Railroaders' Nostalgia > Smog, Steel Mills, Switchers, Summer 1962....

Continuing my ramblings about a career booming around Southern Pacific:

In late May, 1962, I completed another year of college at Arizona State, but I really had to get back to work because I was flat a-- broke. I threw my belongings into my car and headed for LA, where I presented my furlough letter from the previous Fall and was immediately "marked up" on the brakeman's extra board. Now this was big time railroading! At the train crew office at Taylor Yard, there were four crew clerks on duty all the time, calling men to fill vacancies on pool freight runs to Indio, Santa Barbara, and Bakersfield, and filling 85 outside switcher assignments at places like Oxnard, Gemco ( Van Nuys), City of Industry, Los Nietos, Pomona, Kaiser, Colton, Long Beach, Dolores, San Fernando, and Mojave. They also filled all the yard jobs in Los Angeles yard, and all of switching jobs on the Pacific Electric in the LA area. A fleet of yellow cabs waited at the door for crews that needed a ride to outlying points, or to transport crews out to "dogcatch" crews as far away as Mojave ( 100 miles).
And of course, there were still 8 passenger trains a day leaving LA on the SP that needed crews and baggagemen too. Wow! For a punk 18 year old from Phoenix, this was impressive.

That summer, I worked whatever came my way, a week on a branchline switcher up the Piru branch from Oxnard, a few days on a road switcher at Kaiser, breathing the fumes from the mill, freight trips to Indio over Beaumont Pass on brand new 7200 class GP-20's - my what an amazing locomotive! 2000 horsepower and turbocharged too! In the 60's, SP was booming around LA, and no brakeman ever had over 10 hours off between trips. And then I caught a trip on train 4, the Golden State from LA to Yuma, as the rear brakeman. We left LA at 130pm, and I remember the grey-brown hazing enveloping the LA basin as we headed East. At Colton, I could taste the smog in the air, and it was hard to make out Declezville Mountain just West of Colton crossing. The conductor on the train asked me why I wasn't qualified as a baggageman on passenger trains. I didn't know, but I quickly figured out that trainmen worked the baggagemens jobs, and there was always a shortage of trainmen willing to work Train Baggageman (TBM) jobs.

After a few days of "student" trips on different baggagemen's jobs, I was magically qualified to tend to the unloading of baggage, US Mail, remains, company mail and material, milk and cream in 5 and 10 gallon cans, bundled newspapers, and anything else someone threw into my baggage cars. Just a day or two later, a crew clerk motioned to me to talk with him thru a side window, where he asked me if I would like to work the baggage jobs on the San Joaquin and Owl trains between LA and Oakland. It seems that the LA crews got a small portion of those jobs for a few months each year as their share of mileage over the whole route, and no self-respecting LA man wanted to work a job that laid over in Oakland three days between runs. But an "extra" man like me would deadhead to Oakland and work the jobs and get paid for the deadhead trip, and for the return deadhead too! Sign me up!!

For a few months, you would find me concocting wild wacky routes to deadhead from LA to Oakland or reverse. I rode the Daylight up the Coast, rode the San Joaquin (too long a ride, really), rode the Cal Zephyr Oakland to Stockton, Santa Fe to Bakersfield, and bus to LA, rode Santa Fe from Richmond to Barstow, then Grand Canyon to LA, you name it I tried it. And of course, as is always the way of railroading, while working the baggage jobs, I almost had a remains (casket) roll out the door on a curve, I almost got left behind by my train at Merced, I had a 65 hour train ride on the San Joaquin during spring floods one year - baggagemen were not subject to the hours of service, you know; and the TBM stayed with the train if there was US Mail in his custody.

I also fell heir to trips on a classic train on the Coast Route. Trains 90 and 91, the Coast Mail, or as they were lovingly referred to, "Sad Sam". The Northbound mail train left LA at 10pm every night, with a motley consist of about 10 cars - from the head end, 2 40 foot boxcars in two tone grey paint but equipped with steam lines and passenger trucks, one car to set out at Oxnard and one for Ventura. Behind these cars was the RPO car with a 30 foot post office section and a 50 foot baggage compartment for mail. Next came the two or three baggage cars the TBM would work from, which would have stack of mail sacks and pouches for each point along the line, as well as baggage and company material, and usually about 50 full milk and cream cans going to the Tomales Bay Creamery in San Francisco.

