Nostalgia & History > A clearance and a few train orders

In an earlier thread, Con Sweet posted a beautifully hand written train order. I can't compete with that and won't try. But I will post a set of orders I received at Hiland (top of Cajon Pass on the SP) on March 14, 1978 while working a helper out of West Colton to protect trains working up the (Palmdale) cutoff to be sure they didn't stall between West Colton and Hiland.

This particular helper job was called the "Dike Helper" and everybody, myself included, hated to catch that job. Sometimes you'd do nothing but sit in the spur at Dike for 12 hours and not turn a wheel and watch the trains go by. Sometimes they'd go by you at 15/18 mph or more and sometimes they'd crawl by you at 10 mph. It was up to the road crews if they wanted to use the Dike Helper or not. Most of them did not.

If the train wanted to use your services, they would pull west of the crossing at Dike and stop and we would come out of the spur and onto the siding and then out to the main line and couple up behind the caboose and help the train up to the top of the hill.

Upon arriving at Hiland the train would stop as soon as the rear of the train cleared the east switch. The rear brakeman would cut us off and away they would go. Either the fireman or myself would go into the trailer they had set up, or the caboose, depending on whether it was the daylight shift or the afternoon/midnight shift.

As a little side note to this story a trailer was moved in first before the caboose by the SP on the same space where the funeral car DESCANSO sat before it was moved to the Orange Empire Railroad Museum. When it was realized that a train order office for just the daylight shift wasn't good enough the retired SP caboose 1202 was made into a train order office. I believe the daylight operator lived in the trailer and worked the daylight shift while the afternoon and midnight shifts lived at their normal residence. There also was a caboose converted into a train order office and placed at Dike but I don't remember when that was placed in service.

So, we would go into the train order office and hopefully the operator would be in the process of getting us cleared up to go back down to Dike or, if we were lucky, all the way back to West Colton and we would take the power to the roundhouse and then go off duty.

Usually we would get lucky and we'd get our running orders and get back down the hill. Here is a small sample of what a set of orders we would receive would look like. We received a total of 5 orders at Hiland. After the train orders are posted I will post a photo of the caboose train order office at Hiland.

I hope you enjoy reading them and the photo of the caboose.

JE

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Train order #33...

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Train order #35...

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Train order #36...

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Train order # 35 1/2... I don't believe I ever saw a train order number with a fraction.

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Train order #1554...

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Caboose 1202 as a train order office. The one at Dike looked just the same.

JE

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Wonderful set of trainorders, and I too have never heard of a 1/2 numbered order. I remember as a teenager hanging out at the Dike "depot" in the mid-70s and the operator giving me orders and line-ups. In return I made the run to the Devore hamburger stand to load up. I learned early that railroads love to eat. One day the Dike helper was in the pocket and the crew invited me up. Nothing was coming, so we took a "spin" on the siding, with me at the throttle. I was hooked. The engine was 9234 -- never forget it.

Why would a westward train not ask for help, especially if it was there, waiting to do something? Would the time to cut it in and out take as much time than they would save by the faster running?

Also, did you run lite to Phelan to help eastward trains? I know the grade is nothing compared to the east slope, but those lumber drags were typically heavier.

BCHellman Wrote:
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> Wonderful set of trainorders, and I too have
> never heard of a 1/2 numbered order. I remember as
> a teenager hanging out at the Dike "depot" in the
> mid-70s and the operator giving me orders and
> line-ups. In return I made the run to the Devore
> hamburger stand to load up. I learned early that
> railroads love to eat. One day the Dike helper was
> in the pocket and the crew invited me up. Nothing
> was coming, so we took a "spin" on the siding,
> with me at the throttle. I was hooked. The engine
> was 9234 -- never forget it.
>
> Why would a westward train not ask for help,
> especially if it was there, waiting to do
> something? Would the time to cut it in and out
> take as much time than they would save by the
> faster running?
>
> Also, did you run lite to Phelan to help eastward
> trains? I know the grade is nothing compared to
> the east slope, but those lumber drags were
> typically heavier.
>
>
>

Like you had mentioned, some of the trains didn't want the help even though they might be struggling a bit to get up the hill. Most of them figured that by the time they stop, have the helper line out, couple up to the caboose, go up the hill, stop again at the top, and then start again the amount of time spent picking up the helper wasn't worth it at all. Besides, most of the time they wouldn't get a helper out of Mojave unless they had power problems between Dike and Mojave.

