Nostalgia & History > T&P humor, or splinters and needles.

On what is now the Baird Subdivision of the UP ex-Texas & Pacific in the l940's lived a signal maintainer that we will just call Scotty. His territory ran thru Cisco, Eastland, Ranger, and Strawn on the east end. He knew where every set-off was for a track speeder which was his means of transportation. He was particulary well known for running against red block signals and would not get off the track until he saw smoke (steam engines coming). Says it saved him lots of time and he never had to work overtime. Just outside of Ranger was a passing track called Tiffin and it was the start of about a 13 mile 1.35% downhill grade thru Wiles and then into Strawn. It basically was a curvey mountain type of track twisting and turning a lot, hugging the sides of the Palo Pinto hills.

He had run the signals for years and was continuing this practice in 1949. He was running just about all that track speeder would do down hill trying to get almost to Wiles when he came around a curve and surprise, he met 4 brand spanking new F-7's coming up hill (no smoke!) at about 20 MPH and he figured he was doing close to 35. Well sir, being no dummy he "joined the birds" (jumped from the track speeder). The meeting between the speeder and the F-7 was rather dramatic. Other than the metal parts, it simply exploded on the pilot of the engine.

Being on the side of the hills he rolled and rolled and it was a rather rough trip down till he stopped.
Well, he got fired allright, although the union got him back on after 90 days. Scotty said he really didn't mind being off the 90 days since it took his wife about that long to get all the prickly pear cactus needles out of him!

So, did he continue to blow red lights or did he "adjust to the new paradigm?"

I think you can reasonably say he complied with signals from then on.