Railroaders' Nostalgia > Starting a New Day

Way back when, the biggest shipper on the Southern Pacific was General Motors, and there were two SP served GM assembly plants in Southern California; one at South Gate, known as Tweedy, while the other one was at Van Nuys, known as Gemco.
One afternoon, a local came into LA hauling a train of mixed freight and GM empties from Gemco and came into the A-yard unit of Taylor Yard. The usual move was to yard the train and go home.
However, on this day, they were instructed to wait at the Top End of A-Yard for s short train of shut down cars for the GM Gemco plant. Now shut down means exactly that. If the plant doesn't get those cars right now, the assembly line would grind to a halt over a lack of parts. Therefore, they were the hottest moves on the planet!
The engineer upon hearing this immediately gets dollar signs in his eyes. It seemed as though the engineer's agreement called for the engineer to start a new day if he was eight hours or more leaving the terminal for a second time. This eight hour threshold was getting close.
After a bit, here comes the hot cars. The name of the engineer was a guy named Kenny Cee. His last name has been disguised, but I'm sure some of you San Joaquin old heads will know who I'm talking about. His plan was to stall around until the second day started.
A word about Mr. Cee.When he was a fireman, he could never stay awake long enough to learn anything, so very few guys ever let him run. Even one of the good engineers, Harold Chrisman tried to take him under his wing and show him something, but to no avail. He somehow muddled his way through the simulator program and was promoted.
He got down off the engine, slowly walked around the power, climbed back up in the cab, called the roundhouse to report a thin brake shoe on the second unit that would have to be changed. The stall was in, but not for long!
I had a ring side seat for all this, since I was up at the Top End waiting for my power to come out. Developments were not long in coming!
A cloud of dust appeared about the yard office, caused by Terminal Superintendent George Delellis's car. He piled out of that car, went across the lead tracks, and I don't think he hit the ground more than every fifth stride. Up the ladder he went, and if any of you remember George, you can imagine smoke and flames were coming out the cab windows very quickly.
Within 15 seconds, that train was moving toward Gemco as Kenny Cee was pouring blood out of his boots from one of Delellis's legendary ass chewings.
Kenny Cee didn't last very long with the SP. He was off duty one time, drove up to Bakersfield, took a room at the motel we stayed at on the SP account, and had a big old party with some local girls at the SP's expense. He got fired over that for dishonesty, and never came back.


Brian Black
Retired SP/UP Conductor

Back in the mid-80's a memo when up at the Amtrak Crew Base in Seattle. It said that if you were going to be needing a prostitute, you must get your own room. No prostitutes in rooms paid for by Amtrak. The memo disappeared the day it went up. So did the next two. The problem wasn't an act of defiance- the problem was that such a message with the Amtrak letterhead was so.... collectable!
SR Bush
Dutch Flat



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/14 21:35 by BoilingMan.

Right about the same time, a conductor worked from LA to SLO, and when he got there, went to Tortilla Flats for dinner. Along with dinner was some liquid courage, which resulted in the conductor calling a cab to take him back to his motel, and charging it to the SP. The only problem was that the crew dispatcher wouldn't sign the cab voucher, and when the cabbie got angry, the crew dispatcher called the trainmaster. The end result was that the condr was charged with abusing the company's credit

ExSPCondr Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Right about the same time, a conductor worked from
> LA to SLO, and when he got there, went to Tortilla
> Flats for dinner. Along with dinner was some
> liquid courage, which resulted in the conductor
> calling a cab to take him back to his motel, and
> charging it to the SP. The only problem was that
> the crew dispatcher wouldn't sign the cab voucher,
> and when the cabbie got angry, the crew dispatcher
> called the trainmaster. The end result was that
> the condr was charged with abusing the company's
> credit



But this was after he and the cabbie had made several stops at a few bars wasn't it George?

V

SLOCONDR

I never heard that story about Kenny before... He was a piece of work ... his butt was connected to his eyelids ! every time that he sat down he went to sleep. I finally got tired to telling him to stay awake if he wasn't sleeping he was smoking.. finally decided I would rather have a non smoking cab..

Every once and a while, we would get a second day in the yard at SLO on the helpers. The trainmen knew it and low and behold, we couldn't get the air and then it was walking the cut out to old Hathaway to couple to the head end. SOB, the trainmaster,(WAG) would be looking out his upstairs window, you could see the red in his neck, knowing what was going on but no way to stop it. When we worked 16 hours it was common to try to get 2 or 3 trips out of a helper, but a lot of "second day in the yard", was paid to the Helper Engineer & Fireman.


Nudge