Nostalgia & History > Your first trip

This thread might get some interesting responses. My first student fireman's road trip was LA-Yuma, electing not to lay-over in Indio since, in Nov 1962, the Hours of Service was still at 16 and as a student I was probably not covered anyway. Fireman from LA-Indio was R R (Bob)Graves, a man then in his late 40's, gregarious and helpful. Engineer was W.J.(Bill) Douglas. Bill was off of the extra board, about 45ish and was content to nurse his cigar. 4 or 5 covered wagons, uneventful daylight trip. Relieved at Indio by fireman J.A. (Joe the Camel Driver) DeCoster and J.W. (Cowboy) Crawford. Also uneventful to Yuma. Joe did all the talking but I noticed that 'Cowboy' was strangely silent. In fact, beyond the welcoming grunt I received at Indio he said nothing. After tieing up at Yuma in the early morning, Cowboy and I were walking down the outside stairway leading from the yard office to the street below when, at the midway point, two very loud gun-shots rang out followed by a blood curdling scream. Without looking at me and without pausing Cowboy said: "It's kinda dangerous around here". We continued on to an all-night diner, had breakfast then walked to the DelSol.

Westbound out of Yuma I caught Cowboy Crawford again but fireman 'VWM' had replaced Joe DeCoster. At some point, out of VWM's earshot, Cowboy wispered to me: "This guy,(meaning VWM), is gonna want to borrow some money from you before we get to Indio. Don't do it!". Sure enough, coming through Thermal, VWM leaned over and with pleading eyes asked if I could spot him some cash since he had to buy milk for the kids on his way home. I plead poverty and that was the end of that. Thanks Cowboy!

Charlie

My first student trip on the road was in June of '69. I was with T.B. "Ted" Ferree. We had an empty auto parts train (EPE I believe) out of LA with a total of 9 units with the 9072 as the lead unit. A pretty uneventful trip all the way to Indio which is where I got off.

On the way back from Indio, after being there for 24 hours, I ended up with C.E. "Chester" Epperson as the engineer and Sam Lundsford as the fireman. We had the City of Industry Bullring train which was on duty at about 5:00pm or so. We had a brand new, or at least fairly new, U33C on the point, the 8604. This was the first time I had ever been on one of the newer GE locomotives. As usual it was an uneventful trip back to LA. The only parts I remember is that (a) I had a hard time staying awake, (b) we got held at Colton Tower for about an hour, and (c) when we went across the LA River into the Bull Ring it was daylight.

When we finally got tied up, I went in to see the Road Foreman of Engines, Rollin Roberts, to hand in my paperwork on my student trips. He asked a few questions and was calling the crew dispatcher to get me marked up. Before he finished dialing, I asked a favor of him. Could he see if I could mark up on the firemans extra board at Colton because that's where I lived. He took care of it immediately. I got marked up and the next morning at about 3:00AM or so I caught a helper trip over Beaumont Hill with engineer John Salsbury. We made a Myoma turn and were on duty about eight hours. If memory serves me correctly, I ended up making about $42.00 for that trip. It sure beat that $31.96 I was making as a switchman.

As a little side note, I asked Chester Epperson if he remembered a young kid who, back about 1961 or so, while the westbound train was stopped at Colton Tower, has asked him if he could see the inside of an F unit. He said that he did remember that incident and he asked my why I had asked him that question. I told him I was the young kid who did the asking in 1961.

steamjocky

Steamjocky Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Rollin Roberts

A great guy.

He's the one who hired me at the request of Ernie Fromm.