Behind the TBM's cars were two or three baggage cars for Railway Express. The cars would be worked by an express messenger who loaded and unloaded packages at every point on the line also. The express messenger also handled shipments which required security or signature, and he had several strongboxes in one of his cars for the high security/valuable shipments. I quickly learned that it was a very good idea to become friendly with the express messenger. These men, employed by Railway Express, worked all the way to Portland, Oregon. When the Northbound mail train 91 arrived in Oakland about 400pm, the messengers cars would be switched to train 20, the Klamath, which was the mail train from Oakland to Portland. Because these guys traveled so far and so long, they took several large trunks with them, and one of these trunks would usually contain a camp stove, cooking utensils, and food, and of course, coffee. I remember several delightful breakfasts along the coast, sitting on a crate, with the doors on the baggage car open a bit, enjoying the view. What could have been better?? On the end of this hard working train was always a "sub", a commute coach for the occasional rider.

After eight hours stopping everywhere along the coast, the mail train would limp into San Luis Obispo about 630am, and the TBM was allowed to walk over the depot café for a meal while the station crew loaded and unloaded the mail and baggage. About 40 minutes later, under the stern and watchful eye of the local trainmaster, the mail train would depart North, with maybe 8 to 10 cars, with the head brakeman riding in the baggage car with me. The brakeman had to lock up the mail for Santa Margarita, Templeton, Atascadero, and San Miguel in the depot or the phone booth at each point ( remember those round concrete phone booths the SP loved??), so the baggageman would get down the stretcher from the overhead rack in the car, and get a short nap between San Luis and Paso Robles. I think I described a humorous incident in a older post about this part of the trip, where the brakeman watched me dozing, then chilled his hands outside the door of the baggage car, and then grabbed me with both hands around my neck. It didn't help that I had placed the stretcher atop a remains crate.

It seemed no time at all and it was December. I was having the time of my life working on the railroad, some much that I had elected to work the Fall semester, and return to college in the Spring of 1963. Now I had to figure out a way to get a furlough letter so I would have a job to return to in the Summer..More later...

TIOGA PASS

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

Nothing short of superb. I especially appreciated the insight into the Coast Mail consist.

Best rgds, SZ

aronco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> At the train crew office at Taylor
> Yard, there were four crew clerks on duty all the
> time, calling men to fill vacancies on pool
> freight runs to Indio, Santa Barbara, and
> Bakersfield, and filling 85 outside switcher
> assignments at places like Oxnard, Gemco ( Van
> Nuys), City of Industry, Los Nietos, Pomona,
> Kaiser, Colton, Long Beach, Dolores, San Fernando,
> and Mojave. They also filled all the yard jobs in
> Los Angeles yard, and all of switching jobs on the
> Pacific Electric in the LA area.

Norm, loved the post. Just a minor point however; the
Pacific Electric crew dispatchers were still located in the
yard office at Butte St. yard in October 1962 when I
went railroading. Since I quickly left PE employment in November 1962
in favor of a SP firing date (11-15-62), I cant recall just when
the PE callers moved to Taylor yard. The engine crew callers at Taylor
remained in the engineers locker room adjacent to the engine wash rack, about
a half mile south, under the watchful eye of Joe Schwartz, Bill Moore, Ross Shaw, Johnny Diaz,
Alvin F. 'Bud' Markham and lets not forget the indomitable Hattie Balsz among
others at least until after 1970.

Charlie



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/13 11:28 by cewherry.

Wouldn't we all have loved to do this. Great writing. Thanks

cewherry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Pacific Electric crew dispatchers were still
> located in the
> yard office at Butte St. yard in October 1962 when
> I
> went railroading. Since I quickly left PE
> employment in November 1962
> in favor of a SP firing date (11-15-62), I cant
> recall just when
> the PE callers moved to Taylor yard.


They moved in June of 1968, Charlie. None of them were happy about it either. There was Frank Morse, Evelyn Moore and Larry Cobb, and one other guy I can't remember his name.

V

SLOCONDR

Thanks guys - I remember the crew office lobby for trainmen was about 50 feet across, with a wall of glass all the way across. Each train or yard employee had a name tag, about 2 inches wide by 3/4 of an inch high. These name tags were enclosed in plastic, and the color of the tag indicated the occupation and qualifications of the employee. If I recall correctly, a plain white tag indicated a brakeman, and a yellow tab a conductor. If the employee had a passenger uniform a red dot would show on the tag, and if one was qualified for TBM work, there was another color dot. The tags looked something like this:

N. C. Orfall

B-713 6-30-61
TBM Unif.
Somehow the tags were moved around in slotted rails in the windows to indicate where you were working. I always wondered what would happen if the big earthquake struck and all those 2000 name tags ended up in a pile on the floor!! I do remember arriving at Tsaylor Yard in LA one time after a really long trip from Bakersfield ( perhaps 15 hours or so), and checking the "board" to see when I should work again. I was the 63rd man on the LA Division extra board so I should have plenty of time for a good sleep, do some laundry, and maybe have a nice meal. I was called to deadhead to Indio in freight service on a chartered Greyhound bus after only 5 hours off!!.

