Railroaders' Nostalgia > getting off but not on moving equipment

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From: Fbedder@aol.com
To: FBEDDER@AOL.COM
Sent: 10/20/2012 8:31:41 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time
Subj:Getting off but not on moving equipment


All these stories about moving equipment started by Aronco reminded me of one that an old head engineer told me when I was firing on the Santa Fe Gallup Sub .
Long before I worked there it seems there was a long mty reefer drag being operated across the New Mexico desert from Belen to Gallup when it suddenly stopped in the middle of nowwhere.Now this was before they had radio communication and the conductor in the caboose had no way of knowing why his long train was standing still in the desert.What he wasn't aware of was that the head end crew had spotted a hotbox 30 or so cars back and they had to stop to allow the head brakeman and fireman to re-brass it.

This took more time than usual for this task and after a half hour or so the conductor decided to walk forward and hopefully help fix what ever the problem was.He had a brand new youngster first trip brakeman with him in the caboose and before he left he told him to place himself on the track next to the steps with a red flag and if the caboose suddenly started to move to jump on as he didn't want him to be left alone in the desert.

Meanwhile as the conductor was walking forward toward the head end, the reefers started to move.The conductor started walking toward the caboose ,then he was running as the yellow reefers and the caboose were moving faster and faster down the grade.As he ran he prayed that the caboose would show soon and he could board his train.Then about 30 cars away he spotted the markers coming toward him, But then the speed was so fast he realized that by the time the caboose and he met the speed was so great that he would never be able to get on!

He then changed his prayer to ask that the kid brakeman would be on the back platform and that he would pull the air when he saw him .As the rear platform approached the kid was there leaning out and the conductor yelled "Pull the air"!

The kid obviously didn't understand what he meant and did nothing.As the caboose platform went by the conductor yelled."Hey Dont leave me here alone"!!

The kid didn't and he joined him !.

Together they went for a long walk with no talk for miles to get to a dispatchers phone box

And this is why the advent of two-way radios in the railway industry was a great step forward (being a one-time Santa Fe radio tech, I may be prejudiced). I used to tell people that if radios had been available in 1900, someone could have warned Casey Jones about the caboose fouling the main, and he never would have become famous in song and story.

Do radios enhance safety?
I think the verdict is mixed, the results could be better but human nature may interfere with the safety goal.
There are many cases where the reluctance of crew members to criticize or "rat out" someone who is in violation of the rules leads to silence on the air even when some remedial action is needed.
Sometimes a cryptic "the conductor is still coming out of the siding" can slow down a speeding hoghead as he pulls out too fast, I have heard that.
One case where an experienced engineer on a rear helper did little or nothing to caution a very green lead engineer was the SP Duffy St. runaway derailment. I never did hear why nothing was said, only that "we communicated by the brake pipe" (the helper engineer dumped the air, but by then they were beyond hope, accelerating down hill.
Comments?

railstiesballast Wrote:
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> Do radios enhance safety?
> I think the verdict is mixed, the results could
> be better but human nature may interfere with the
> safety goal.
> There are many cases where the reluctance of crew
> members to criticize or "rat out" someone who is
> in violation of the rules leads to silence on the
> air even when some remedial action is needed.
> Sometimes a cryptic "the conductor is still coming
> out of the siding" can slow down a speeding
> hoghead as he pulls out too fast, I have heard
> that.
> One case where an experienced engineer on a rear
> helper did little or nothing to caution a very
> green lead engineer was the SP Duffy St. runaway
> derailment. I never did hear why nothing was
> said, only that "we communicated by the brake
> pipe" (the helper engineer dumped the air, but by
> then they were beyond hope, accelerating down
> hill.
> Comments?

Was this the one where, when starting out, the helper engineer said on the radio, "I don't think we're gonna get this thing stopped." or words to that effect?

On the other hand, radios have saved a lot of lives and disasters. I can give you one right off the bat.

I was the engineer on an east train, in the siding at Guadalupe for the SF. We were making a pick up on the back lead and went into emergency. Thinking it was the brakeman cutting in the air too fast, I reset the air and the brakeman told me to take it ahead again. I went about a car length and felt something pulling me back and went into emergency again. By this time the SF was out of Waldorf, coming at 60 MPH. It was dark out and I just had a funny feeling. I got off the engine and walked over to look down the main line. There in the fog was a box car leaning over from the siding, blocking the main line. I could see the signals were red to the east so the SF was getting close and he had green signals. I ran back and called the hoghead on the radio and told him to stop. I then grabbed my keys and ran over to the house track switch and lined it in order to get the color on the SF. The hog head, LD No. 2, came to a stop at the east switch. Without a radio, you can guess what would have happened. As it turned out, the house track was clear, so the SF went around the mess, behind the depot and out the other end. He lost about 20 minutes.

Nudge

Here's a situation where the radio didn't help (almost)...fortunately, there was no accident.

In 1983 I was working an eastbound out of Bakersfield. The weather was dark and the temp was about 60. It was about 100am or so.

We were coming into Edison (first station east of Bakersfield) at about 40 as we were just starting up the grade to Sandcut when I noticed that something to my left at the Giumarra Winery spur didn't look right. As I got closer I could see that the signal light (Mars or Gyralite so pick one) was shining on some flatcars loaded with ties that had run through the derail out to foul the main track. So I try to call Albert Hale who was dispatching the mountain that night to tell him that these cars had rolled out and were fouling the westbound, or #1, main track. I could also see that the westward signal which is just east of the derail was green when it should have been red. I assumed that the cars rolled out enough to go through the derail but not far enough to get into the circuit to create a track occupation so that signal would be red. I must have tried for about 3 or 4 minutes to get Albert to no avail when I see the headlight of westbound coming around the curve at Sandcut. I tried calling the westbound but no answer. I called and called but still no answer. I called the caboose to see if my radio was working. Caboose said it sounded fine so I tried calling the westbound again but he still didn't answer.

By this time the distance between our two trains was getting shorter and shorter. I told the brakeman to get two fusees and light one and throw it out the window. I had him grab two in case the first fusee went out when it hit the ground as they sometimes do. After he threw the lit fusee out the window I went over to his side to look at the westward signal. It was still green. I got on the radio again and this time he finally answered. I told him to stop his train as quickly as he could without going into emergency and do not go beyond the west signal at Edison because of the flat cars that had rolled out and fouled the main ahead of him.

By this time I could breathe a sigh of relief as the westbound, which happened to be a Santa Fe manifest train) finally got stopped. He thanked me for the warning. And of course the dispatcher came on and said that the Bakersfield yardmaster called and said that I was trying to get a hold of him and what did I want. I told him about the derailed cars and said that I got the westbound stopped short of the cars.

I don't know what happened after that so we just kept going on our merry way as if it was just another day or, in this case, another night, on the railroad.

JDE