Railroaders' Nostalgia > Santa Fe's GP - 40Xs , a Phone Call and My Lucky Day

I didn't want to hijack Lance's thread just below but reading his post reminded me of one of my episodes. I was assigned as a Road Foreman at Marceline, MO on April 15, 1978. Shortly thereafter they discovered that all 10 units (3800 - 3809) that the Santa Fe had just received had developed flat spots and had to have their wheels turned within the first month of operation. They could not figure out the reason for the flat spots so they impounded their operation to between Kansas City and Corwith (Chicago). They had us road foreman (Jim Conaway Ft Madison to Corwith and me Ft Madison to Kansas City) ride these units to determine what was causing the flat spots. The 10 units were operating in three or four different consists so we were almost constantly on a train. Even though it was nice to always be on a new locomotive I was getting mighty tired of working day and night.

One time I dropped off at Kansas City Union Station from a westbound as we were meeting an eastbound there with a GP - 40X. He was travelling about 4 mph when I boarded it and I noticed there wasn't any sand coming out onto the rail even though it sounded as if the wheels were slipping. Upon entering the cab I asked the engineer why he didn't have the sand on and he replied that they were turned on. I informed him none was coming out onto the rails. I noticed the same thing on the other units also. So here I am sending report after report to get the sanders fixed on these units. Later I find out these units were designed not to manually sand below 5 mph because they wanted the wheels to "creep" which was suppose to produce higher tractive effort. It sure would have been nice if someone had educated us guys out in the field who were experiencing what we thought was abnormal operation prior to using these units. Also many times the wheels were not just creeping but actually spinning. They did make some modifications to these units in the following weeks/months. I did not find any reason for the flat spots that occurred when the units were brand new and I never heard of any others developing.

I rode a westbound with some 3800s one Saturday and dropped off at AY Tower as I had moved my old '56 Chevy work car from Wellington to Kansas City so I would have transportation when laying over there. When checking on the next eastbound with a 3800 I was informed it wouldn't be until Sunday afternoon. I was going to have 24 hours off. Headed to the Crown Center Hotel for some deserved time off.

After checking in I called home (my family was still living in Emporia as we hadn't located housing in Marceline yet) and my wife's grandmother answered. I asked her what she was up to and she said she was watching the baby while Marsha was bathing and she had brought over a birthday cake for Marsha. I looked down at my watch (which had a month and date indicator on it) and it showed May 6th. I thought "oh no". I had been working so much I didn't even know what the "date" was til I looked at that watch!

Well, a couple of minutes later Marsha came to the phone and I said "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" honey. She said "I just knew you were going to forget it". Why I wouldn't forget anything as special as that. Say, why don't you load up the kids and come to Kansas City and we'll go celebrate as I don't have to go to work til tomorrow afternoon. And we had a great time..........

Praise the Lord for Grandmothers! And by the way I haven't forgotten any of her birthdays since.

Mark



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/17 20:36 by KskidinTx.

What a great story and recollection. Thank you so much for sharing!

Cheers,
Harry

Nice tale! Except for the not-so-nice part about being stuck away from home. I'm sure there was discussion among the hoggers I had just started working with back in those days. But I was so new that I didn't know nothin' about nothin'! All I remember in the 3800s' early days was they always worked together in packs of 3 or 4, which was great for picture-taking "FRNs" like me...

Lance

santafe199 Wrote:
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> great for picture-taking "FRNs" like me...

I take it FRN is something along the line of FNG???

ble692 Wrote:
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> santafe199 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > great for picture-taking "FRNs" like me...
>
> I take it FRN is something along the line of
> FNG???

F*****g Rail Nut
JC

Posted from Android

Just about every one of those engines I was on had a "super series failure" indication. Seemed like the wheels would spin when that light was on, rather than "creep". I can still remember how they shuddered and vibrated when they were pulling hard, and the terrible squeal they made at the rail. And it seemed like all the EMD's of the era ran sand for no apparent reason, so they were probably just out most of the time.

Dennis, I had forgotten about them shuddering and vibrating on a hard pull like you stated but I sure didn't forget about the squealing noise they made. I do think one of the modifications they made to them was allowing manual sanding below 5 mph.
Mark

I can relate to everything that was stated here regarding the 3800's. Not long after they came on the property they started showing up at Barstow on the York Canyon coal train in RCE configuration and I was working as a Hill Pool Fireman (AT&SF Los Angeles Division, First Dist.) at the time.

I got called at Barstow for the YK with Engineer Lloyd Chambers for the trip home to San Bdno. As I recall we were making about 15 MPH on the 1.6 % pull between Thorn and the east end of Hesperia with lots of wheel squeal, bucking and auto sanding so we figured with the track curvature west of Lugo (MP 50) acting against the train we should be should hit MP 54 at about 12 MPH if everything held together. The unofficial rule of thumb was if you could make it to MP 54 + 10 poles you had it made.

So, we got a run at it thru the sag at Lugo and by MP 52 we were back down to 14 MPH squealing and jumping around as the radar wheel slip detector did it's thing. At MP 53 we were at 12 MPH starting the toughest mile on the east side of the hill with Lloyd, the brakeman and myself all looking at one another and with all the commotion going on the needle on the speed recorder kept very slowly dropping until we shuddered to a stall about 200 ft short of 54, out of sand and out of luck. And there we sat for about 2 hours while they got a helper up to us.

If anyone is interested in the location where we stopped, it can be seen in a 1945 Frank Peterson photo on pg 20-21 in the latest Classic Trains mag.

Good story, Chico43. I can't imagine they would put GPs on a loaded unit coal train and expect anything but a stall. But from some of the stories I've read here on TO they still are doing things similar today.
Mark

KskidinTx Wrote:
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> Good story, Chico43. I can't imagine they would
> put GPs on a loaded unit coal train and expect
> anything but a stall. But from some of the
> stories I've read here on TO they still are doing
> things similar today.
> Mark


IIRC the 3800 and 3801 showed up on the property equipped as RCE masters complete with door hinge automatic brake valve dis-ablers, so you just had to know that they considered them the do-it-all wunderunits. Let's hear an atta-boy for the EMD sales dept!