TIOGA PASS

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/13 21:33 by aronco.

Fascinating story, Norm!

From your description, it sounds like the SP crew callers did not use little wooden blocks (about the size of a pack of cigarettes) for their crew calling boards.

I remember seeing them used by Santa Fe in San Bernardino and Amtrak at Union Station in LA. Each block represented an employee and had much the same information on them that you illustrated.

Do you know if the REA guys paid into Railroad Retirement?

If REA had played its cards right, they could have been on the ground floor in the niche market that has been cultivated by FedEx and UPS.

Railway Express Employees paid into RR retirement like any other RR employee.

Frequently when I was attending college I worked for Railway Express at Mesa, Arizona. I suppose that accounts for my strong interest in "package" freight. I was the night trainmaster at Hobart Yard in Los Angeles in 1975 when UPS finally acquired their nationwide operating rights and tried to watch over the first UPS shipments from LA to the East. I developed a great deal of respect for UPS as a very well-run tight ship where every employee seems to understand the goals. Perhaps railroad could learn a bit about running a precision operation from UPS?

You are quite right about REA Express (the old Railway Express) missing the wave of small package shipping. About the same time as UPS started shipping trailers via rail all over the US, REA was collapsing, to the point that we were told to hold REA trailers inbound at Hobart for payment of freight charges. There were rumors of organized crime having their hands on part of REA Express in that same time frame. Something to do with shady TOFC trailer leasing. But if REA could have hung on a few more years, they might well have become something akin to UPS or Fed-Ex Ground?

TIOGA PASS

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

I knew a clerk at Hobart Yard who was kind of a "boomer" between crafts. He started out as a locomotive fireman, but got axed during the abolishment of many firemen's positions around 1964. Remember when it was a ballot proposition to California voters that year? Then he worked a few years in the baggage, mail and express cars. Among other things, he told me that, while working eastbound on the Santa Fe's Second District via Pasadena, everyone in the head-end cars would use the noise of clanking across the diamond of the PE line that ran up the middle of Euclid Ave in Upland as a reminder that they had "X" number of minutes before the stop at San Bernardino!

When those positions dried up, he became a clerk and that's where I met him.

He mentioned that the postal workers on the RPO cars used to carry side arms.

I wonder what he's doing now or if he's still alive.

Talk about "funky" air: When I worked at the Santa Fe LA Radio shop in 1969, I was sent to Hobart yard to replace a "talkback" pole that had been mowed down by a derailed freight car. Talkback speakers were used by the yard tower operators to speak with the switching crews. They had a pushbutton on the pole that would light up a lamp on the panel in the tower, and an outdoor-type loudspeaker on top. The man on the ground would push the button and (presumably) the tower operator or yardmaster would answer, rather like a two-way radio. Indeed, radios eventually made the wired system obsolete. Anyway, it was June 1969 when I went to Hobart for this task (the Radio Shop was next to the 8th St. Coach Yard in those days). As one can imagine, it was hot, humid, and the air was heavy with the smells of chemical works, salvage companies, rendering plants, meat packers, and other aromatic industries. I finally got the job done, and was very glad to be back in the relative cool of the shop. Another smelly spot was the Kaiser depot, next to the steel mill in Fontana. In those days, it was a fully-integrated mill, taking in coal, limestone and iron ore at one end and cranking out I-beams, steet pipe and other useful items at the other. The coal would be loaded into the coke ovens, where the coal tar would be removed; that was what gave Kaiser its distinkt fragrance. We'd get a lot of kids throwing rocks at our trains in Fontana, and I used to think all that crud in the air warped their brains, or that anyone with intelligence would live elsewhere. Today the steel mill is but a shadow of its former self, and the north side of the property is now the Fontana Raceway. When it opened, I thought that they should have the "Coke Oven Challenge" and the "Slag Heap 400" on their racing schedule.

Great story .. I remember many of those crew dispatchers, Jim Brown, Bill Lavigier, Barbara Vanwinkle.. to name a few.. blue tags were brakeman, yellow was a conductor, white was a brakeman prior to 1964,