Railroaders' Nostalgia > Mad Dog Chronicles #69: A Melt Down Every Weekend

West Colton Melt Down Every Weekend.

Weekly volume fluctuations
Every yard on the SP system has days when the rail traffic peaks, as well as low volume days. At West Colton the high volume days were Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Monday should be an average day based on arrivals. However, we got some of our highest counts on Mondays due to traffic that had backed up during our regular weekend meltdowns. Tuesday was the low traffic day at West Colton as long as I was assigned there. Tuesdays and Wednesdays arrivals at West Colton are Sunday originations from Eugene and Roseville, for example. Thursday would be considered an average day as far as volumes are concerned.

When I started working the relief shift in October, I was now on duty at West Colton during the heaviest days of the week. With the exception of Wednesday, midnight and Thursday afternoon, we were not capable of processing all of the trains arriving at West Colton on a current basis. There would be plenty of room in the receiving yard when I went home at 7 am Thursday morning. When I came back to work at 3 pm Thursday afternoon there were usually one or two clear rails left in the receiving yard. If we had a good shift, with no big problems, my team could keep up with the arriving trains. My goal was to leave my relief with more clear tracks in the receiving yard than had been there when I started. We usually did accomplish this. However, this meant that we were adding between eight and nine hundred cars to the Bowl inventory. Building up in the Bowl what the crest yardmasters used to call the Chinese Wall. It is not easy to find places to hump cars when you have more than 1800 cars in the bowl at West Colton.

When I left Thursday at 11 pm I knew that I would have 16 hours off and that when I came back to work at 3 pm Friday afternoon, the bowl would be full, the receiving yard would be full and we would have several trains held out of the yard. It would be worse than that when I came back to work on Saturday morning with only eight hours off duty.. It seemed that for several months at the end of 1973 that the yard melted down sometime Friday night, every weekend

Here, now, was the real crux of the problem at West Colton. We were not capable of trimming and setting trains at the same rate as we could hump them. Worse than that, even when we did acquire the skills and the manpower to trim up at the 1000 car a shift rate, we could not get them out of West Colton. The principal reason for this was locomotive availability. We were always holding trains for either locomotives, or rested crews. We were causing some of our own problems too. The dispatchers and the power bureau were very reluctant to supply West Colton with extra locomotives when we had trains held out of the yard that we could not handle. Trains with some, but not, in most cases, all of the locomotives that we needed to stay current on the departure end of the yard.

No one wanted to acknowledge that the yard had been designed so that it couldn’t efficiently hold trains for crews or power. Only by over-supplying West Colton with locomotive power, can you have even a ghost of a chance of departing trains as fast as you can hump them.

As the receiving yard filled up and we began to hold trains out waiting for a clear receiving yard track, we were making our problems worse. Even when the train did get to park on a receiving yard track, frequently now the road crew did not have the time to cut their power off and get to the diesel servicing facility. If you don’t get those locomotives down there they don’t get serviced. The same problem was occurring with cabooses. We never seemed to have enough serviced cabooses. Frequently, we would have to send a job up to the receiving yard to “cherry pick” all of the cabooses and make a special run to the caboose track. This was usually a trim job. However, I also used the knock down engine, particularly to grab cabooses off of the east end of the receiving yard. Usually we had at least one set of hostlers up in the receiving yard retrieving inbound power whose road crews were dead on arrival.

One of my little tricks was to send a hump engine to the receiving yard and have it cherry pick all the cabs he could get to before he doubled to his hump cut. That way they are at least going to get to the cab track faster than if you wait to hump the train that they arrived on.

Try to visualize this now. One hump cut is going over the crest. A second hump crew is doubling two other trains together preparing to come to the hump when the first crew is finished. A third hump engine is up in the receiving yard grabbing stray cabooses and maybe cutting out a do not hump car. This way we won’t have to stop that hump cut and make a setout to the do not hump track. The hostlers are up there somewhere with several sets of power which they are lacing together, You have trains waiting at both Sierra Avenue arriving from the west, and at Cedar Avenue arriving from the north and east. And of course, you have several of the receiving yard tracks blue flagged protecting the carmen who are inspecting and bleeding off your next several hump cuts to be processed. This could be a real zoo. Lots of chances to make a mistake in orchestrating the receiving yard traffic jam.

The proximity of the Crest Yardmaster, the lead carman the crest herder and the West Colton interlocking operator, all there together in West Colton tower helped immensely
under circumstances like these. It also helped to have someone up in the receiving yard directing traffic. This was where I frequently deployed one of the two Assistant Trainmasters on my team.

One afternoon, in circumstances very similar to what I have described above, I sent my ATM up to Sierra Avenue to direct traffic. In this particular case, the next cut to be humped was assigned to a hump crew just coming off his lunch break. I was sending this hump engine up the Main Line to Sierra Avenue. The instructions to this ATM were long and detailed as far as priorities, but one thing was very clear. Under no circumstances was any of the work up around Sierra Avenue to delay this hump engine for even 30 seconds. Things were going well that day and the current hump cut would be done almost before this second hump engine could tie on, stretch his cut and shove to the hump. We were headed for a 1000 car shift and I needed this particular track clear for a train arriving off of the Cutoff who was short on his hours of service.

With a traffic director up there I could concentrate on other things that needed my attention. We finished the cut that was on the hump. However, no next hump cut was coming into view up under Cedar avenue. The delay stretched out to well in excess of 15 minutes. The hump engine that had just finished his cut was poking a couple of stalls into the clear. Still no cars appearing under Cedar Avenue. I walked over to the yardmaster and asked what was the hold up. Why was the next cut not shoving down to the hump? “Gee, Mike, that hump engine isn’t even off of the main yet, let alone coupled to his cut.” I grabbed the radio. I am afraid that we were on the road channel. Calling for my ATM I asked in an impatient sounding voice what was the reason for the delay. We just have one more caboose to pick off, then I will clear up for that hump engine. That I lost my temper would be an under statement. I am sorry to say that I told this ATM that he could foul up a two car funeral over the road radio. Some more of the emerging mad dog.

I have chosen not to name this person here. I will tell you that he later got much better at following instructions. He was one of several of the young, green supervisors at West Colton who later reached the level of Division Superintendent. He never let me forget what I said that evening in the winter of 1973.

mdo
10/10/04

As you know, it goes both ways but crews usually never let it get out on the radio. For instance, I worked with our best trainman, a 40-year SP veteran. We were discussing some move that a manager wanted, to which he said, "That guy couldn't switch a turd out of a bag of wienies." That manager got better but is now gone - and missed.

Thanks, Mike!

Roustabout out

roustabout Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As you know, it goes both ways but crews usually
> never let it get out on the radio. For instance,
> I worked with our best trainman, a 40-year SP
> veteran. We were discussing some move that a
> manager wanted, to which he said, "That guy
> couldn't switch a turd out of a bag of wienies."
> That manager got better but is now gone - and
> missed.
>
I never should have said that over the radio, either. For this forum I have even cleaned my colorful language up quite a bit.

Another way to put this was couldn"t switch a wheel barrow around an outhouse.

mdo