who could run and not tie up there railroad. It meant going to SLO and into the yard for Atk or waiting in the hole as far away as Cuesta or Margarita adding another hour or so to your trip.  Those were the days.


Nudge

 

And if you haven't read enough about drops, there's this thread from 11 years ago-  <http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,890324,890567#msg-890567&gt;  From that thread, the Dutch drop or dive (thanks, Roustabout Al for the term)

"40 years ago I often watched SP's Patata Local in South Gate, CA, do a variation of the drop. The engine would duck into a spur and let the cut of cars continue up the main, in this case up the approach to the Los Angeles River bridge. The engine would come back out onto the main behind the cars, the cut would roll uphill to a stop, then roll backwards to be caught by the engine. That saved running around the cut in a nearby yard that may not have had a clear alley."

mapboy

 

I enjoyed reading this thread. It reminds me of the stories my old friend, retired Wabash Railroad Conductor Clarence Montgomery, used to tell me before he passed away at age 97 in 2012. Many of his stories, in his words, are in my Railroading on the Wabash Fourth District book (almost sold out now). His crew often did flying swtich manuevers on the Gary Local Mixed train that ran btw Gary, Indiana and Montpelier, Ohio (featured in one chapter in the book.) Most of the time things went fine, though I suspect fatigue would set in once in a while like this incident at MIllersburg, Indiana:

​"Next was Millersburg, where we crossed over the New York Central mainline above grade. The Wabash had a track that went downhill to a lumber-coal yard and team track. Going west we would have to do a flying switch manuever because of the direction of the swtich and one of us would have to ride that car downhill. One time Leo Reichle was on the ground tending the switch for our flying switch manuever (or Dutch Drop as some call it). And Chuck Ferguson, the engineer didn't give him enough room, so Leo didn't throw the switch. I was riding on the rear-end of the car on the brake platform and my car slammed into that engine but luckily I didn't fall off."

​If you'd like to see some flying switch manuevers (and car kicking, including multiple flying switch manuevers at the same time!) on old 8mm home movies taken by these rairloaders in the 1950s, go to my website and see the November 5, 2016 blog. (Click on the blog buttton on the home page to get there).

Victor A. Baird
​http://www.erstwhilepublications.com



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 11/05/16 20:09 by wabash2800.