Railroaders' Nostalgia > Do you remember your worst "Meet"? SP Tales From the Past11

 YES, I SURE DO. INSTRUCTED TO HEAD IN AT NARLON TO MEET A WESTBOUND THAT HADN'T EVEN BEEN BY BURBANK JCT YET.
IT WAS ONLY ATER HEADING IN AND LINING BACK, THAT WE HEARD A FAINT RADIO TRANSMISSION OSing OUR MEET BY THE JCT.
I NEVER  COULD FIGURE THAT ONE OUT. WE DID NOT HAVE A NON-CLEARING TRAIN.

To kill time I hopped over a low wire fence next to the ROW and walked around. I found old 30-06 Blank rifle cartridges in the sand. There must have been a WW 2
training area at that location back in the day.
Saw one Rattlesnake,  I think it was a MOJAVE GREEN I'm guessing.. The snake didn't seem concerned with me but I left the area after that.
ENGR ON THE WESTBOUND WAS THE SLOWEST GUY ON THE ROSTER, SO WE HAD A NICELONG WAIT!

Happy 4th.

Headed in at Sellers, Florida (between Defuniak Springs and Crestview, Fl) for the east bound Sunset Limited. They were not even in Florida yet, 115 miles away. That was back when the railroad was collecting good "candy money" from Amtrak..

Steve

We were stopped at NS JCT (south side of Litchfield, IL) on the connection between the NS (former Wabash) Brooklyn District, and the BNSF (former CB&Q) Beardstown Sub. Loaded DP coal train...probably around 6,600ft...for Coffeen, IL....trying to get down (timetable west) the Beardstown Sub to Sorento, IL (around 11 miles), then onto the NS Madison Branch (former NKP) to run east to Coffeen.

Watched a westbound go by, and told the Beardstown Sub dispatcher we'd like to follow him to Sorento. Instead of doing this, she held us (for what turned into about 3 1/2 hours) for the next eastbound. In the meantime, we've got the Brooklyn District blocked. The Beardstown dispatcher will talk to other people, but not us or a BNSF local at Litchfield trying to get ahold of her as well. Finally, the local says, "Hey coal train, can you hear this radio?" I said, "Yeah buddy. I can hear you just fine."

Of course, our dispatcher was anything but thrilled.

Fortunately, my conductor had brought a big bag of quite tasty deer jerky, which is a great supplement to the normal snacks.

Life is hard. It's harder without deer jerky.

ApproachCircuit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>  YES, I SURE DO. INSTRUCTED TO HEAD IN AT NARLON
> TO MEET A WESTBOUND THAT HADN'T EVEN BEEN BY
> BURBANK JCT YET.
> IT WAS ONLY ATER HEADING IN AND LINING BACK, THAT
> WE HEARD A FAINT RADIO TRANSMISSION OSing OUR MEET
> BY THE JCT.
> I NEVER  COULD FIGURE THAT ONE OUT. WE DID NOT
> HAVE A NON-CLEARING TRAIN.
>
> To kill time I hopped over a low wire fence next
> to the ROW and walked around. I found old 30-06
> Blank rifle cartridges in the sand. There must
> have been a WW 2
> training area at that location back in the day.
> Saw one Rattlesnake,  I think it was a MOJAVE
> GREEN I'm guessing.. The snake didn't seem
> concerned with me but I left the area after that.
> ENGR ON THE WESTBOUND WAS THE SLOWEST GUY ON THE
> ROSTER, SO WE HAD A NICELONG WAIT!
>
> Happy 4th.

Who was the slowpoke? Burl Bray?


Allen

Posted from Android

GN was cheap on their CTC installation. Sidings weren't bonded. Trains got Restricting to head in. There was an occupancy light on the CTC machine, but it was manually operated by the dispatcher. Spatch had to turn it on to line into a siding, but it could be turned off any time. First trick Boyer East dived a train at Boyer ID. When the east man they were meeting got by, he turned off the light lined the switch...  and was distracted before lining the signal... which he never did. Later, he saw the switch lined for the siding, no light in the siding, and assumed the train was gone (since it was the farthest west siding on his district).

The second tricker was surprised by a call from Boyer asking if there was a ride on the way for them.

I guess you might say they died peacefully in their sleep.

TAW

the worst meet ever, was on an eastbound out of SLO . We were instructed to take the siding at Tangair and clear up by heading down the lead into Vandenburg AFB.  We were meeting number 13, George Schultz was on the rear car, the Sunset as I remember.  13 wasnt due out of Burbank yet.  We sat for hours .  The MOW as a precaution had spiked every facing point switch on the Coast as a security measure to prevent any possible derailment issue.  Cant remember where we were patched but it made for a long day.

This memorable meet was on the Santa Fe, not the SP, but was probably just as bad. I caught a 304 train from Emporia to Newton at about 10:30pm. If I remember it wasn't a bad train, running time over there was only about an hour and a half, maybe two hours. The DS put us in the siding at Peabody, and we were courious as to why, nothing was on the lineup for us to meet. He was a new guy, a little nervous, and he'd heard about the hill at Walton, and was worried we couldn't make it, and he wanted to meet Amtrak 3 and 4 at Walton anyway, so he parks us at Peabody "just to be safe". When we ask where those trains were, he said #4 was almost to Dodge City, and #3 had just left Topeka !  Several hours later, #3 zipped by us, then about half an hour later, here comes #4. We finally got a signal, left Peabody, trotted up the Walton hill about 15-20 mph, as usual, no problems at all.