Railroaders' Nostalgia > Saturday morning duty

The previous post about the Rock Island reminded me of when I was working for the UP in KC on the survey crew. We had a rotation for duty in the DE's office on Saturday mornings. The DE was in there because Bob Brown (UP Chief Engineer) was in his office in Omaha and wanted his DE's available. The DE needed some people on hand also to handle whatever flowed down hill.

This would have been about 1975 or 76, when Bill Wimmer was DE and I was there along with Jim Worthington the General Roadmaster. A call came in from Omaha and Mr. Wimmer came out to talk to Jim. He told him to get on a plane right away and head out to Limon, CO and have a heart to heart talk with the foreman of the surfacing gang working near there.

Limon was where the Rock Island came onto the UP and ran on trackage rights into Denver. UP had a surfacing crew working west from Limon. The Rock Island Chief Engineer, Tom Schmidt, had been out looking over his territory and looked in on the UP crew doing work on track his trains ran on.

As I heard it that morning, Mr. Schmidt had approached the foreman and asked why he was turning Class 3 track into Class 1 track. The foreman apparently did not take kindly to such a comment and without determining who he was talking to proceeded to tell Mr. Schmidt to take his thoughts and observations and put them where the sun don't shine and various other recommendations.

I had the opportunity to meet Tom Schmidt several years later and he remembered the incident and got a chuckle out of my view of the UP's reaction.

Wonder what Bill Wimmer's response was?

Having known Tom Schmidt for many years now, I would have liked to have witnessed that one!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/12 13:50 by aussiehinz.