Railroaders' Nostalgia > Fifteen Rounds With Mohammad Ali

After being with the UP in Kansas City for four years, I transferred to Salina, KS.  In Kansas City, I was 156 out of 160 men.  My transfer to Salina was a seniority move as most of the men in Salina at that time were over 60.  Of course, when I first arrived at Salina, I could not hold an engineer's job, so I fired on whatever job I could hold that paid the best.  This happened to be the interdivisional run between Salina and Kansas City. 
In the late 1970s, we only had two daily trains between Salina and Kansas City: Nos. 117-118 between Kansas City and Denver and Nos. 155-154 between Kansas City and Salina.  If the KP had hotshots back in those days, it was 117-118.  155 delivered the local cars for Salina and environs and one could call it a"Drag Freight".  It is No 155 that will entertain us in this thread. 
My regular engineer had laid off and I caught an extra board man, Sam L.  Now, Sam was a good man.  Give you the shirt off his back.  He just could NOT run a train.  We were called for No. 118 at Salina.  We had UPS and US Mail traffic.  Our head brakeman, Bernie, a veteran and used to working with Sam,  suggested to Sam that I run because I was familiar with the segment between Topeka and Kansas City.  So I ran east.
The next day we were called for No. 155 back to Salina.  Our power was an Omaha GP20 and two GP20Bs.  I ran to Topeka and after our pick up we had 140 cars.  Sam said, "I'll take em from here".  Both the Bernie and I cringed.   With that power and number of cars, we barely made it over 25 mph.   Sam was obviously lost because the speed limit through Silver Lake, first station west of Topeka was 45mph.  He set air and drug us down to about 10.  The conductor, Merle Broce, a witty  man, got on the radio and said "We don't have any slow order through here"!!!  Sam then set air for a little burg known as St. George with no speed restriction.  The last straw was at Manhattan where we had to stop and hand flag the Rock Island "Highline" crossing.  Merle got on the radio and said "Sam, I'm speaking to you from the floor of the caboose.  PLEASE!  Let the fireman run the engine"!  That just made Sam mad and we just prayed we stayed together. 
Coming into Abilene, KS, 25mph through town, he set air doing 28mph.  Merle got on the radio and said, "They must have put all new knuckles in this train at Kansas City". 
As we were slowing for the switch to head into the yard at Salina, Bernie had to walk an eighth of a mile to the switch, Merle says "Now I know how it feels to go fifteen rounds with Mohammad Ali".  
We made it in one piece.  Bernie and I, being that the churches were closed, gave thanks at the Blue Lounge. 

UP #154 with the exact same consist that we had that day on #155.
Topeka, KS
May 17, 1964
Photo by W.A. Gibson Sr.

Thanks for listening
Bob Helling
PRose 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/15 16:06 by PRose.

---

Bob,
Your story is one reason no body beats railroad stories.I just loved yours.
I laughed so much nearly fell out of the chair.

DAMN,Sam! We don't have a slow order here! VBG

Uncle Joe,12 miles east of Tampa near exACL MP 870.7

Great shot BTW.

UJ

Tell us members about the hog train, did it come out of St.Joe down to Troy or out of K.C. I can kind of remember it as being really hot was it strait hogs and how many cars usually thank you.

I was a fireman on an eastbound ATSF train from Ar Kansas City to Emporia one night with an engineer who everybody said could operate a train better drunk than most engineers could sober.  He also would let me run most of the time but on this trip he stayed in the driver's seat and was having some trouble handling the train.  I don't know if he was drunk or was just experiencing a bad hang-over.  Or maybe he was having a hard time because he was sober for a change!  The brakeman had mentioned to him a couple of times that he ought to let me run.  I think that was why he didn't let me.  At El Dorado he was going about 40 mph around a 30 mph curve when the brakeman got up and instructed him to slow the train down.  He set a bunch of air and got down to about 10 mph, then asked the brakeman "is this slow enough for you?".  We continued at this slow speed for a mile or two until I went over and quietly asked him to let me run it on to Emporia.  He didn't say a word but got up and let me have it.  I think this was the only time I ever asked an engineer if I could operate the train.  I always felt that if they wanted me running the train they would offer it to me.  Neither the engineer, the brakeman, nor I ever brought up this episode again until now.  So now everyone knows about it!
Mark 

Bob,

Great story.  Running all those releases with 140 cars, wow!  I'm amazed Sam didn't end up with a 3 piece train when it was all over.

That was a great story!!!

I worked in the telephone business and we had to work with people in other telephone offices all over town, or the state.  There were a few people you just didn't want to work with.  You knew you were going to get a bad test about half the time.  I never did it but occasionally a few people in my office would call an office for a test.  If the "wrong" person answered, they would hang up, call back in a minute or two, and hope someone else would answer.

Great stories.  There are a few "special" people in every industry.

John

"What's left of the way car is moving..........now it's stopped.........now it's moving again".

    As the airline stewardess said one time after a hard landing, " Well, we are finally on the ground and nearly in one piece. If we find any of your luggage we will notify you at home. "

A great story, which could NO doubt come from a thousand places around the RR world! Getting knocked around on the caboose recalls a legendary tale of rough handling woe for a rear-end crew: The rear brakie gets on the caboose radio to tell the "lumpy" hogger: "Hey, you just knocked my conductor down. He's laying flat on the floor!!"

