Railroaders' Nostalgia > Mad Dog Chronicles #70: Key Tracks in the Bowl

Key Tracks in the Bowl at West Colton
One of the other new design features at West Colton was the placement of departure tracks in the classification bowl. At West Colton, tracks 201, 202, 203, 211, 212, 213 and 214 in the north key along with tracks 235, 236, 237 and 238 in the middle key, (think I have these numbers right) were designed to serve a dual function, both as classification tracks and departure tracks. These tracks were placed on wide track centers, equipped with ground air lines and scooter paths for the carmen.


Tracks 201 thru 203 had an escape track allowing for departures to the west at Cedar Avenue. The middle tracks: 211 to 214 and 235 to 238 lead thru the trim crossovers directly to corresponding tracks in the departure yard. These key tracks were designed to hold the rear end of trains departing to the east. Remember that you can also go west from the departure yard by utilizing the balloon track just east of Pepper Avenue.

The design concept here was to eliminate the need to trim all of the cars to the departure yard and to speed up the setting and departing of trains. In theory, all you needed to do was double the train together, using the crossovers at the trim, get a quick set and release on the caboose and leave town. This was supposed to speed up the departure of trains by minimizing the time between when the last car went into the key bowl track and when the train was ready to leave. The thinking here was that we would even hump the caboose into the track as the last car in. That would set the train. While the head end is being trimmed from other bowl tracks down to an appropriate departure yard track, carmen are supposed to be lacing up the air hoses and performing a trainline leakage test, using yard air and the air brake test consul at the lead carman’s desk in the trim tower.

The CCC was designed to cause each car humped into every bowl track to make a gentle, less than 4 mph, coupling with the cars in front of it. We weren’t even supposed to need a trim engine to couple up these tracks……Right! Given all the problems that we were having with the process control logic and the tangent point retarders, it was a far piece from theory to reality. It was a rare day when there were not at least a few joints, which had to be made in each and every bowl track.

Then there was the issue of mis-routed cars. That is, cars for what ever process control error, wound up in the wrong classification track. These cars had to be switched out. The general rule in all hump yards is that this job is performed by the trim engines.
If you need to use the trim leads to do a lot of switching, this defeats the concept of just doubling your train together for a quick departure. The way that West Colton’s trim leads and departure tracks are laid out makes it very hard to accomplish the sorting out of mis-routes and at the same time, couple up and depart trains using the key departure tracks in the bowl.

Of course, there were not supposed to be any mis-routes according to the people who designed West Colton. However, there were so many of them in the first few months, that we broke all of the normal hump yard rules. We used the knock down engine to switch out some of the mis-routes on the hump end of the yard. For tracks with a lot of mis-routes, we would reach back into the bowl track to the eastern most mis-route and rehump that bowl track over again. Just think about what either of these two strategies does to productivity at the hump. During at least the months of August and September of 1973, we sent many trains out of West Colton with wrong way cars buried in the train. We were actually given the authority to do this by the General Manager. Is it any wonder that all of the terminals catching what West Colton was pitching began to seriously doubt that West Colton would ever live up to it’s potential.

Since it was taking much longer to prepare outbound trains, the key bowl tracks caused a real problem with room in the bowl. With all of the mis-routes and additional joints to be made, we did not even have enough trim engines at first. It took a while to even get the manpower in place and trained to fill all of the trim engine assignments that we needed.

The result of all of these problems with trimming and setting of out bound trains was that as we increased the rate at which we could push cars over the hump, we began to seriously over load the classification bowl. If my team turned in a thousand car night on the hump, chances were that the next shift had nowhere to go with the next hump cuts. If Gerald Hoops team had a thousand plus shift, my shift might spend as much as half of its time rehumping bowl tracks, coupling up bowl tracks and shoving tracks for room. I remember several occasions on Sundays when, after we had punched enough holes in the receiving yard to take in all of the closely approaching inbound trains, we actually trimmed and set outbound trains in the receiving yard using the hump engines.

If you try to keep humping against a full bowl, the Chinese Wall, you are just wasting your time and resources. With 1400 cars in the bowl, no problems. With 1800 cars in the bowl, particularly if some of your key tracks are filled with set trains, which are not even called yet, and may not even have power serviced. Better think very carefully about which cuts you pick to hump next. More than half of the cars may be going to rehump rails. That means to slough tracks that must be coupled up and rehumped later. In fact, some times this is the very best time to carefully pick rehump rails to reprocess. Or perhaps, this is a good time to rehump the hold tracks.

If you ever find yourself with over 2200 cars in the bowl, it is time to trim trains using the hump engines. We even set a few trains on running tracks 904 and 905 when we got really desperate.

mdo
10/11/04