Railroaders' Nostalgia > Christmas on the railroad

I remember the Christmases and Christmas Eves I worked on the railroads (SCL-SOU-NS). And I had 51 Christmases under pay - on call, claimed out, or assigned.

I especially remember my first Christmas on the railroad - working the fireman extra board on the SCL-ex SAL at Hamlet NC. On Christmas Eve I lay down for a short railroad nap with visions of E-units in parallel shunt slamming through my head. Way before dawn the call office remembered my number - 5:30 am outside hostler helper - 4 or 5 dozen engines sitting everywhere at the big diesel shop and the 14 hour law.

It was a lot of interesting work, and I swapped out of a lot of the running with my hostler. The highlight of the day was rerailing an eight year old E9. It was hard to believe even then that our only E9 was only eight years old. The big engine sat in oil soaked dirt amongst splintered old ties. It was celebrating it's birthday and Christmas on the ground. We thought aloud that it was just still mad about being repainted in Coast Line bumblebee black paint. Add to that - this engine had to go to Washington on the Silver Star, and it was headed to us about 100 miles away. The E9 came up surprisingly easy and unharmed. We got it and two E8's quickly down to the distant station hitting parallel shunt on the way. The E9 took off for Washington on the Silver Star. After 14 hours I turned it over to the night outside hostler and headed home to have Christmas supper with my parents. With me was one of my greatest Christmas presents - a E9 reverser handle. The E9 got a new SD45 reverser handle for Christmas.

How about y'all - any good Christmas on the railroad memories?

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I thankfully only had 25 rounds of Christmas to potentially get called out on before I got to pull the pin. I don't actually celebrate Christmas, so I would always offer to swap places with whoever was unlucky enough to be sitting first out waiting for the next train.

Working out of Klamath Falls, Oregon, we had a pretty unique setup for the "double ended" pool to Eugene. A leftovers mess from the UP's invasion of this former SP territory, the engineers were all based in Eugene, but the conductors were based on both ends and would be dovetailed into the lineup based on arrival times and activation times and more exciting math that I won't detail here. The pool was mostly high seniority, so the home pool guys usually were enjoying time off for the holiday, leaving the extra board to cover their turns.

The crew base south of us in Dunsmuir were often times being mistreated as the UP was known to do, so they'd almost always have a mutiny down there and there'd be no crews to bring trains northward come Christmas Eve. Eventually a crew would cave to promises of a "quick trip, all greens, and the crew van will be waiting to take you home immediately", and the UP would be able to get their hot northbound Z moving again.

So this one year they have TO's very own RailBaron stuck by himself at the hotel. They've already deadheaded all the other hogheads and out of town "grade indicators" home (grade indicator being a term of endearment for us conductors who's only useful function was to show the engineer if we were traveling uphill or downhill based on if we were asleep with head back over the headrest of the chair or head forward planted firmly on the desk).

The phone rings about 9am and the crew caller says please get to the yard asap for 930am on duty cause we forgot to get you called out on time (we are required to get 90 minutes minimum advance notice by the agreement). I know the RailBaron will be happy to get home in time for the holiday for once, so I hustle to pack up and get out the door.

As I pass over the bridge headed to the yard office, I can see the Z is already pulling in and will be sitting at the door waiting for me by the time I get parked. I also know our beloved RailBaron will have already been at the yard office getting everything ready to go, instead having to sit and wait for me to run paperwork and check notices and go all the other pretrip garbage the UP took glee in wasting our time with.

Sure enough, as I climb out of my car, I see the road van already driving off southbound with the inbound Dunsmuir crew hauling them homeward, and there's the RailBaron standing on the nose on the locomotive. He's enthusiastically waving me over straight to the train. "I've got it all ready and the railroad is ours! Let's roll!!"

One of the perks of having an engineer who actually gives a crap about his job and takes his responsibilities seriously is that you can trust he's not going to inadvertently make an example out of you by screwing something up for which you as the conductor will be taking the fall. (The GCOR and the UP way is that the conductor is the final authority on the train. Anything goes wrong, it's your fault. This is actually a good thing when you have a conductor who knows his job and knows the agreements and doesn't mess around. More than a few times throughout my tenure on the rails did I manage to save my engineer and/or brakemen's bacon by standing between them and a rule book wielding manager trying to climb the ladder on my crew's back. "I'M the conductor; you deal with ME and leave them out of it.")