Whereupon the uncaring hogger retorts: "You just tell him to stay right there! Pretty soon I'll stand him right back up again!" :^)

Lanzo

While I am not suggesting this is the proper way to handle things sometimes a little “slack action” was a nice subtle way to send a message to somebody. And as I mellowed with age I doubt I would have taken this course of action again but it did serve its purpose at the time.
 
When I was running an engine, regardless of whether it was a train or just a cut of cars while switching, I always took great care and pride in trying to handle the train/cars in such a way as to eliminate, or at least minimize, slack action; I never wanted to give somebody riding the cars, or in a caboose, anything but the smoothest ride possible. Of course as everybody knows sometimes things happen where you do get a bit of slack action but hopefully it would be minimal.
 
Many years ago we had a conductor who basically hated engineers, primarily younger engineers, which was ironic since he originally hired out as a fireman but was cut-off in 1964 when they did away with fireman. He would ignore engineers as much as he could and when he did say something he would usually make snide, often nasty, remarks about the engineer and how he was handling the train/cars no matter how good it was – and always on the radio, never face to face. When I would catch his job I’d just ignore him as he wasn’t worth getting pissed off about and I can ignore anybody if I choose to do so.
 
One day I caught his job and he was up to his usual crap of making snide and nasty remarks whenever he could. The job always used 2 SD9’s, which were great to switch with as they had good brakes and good acceleration – and no event recorders. <G> On this day, rather than make an extra move to place a “spot” car on the head-end he placed it on the rear of the train so he could cut it off on the “main” at the industry and then we’d spot that car on our way back. He also did not lace any air up so the cut was “dry”. When we left Springfield for the industrial lead we probably had 15-20 cars and he was riding that rear car, a loaded tank car, so he could cut it off. I was doing everything I could to give him a decent ride as usual.
 
He stops me at the industry to cut the car off. Being as how it was a load and the “branch” is slightly downhill the train was bunched. After securing the car and giving me an “ahead” I started the train as smoothly as I could but he just had to say something. Instead of saying nothing, or simply saying “got ‘em all”, he made a smart-assed “uhh!” on the radio. That was the wrong thing to say on the wrong day!!! I gently pulled down to the switch where the brakeman was going to get off and as soon as he was off I accelerated to around 10 or 11 mph. Once I had the slack stretched I threw the independent on and dumped the throttle. Once I felt the slack all run in I kicked the brakes off and widened back on the throttle. At that point I got on the radio and said “UHH!!!” right back to him. Say what you want but after that we got along really good and he never made any smart-assed remarks to me, or about me, after that.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/15 19:53 by Railbaron.

Great story of a miserable runner.  Thanks for sharing!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/15 17:07 by roustabout.

Another bunch of good ones, nothing like the real thing.
JB

great sense of humor that conductor had.........

66

I never did like switch engines, and stayed on the road as much as I could. Part of that was because I lived at Emporia, and we only had the road jobs from there west. The yard jobs were covered by the Eastern Division guys. On the Middle Division, the closest yard jobs for us were 75 miles away, at Sand Creek, (Newton) or even further, at No. Wichita. Those jobs were covered by old timers with only yard seniority, that lived there. Eventually, they died off or retired, and someone that lived in the area would take the job. But once in a while, a job would go vacant for any number of reasons, and they would fill it off the Emporia extra board. One spring day, I got sent out to Sand Creek for a one or two day vacancy on an afternoon yard job, and was working with a crew I didn't know. They didn't know me either, and they felt compelled to rawhide me from the start. They wouldn't speak, they wouldn't tell me anything about the job, and they went into the special "Sand Creek only" hand signal phase, just to mix me up, so they could rip me about it as soon as possible. They would come up into the engine and turn on all the lights, then go back out and leave the lights on and the door open, every time they felt like it, saying nothing, you know.  The foreman was a real Jackass, but as the afternoon wore on, it started looking like rain and lots of it were on the way. We had to make a few moves over south of the round house area (where there was no cover) and he started really trying to speed things up so they could get an early quit before the storm came in, and it was really looking nasty out. The faster he wanted to go, the slower I got. When the cloud burst finally hit, he and his helper were about twenty cars from the engine, trying to do the job with hand signals. It was raining so hard, and we were almost done, but I couldn't see them very well, so I went a little slower. The wetter they got, the slower I went, until I just stopped. Then they pulled out the packsets, and asked me what I was doing, why did I just stop? I told him I had to use the rest room, what did he want me to do next? He spouted out some kind of nasty comment, and want me to makd a move of some sort, but guess what, I couldn't quite make it out. "Your radio's breaking up, what was that? "Huh, I can only hear every other word". "You're radio must be getting wet". Then I suggested he go back to hand signals, but guess what? It was raining so hard, I couldn't even see him. After about 45 minutes of solid rain, and him being out in it most of the time, he finally made his way back to the engine, absolutely drenched, and soaked to the bone. He pulled the pin, took me back to the yard office, where we all tied up and went home, nobody saying a word about any of it. 

Cool story, and I like seeing the Trn # in the indicator boards.  Good thing it wasn't on the west end with all the hogbacks etc.  As you have mentioned to me before----think what he could have done to a train with a DPU.
Brian Stevens