Railroaders' Nostalgia > From the past -: MDC #77 A real 3000 car day at West Co

Date: 10/18/04 07:17
Mad Dog Cronicles #77: A Real 3000 Car Day
Author: mdo
3000 car hump counts


Gerald Hoops and I jointly set the 3000 car a day target. We knew that we would get to this level of production on weekends soon after the Terminal had set the record of 3360 plus. The most likely day would be on a Sunday. We had the cars to hump on Saturdays. However, we were usually short of serviced power and rested crews. The bowl was too much of a mess. You could just not hump enough cars productively and the yardmasters spent too much of the hump engines' time tying to straighten out the bowl and clean up the rehumps.

There was a much better chance on Sundays. For one thing, many of the trains set during the day on Saturday would be gone. The bowl inventory would be down some. Most of the rehump rails would be reprocessed. We also would have built up an inventory of trains that had already been inspected and worked by the carmen.

In March Gerald would relieve me on Friday nights at 11 pm. My job was to try and have as much room in a bowl that was as straight as possible. We had both learned not to clobber the bowl with rehumps just to get a good count on Friday. A much better strategy was to keep the bowl straight, just hump enough to keep from holding out too many arriving road trains. If we needed more room for arrivals there was always 904 and 905, along with 901 We could also stop a train at Kaiser, pulling it into the receiving yard with one of the Kaiser switchers later when we made room. I would come back at 7 am Saturday relieving "Little Brother's" team. The task on Saturday was to keep ahead of the arriving trains while trying to not to clobber the bowl or build up too much of a Chinese Wall of cars. The secret was to carefully chose which cuts we came to the hump with. Never try to hump an Oregon lumber train if the eastbound Pine Bluff, Houston and Phoenix rails are already full. You cannot depart a train and a half anyway.
Try not to hump that next east train until the first one had departed. That was why we were called planners to begin with.

Gerald would relieve me at 7 pm Saturday evening. If things were going well we would have a hump count of around 2200 cars over the hump at that point. With five hours to go in the day but with the hump engines needing to go into beans and a shift change at 11 pm. Hard to get 800 cars over the hump under those conditions and no need to for now arrivals are slowing down Try not to let the yardmasters mess up the bowl, Little Brother. was my usual good night wish.

On Sunday mornings in March I would always come in a little early and survey the yard before I relieved Gerald. On every succeeding Sunday Gerald would have more cars in the bowl than the last Sunday. I think that the second Sunday there were well over 900 hundred cars already in the count. I will try to give you 2500 when you get back I told Gerald. Our luck held and the count was right at 2500 cars into the bowl when Gerald relieved me at 7 pm. Only 500 cars to hump in 5 hours, a piece of cake opined Gerald. I called him right after midnight. We had a breakaway at 10 pm was the report. The final count was 2950 some cars.

The third Sunday was the day that we beat the 3000 car barrier. This time there were about 2550 cars over the hill when Gerald strolled into the planer's office at West Colton tower. You will get there this time I told him. He called me at home right after 11 pm. "Five cars to go," was all that he said. Then after a pause, "We got it!" was what he said next, Great! was my response. I think that our final count was close to 3100 cars that night.

After that Sunday night in March of 1974 we got 3000 plus hump counts when ever we needed to. One weekend we even turned in 3000 plus counts on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The job was much more relaxing after that.

I wrote this once before here. Now you may be able to understand how I felt a little better….. There is no better feeling in all the world than to stand out on the observation deck on the third floor of the administration building in the evening, watching the cars rolling down through the retarders and into the bowl at West Colton. Knowing that on this shift your team of yardmasters, switchmen, engineers, clerks, carmen and supervisors have cleaned out the receiving yard and pushed over a thousand cars over the hump. It also helps to know that if you need to, they will do it again tomorrow.

And, now you know a little about what it was like to work there before that.


After the month of April 1974, traffic levels on the SP dropped noticeably. For one thing, we had passed the normal spring peak season for rail traffic. However, the US economy took a dip, too. I think that after April, we rarely, if ever, achieved a three thousand car hump count. From that point on, the pressure was off of West Colton.

At the end of August of 1974, Bob McClanahan called me at home late one afternoon. I was working the night shift that month. Congratulations, He said. You are to be appointed Senior Assistant Terminal Superintendent at Oakland, California on the first of September.

He told me that he had decided to recommend that Henry Chidgy, one of the Assistant Trainmasters Mechanical Dept. whom I had been responsible for cross training, be promoted to Assistant Terminal Superintendent to fill my vacancy.

mdo
10/18/04

mdo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> After the month of April 1974, traffic levels on
> the SP dropped noticeably. For one thing, we had
> passed the normal spring peak season for rail
> traffic.

This is intriguing and somewhat surprising (to me anyway). Peak season for rail traffic in the Spring???!!

Spring is not the peak in the Pacific Northwest. Not even close.
Spring is not the peak in the Midwest. Not even close.
Spring is not the peak on the Overland Route. Not even close.

But evidently it was the peak at West Colton. So why was that?

Maybe because supplies for housing construction in Southern California and Arizona were stockpiled for a roaring start to the construction season right after the winter/early spring rains subside?

Was March the traffic peak on the Sunset Route? It's hard to imagine Gulf Coast chemical traffic had any pronounced peak season. Or maybe it did, supplying fertilizer and pesticides to California agriculture in the spring?

Is it still true that there is a pronounced traffic peak at West Colton in the spring??

Any insights would be appreciated.

Best regards,

Rob L.

Rob L wrote:

This is intriguing and somewhat surprising (to me anyway). Peak season for rail traffic in the Spring???!!


Maybe because supplies for housing construction in Southern California and Arizona were stockpiled for a roaring start to the construction season right after the winter/early spring rains subside?

Rob,

I think that you have it figured out.

mdo



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/12 12:53 by mdo.

Spring 1974, coming off a small recession the fall before might have something to do with it