Only once while working the "Dike helper" did I have to go lite from Dike in an westwardly direction all the way to Wash (about 47 miles) to help an eastbound who had a lead unit problem. Upon arrival at Wash I was put on the point, MUed the power and took the train all the way into West Colton yard.

JE

Again, when I bribe Tony J to show me how to scan this stuff, I have a Clearance out of BI with every Order Number filled in except one. It was like No. 830-832 or something, going to LA.

Nudge

Order 35,1/2? Sounds like the ds had a sense of humor and was tired of issuing train orders.

I noticed that the orders that you posted were very generic looking in nature. The orders from previous generations were very distinctively identified by the railroad that owned and used them. Weren't "form 19" orders green flimsies, and Form 35 orders yellow flimsies? I think that this was a universal fact, no matter what railroad name was at the top. One of these days I'll scan and post some of the orders from various North American railroads that my Pop collected. Right now, I just have a few scanned from the Rio Grande. None of the orders that I've just scanned were written by my dad, although a have quite a few that were written by him. I wonder why some of the orders were written in long hand by the operators, and others were written on the all capital lettered typewriters. Here is a copy of a clearance card that accompanied the train order that I posted a couple of days ago. Notice the similarities between the cc's of 1939 on the Grane and the 1978 one from the SP in 1978.

Con

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I never have heard of any green train order paper. I have only seen the yellow onion skin type train order paper that is normally used.

One of the relief operators at Hiland, Royal Beauchamp, would sometimes fill out the train order(s) and clearance in long hand (of which I have a couple of them) instead of using the typewriter. Maybe it was because he's rather do it that way than to mess with the typewriter. I also have a couple of clearances that were filled out by using a typewriter instead of filling it out long hand but the prevalant method was to write it out long hand.

All of the railroad typewriters that I have seen that were used for copying train orders all used upper case letters and were not equipped to use lower case letters.

JE

xtra1188w Wrote:
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> Weren't "form 19" orders green flimsies,
> and Form 35 orders yellow flimsies? I think that
> this was a universal fact, no matter what railroad
> name was at the top.


It was form 33, not 35. The color of the order did not necessarily indicate the form -- though some railroads may have adopted color for form. On the SP it was always yellow. The difference between form 19 and 33 was that the conductor and engineer had to sign for form 33 orders, while form 19 did not require any signature. So for form 33 the crew had to stop the train. The conductor and engineer had to walk to the office. The telegrapher would repeat the dispatcher's order to both conducter and engineer, then each would repeat the order, acknowledge that they understood it, and then sign it.

Do you think you might mean a "31" order instead of a "33" order?

JE

Yeah, I think that it probably was "form 31" or ? "33"? I dunno, I ain't very good with remembering numbers..
BTW, I have also seen pink flimsies as well as yellow and green. When I find some of each one, I'll scan and post examples of the same.

Con

In 1958 and 1959, when I worked for IC, they used only 19 orders, green flimsey, and if I remember correctly, we X'ed the order (acknowledging the order without repeating it, which made it a holding order for the train addressed. In the 1960's when I worked for the NYC, they used green 19 orders and yellow 31 orders. I only had one 31 order signed, the rest were either annulled, or after the opposing train was in the clear, we marked it a 19 order to in the space for signature at the bottom.

NYC and IC had the name of the railroad on the order. Later, when collecting them, I found that SP did not. I think ATSF had a name on the form.