Railroaders' Nostalgia > It's c-c-colder than a well-digger's...

When I went to work for Montana Rail Link in the fall of 1987, there were at least 21 RR’s represented with former employees, from literally all over the country. My very 1st job with MRL was a 3-man crew, 1500 switch engine on October 31, 1987. As I remember those days it was sometimes very precarious trying to work switch engine shifts with a man from another RR. Some switching hand signals (both daylight with ‘highly visible material’ & night time lighted lantern) were sorta similar between all those RRs, but other hand signals were about as far apart as the predecessor RRs they came from. But the “stop sign”, which is a lower quadrant, half-circle, back & forth motion was absolutely universal! And that was an absolutely damn good thing! I personally experienced more than once giving (or receiving) a stop sign immediately after receiving (or giving) a complicated hand signal. I specifically remember one evening when this happened. I had to walk up about 30 car lengths to confer with my switching partner. “What-the-hello was THAT?”, I asked. When I got the explanation, I understood his particular variation of a routine hand signal. So I came back with “Okay, gotcha! Here’s how we did it on the Santa Fe”. We agreed upon which signal we would use and continued the shift without further ado. In some ensuing comparison conversations with fellow employees on my new RR it quickly became obvious that this situation arose numerous times. It got to be a source of great humor for some of us. I’ll always call the first 2-3 months of MRL’s existence the “Unsteady, heady days of a brand new RR”!

Going to work in the great Rocky Mountains of Montana naturally gives a person a reason to contemplate outdoor temperatures & other likely weather details. My switch foreman back on that (very balmy) Halloween afternoon was a cordial prior BN man, and my engineer was a Santa Fe man from Cleburne, TX whom I had met & worked with on the DM&E in South Dakota earlier in the year. We ended up becoming very close friends and we keep in touch, with both of us now in retirement. As my foreman & I got to know each other during my first-ever MRL shift, he asked me where I was from. When I replied Kansas he gave me a wry smile and informed me that I was “gonna freeze my a** off up here”! I just took this information in stride. I had anticipated the very same thing, and purchased a fresh set of ‘long-handles’ and other related apparel in appropriately varying thicknesses.

As the fall of 1987 became the spring of 1988 I kept waiting for my a** to freeze off. It never happened. I thought maybe it was just a mild winter, and never really thought about it again. A couple of years later I got into a conversation with a few guys about weather & temperatures & such. The whole bunch of us were on “other end of the road” layover in Spokane. We were taking turns talking about our worst experiences with cold weather. My original foreman was in attendance for this ‘discussion panel’, and when it came my turn to give forth chilling testimony I winked at him and told the guys my story. It goes something like this:

In November of 1978 I spent nearly 2 weeks covering a brakeman vacation vacancy in the frozen arctic wasteland otherwise known as Salina, KS. I had caught this assignment off the brakeman’s extra board in Emporia. The job was officially called the “Salina Roadswitcher” and went by local train #1353-54. Even for November the weather had been unusually cold, but there was one day in particular it was enough to give Frosty the Snowman a terrifying fear of shivering to death. (It was most likely the same day I photographed this dark & very frigidly sinister looking CF-7). This was a day our crew had a whole trainload of switching to do out at the huge, sprawling Bunge elevator complex NW of town on the Osborne branch (the old Salina Northern). By conductor Harold P. Wells’ estimation we would have a few hours of work out there. So it was a good idea to bring some extra apparel of the warm variety. I had my ‘grip’ in my car, so I went out and got some more clothes and put them on right away. I could sense a very cold day’s work coming so I wasn’t taking any chances.

Here’s how the day went (just the COLD, hard facts, ma’am!): I had 2 pairs of thick cotton tube socks wedged in between my feet and my standard work boots. There was no snow on the ground to speak of, so there was no need for over-galoshes. I was wearing 2 pairs of long underwear, a pair of Levi’s 501s, another pair of Levi’s 501s, a nylon outer lining for another layer of insulation. ALL of that was underneath a pair of heavy rubber rain pants for wind protection. I had a standard cotton T-shirt, and a cotton baseball T with long sleeves on underneath BOTH of my long-sleeved flannel shirts, with a long-sleeved sweat shirt [with a hood] next out. All of that was tucked underneath the other half (upper) of the heavy rubber rain gear, also with a hood. I’ve never been a person to wear a neck muffler comfortably, but I even had one of those in my grip for an emergency, such as this day.

We went to work and spent a solid hour in the yard getting our train together for day. It was cold, but the temperature was hovering between 10 & 15 degrees (where it would stay ALL day…) We finished making up our train made and proceeded out to Bunge. I won’t go into all the job details other than to say a lot of it involved switching “with air”. That is to say we had to have long strings of hoppers laced up with the train airline intact. Air brakes & train (air) lines can be notoriously finicky in really cold weather! Even more so if that cold weather is also very H-U-M-I-D. We would end up spending a lot of slack time, just standing around waiting for some iced-up brake valve to thaw out and work properly. I’m sure we spent at least 4 hours in total Bunge switching time (it seemed like 7 or 8). I don’t specifically recall warm-up breaks, but I’m sure we did. But the only place we could have warmed up was inside the cab of our ancient GP-7, #2802. On the other end of the consist was CF-7 2440, which is pictured along with the 2636. I don’t remember either cab heater working very well. At any rate it made a whole lot more sense to get all 4 crew members in 1 cab to create a shared body heat situation, even if there was only 3 seats. (Guess who had to stand up… ;^)