So I go straight from my truck to the train and away we go right at 930am on the dot. "We're gonna have some fun today!" the RailBaron exclaims as we blast off up the mile or two long grade northward from the yard. Turns out that we are literally the only train out here pretty much between Roseville and Portland, except for #14 that's already out ahead of us and #11 that won't be leaving Eugene till after 5pm. The corridor manager in Omaha has let all his dispatchers on the I-5 corridor go home early or come in late because all he has is this one single Z to worry about. Apparently it lost a few hours in Dunsmuir as they tried to scrounge up the crew there, and the boss has already told the RailBaron over the unrecorded phone line that "nobody is watching, run that thing like only you know how!!"

And fun we did have. The Cascade and Brooklyn subs both have 60mph max speed, and the 30+ miles down the mountain from the summit to Oakridge is 25mph. But not for us today! RailBaron was in his element as we did our best silver bullet impression making passenger speed and then some burning up the miles northward. "The chief said he'll have a welcome surprise at Dougren waiting for us if we hurry the hell up and get there!".

Not many details to add for the actual trip; it was literally a blur compared to what I was used to seeing between KF and EU. But, as promised, at Dougren was a surprise (Dougren is a few sidings south of Eugene yard. It has a nice clear spot for making crew changes). There at the north end were TWO carryalls lying in wait. One was the Eugene Yard Van packing a rearing to go Portland crew that was deadheaded down just for us to hand this thing off to so they could run northward and get back home, and the other was a KF based van waiting to rush me back southward to home. The chief arranged this little treat because he had zero intention of allowing some nosey Eugene manager the chance to try and climb aboard while swapping crews at the yard to see just how we managed to get from KF to EU faster than Amtrak usually does. The RailBaron climbed into the yard van with a smile on his face as he headed homeward (a rare sight for sure as a normal trip on the UP tended to make him more and more grumbly as the day wore on as he dealt with the ridiculous decisions and directions by UP's way of doing things that inevitably impeded our progress.)

Yours truly also had a little trick up his sleeve. In their quest to prevent us lowly conductors from actually fulfilling our derogatory mission as grade indicators, we get the privilege of using up ink and paper by keeping a Conductor's Log and writing down various things we pass by along the way and recording the time we saw it go by. I also get to sign these logs to indicate that I was the one to fill it out and that I promise on penalty of the railroad making mean faces at me that everything in the log is true and complete and perfectly accurate for any who demand to inspect it. I always keep past logs that happened to record awesome trips for just this very reason; I filled out my log for this trip exactly mirroring one I already had that showed a nice "normal" textbook all greens run northward on another hot Z from months earlier. Just had to change the times to reflect this beautiful daylight trip today vs the overnight version that it actually was previously. Thankfully everyone in authority knew that they should not question how exactly that hot Z made it on time to Brooklyn yard despite its multi hour layover in Dunsmuir. They just stayed happy it did, and I never got questioned about our marathon run north.

The RailBaron now long since safe at home, I made it back to my truck in KF at 6pm sharp due to some more high speed driving, this time on the part of the carryall driver.

Tied up sixth out on the extra board with no vacancies and no trains showing on the lineup for at least a couple of days. Called the first out guy to let him know that, if he gets a surprise call for anything tonight and I'm off my mandatory rest, tell the crew caller I'll trade places with him.

Phone never rang again for 4 days.

That kind of great holiday trip only happened once. But it was fun.

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Those were good times indeed; great memories!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/25 18:33 by Railbaron.

Good for you guys getting a golden ticket ride.
I member’ some “sanctioned” running like this, but that mostly died off about 20 years ago. I might have taken a few extra notches here and there even up to about 10 years ago, but with PTC, EMS… LMNOP… the days of helping people in the dispatch office are over. Sorry.

Regards

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About 1982 I was called to work as conductor on westbound empty hopper train from Baltimore MD to Brunswick MD. On Christmas Eve. Told us we would deadhead home upon arrival at Brunswick. We were very doubtful but they kept their word . We stepped from the train into the van and went home. Marked off at 11:55 pm. Only problem was I couldn’t turn in my radio everything was locked up and everyone gone. Kept the radio for three days until I was next called. I had a trainmaster call me at home and ask why I hadn’t turned the radio in. He intimated that I should have made the 25 mile round trip on my time to turn it in. You can imagine what I was thinking.
CR

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