My time book says we went on duty at 7 AM, and tied up at 6 PM, 11 total hours on duty the day I shot the 2636. As I’ve already confessed, the temperature never got below 10 degrees. BUT… the relative humidity was well over 70%! Oh yeah: And the howling wind was gusting out of the north at 30-40 MPH… ALL DAY. Oh yeah: And that Bunge elevator was (still is) located on the NW edge of Salina up on top of a long rise of land. Oh yeah: And there is (was?) nothing, zero, zip, nada in the way of foliage to shield against wind on the north side of the elevator. Oh yeah: And the tracks we did the bulk of our switching into & out of were on the (you guessed it) north side of the elevator. The only suffering I didn’t have to endure was the singular pings of pain as chunks of ice (from exhaled breath) tore individual hairs out of my beard & moustache. I wouldn’t grow the facial hair that would identify my face for most of my adult life until later, in 1979.

I’ve worked in sub-zero temps numerous times in my RR career, but this was the all-time, #1 coldest work day I ever suffered, bar none! I remember the coldest temperature I ever worked in was indeed up in Montana. I had to do some set-out & pick-up work at minus 14 one afternoon in Paradise , MT. But the relative humidity was under 10% and there was NO wind.

I’m STILL shivering from November 1978 in Salina, Kansas…

1. AT&SF 2636 sitting in the freezing gloom outside the Santa Fe Salina Yard Office/Freighthouse building on November 20, 1978.

Thanks for the coffee!
Lance Garrels
santafe199



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/14 15:48 by santafe199.

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How'd you move with all that clothing! Moved like a penguin?

twjurgens Wrote:
> How'd you move with all that......

I was a wee bit slimmer in those days! Besides: when yer freezin' yer a** off ya tend to shrink up some...

;^)

Lance --
wow! THAT was some BITTER COLD that November day!
VERY well-written and very interesting. Please share more
of your railroad experiences.

(I'm a real "weather wimp". living as I do herein sunny and
warm Californian (SF Bay Area.) I don't know how you guys
stood that incredibly frigid weather, especially when you had
to stand around waiting for frozen brake valves to thaw.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/14 23:46 by Margaret_SP_fan.

Start worrying when the "Brass Monkey" has his long johns on. My home town was 30* below the winter of 1955-56,
the only time I was colder was at Reno,NV. because of the wind chill. Swede Albany,Or.

I've learned the hard way - cotton socks are OK at the gym, but in hot - OR - cold weather, wool blend rules. Add a polypropylene undersock (in heat or cold), and endurance doubles - no jive.
Polypro MUST be drip-dried; it'll shrink to infant proportions in a dryer. GRRR!
...Lorenzo

567Chant Wrote:
> ... wool blend rules....

All except for the itch. Wool is fine. Wool is great. Wool is wonderful...
Wonderfully itchy. Finely itchy. Greatly itchy. Really itchy. CONSTANTLY itchy. Drive you CRAZY itchy.

...other than those minor complaints, wool is perfect.

(did I mention how itchy wool is?)

santafe199 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 567Chant Wrote:
> > ... wool blend rules....
>
> All except for the itch. Wool is fine. Wool is
> great. Wool is wonderful...
> Wonderfully itchy. Finely itchy. Greatly itchy.
> Really itchy. CONSTANTLY itchy. Drive you CRAZY
> itchy.
>
> ...other than those minor complaints, wool is
> perfect.
>
> (did I mention how itchy wool is?)

Gotta get a better grade of wool. Think about it--wool while it's on the sheep is oily and absolutely nobody gets itchy shearing the little buggers (trust me, I've shorn hundreds of sheep, at the end of a day shearing your pants will be so soaked with lanolin that they can stand up by themselves, with nobody inside them). It's a matter of how much of that oil they take out while processing the stuff. The washable blends take a lot less of the lanolin out during processing and make for a much less itchy sock.

And of course the polypropylene liners (or silk liners) help a lot, too by removing direct skin contact with the sock entirely.

I've spent many, many hours outside on drill rigs, running geology sampling crews, etc. from Montana to upstate NY. My butt has literally BEEN the "well digger's ass" that seems to be the standard of comparison. High quality wool, with a liner, is the way to go.

Not everybody can wear wool, unfortunately. I'd hope the silk liners would help, but wouldn't try them for the first time out on the road. It's a shame, because very little can beat wool for warmth or the "warm when wet" property. It doesn't always hold up well under heavy use, but that's partly the grade of the wool, as you say.

I thought it was my imagination that I always got sick while I was knitting something big, but after an asthma scare it turned out I really can't tolerate the small floating fibers that come off. Also, my fingernails wear away from the abrasion of pulling the yarn across them. Whether it's an actual allergy or just easily irritated skin, I have to wear gloves and a dust mask to work with anything that has a high wool content and I don't dare wear it. That ticks me off because I always wanted to learn to spin and had to turn down an offer of a spinning wheel at Christmas.

--Beckt