Railroaders' Nostalgia > Mad Dog Chronicles #73: Kidnapping Trim Engines

Extreme Pressure and a Feeling of Impending Doom.

The Midnight shift on Wednesday pm/Thursday am was not supposed to be a particularly tough one. It usually was not that bad. That is unless something goes wrong. On this particular Wednesday night when I had relieved Gary Boswell the situation was already bad. Gary reported that we had been having trouble with pin A and Pin B again. He told me that there were a number of mis-routes in the bowl tracks that needed to be straightened out. There were several trains that he had not been able to get into the receiving yard before they had died on the law. Two of them were tied down up at Slover, the first siding to the West on the Palmdale Colton Cutoff. One of these trains was parked on the main line between switches. The other one was in the clear on the siding. This meant that nothing would move on the Cutoff until at least one of them could be moved down into the receiving yard. There were at least three more dead trains not yet into the receiving yard. One was tied down at Old Colton, one was in the siding at South Fontana and one was tied down on track 901, the main running track adjacent to the Bowl and the Departure yard..

In an effort to make room for all of these arrivals, Gary and his team had pushed close to 800 cars over the hump on the previous shift. Unfortunately, in doing so, he had clobbered the Bowl. Many of the cars that had been humped had gone into slough tracks rather than into their assigned classification tracks. My team was faced with at least seven or eight bowl tracks full of cars that must be rehumped.

As soon as Gary left, the crest yardmaster, the trim yardmaster and I had a planning session. We decided that the best strategy would be to double several of these rehump rails together and pull them back to the receiving yard, doubling to a worked track to make a decent sized hump cut. I then asked the trim yardmaster to double up three more of the rehump rails, take them around the balloon track and up to the receiving yard with one of his trim engines. I borrowed another of the trim jobs to haul that inbound train in off of 901. At least the receiving yard carmen could go to work on that one fairly soon. And, we would have track 901 clear for meets. We put our second hump job to work making “short strokes” pulling tracks with serious mis-routes back west out of the Bowl and rehumping them.

By about two am we had gotten the bowl into decent shape. A fresh road crew had pulled the train parked on the main line at Slover down to the receiving yard. We were taking that crew back to Slover to dog catch the second train parked in the siding at Slover. The trim engines were all back at the trim. Best of all, three trains which had been built with their rear ends in the key tracks had departed. This had in turn completely emptied out those three bowl tracks. Even a fourth train, also built with its rear end in a key track had coupled up and was pulling down toward Pepper Avenue. In three hours we had reduced the bowl inventory by well over 500 cars. Of course we hadn’t humped two hundred cars up until that point in time. But we had room to hump now and we had plenty of cars in position to hump. The classification bowl was straight. We were ready to kick a..

Or so I thought. The first big cut that we came to the hump with that night was a bad luck cut. For one thing we were still experiencing a few stalls in the fan of tracks past the master retarders. We had to stop that hump cut multiple times in the first twenty cars over the hump. Then disaster. We broke in two only a few cars east of the hump engines. The east end of the cut ran away. It did not get stopped until it reached the skate retarders at the trim end of the bowl. This cut also frogged my other hump engine into the bowl. At least the Trim could free him by pulling the cars in that bowl track east of the trim crossovers. Good thing too, because we used that second engine to retrieve the cars that had broken loose.

It is amazing how time flies by when you are dealing with problems like this. About the time that we got this all straightened out I glanced at my watch and discovered that it was after 4 am. Now I really began to sweat. We were under extreme pressure to turn in a decent hump count. We still did not have 200 cars over the hump. Five hours of the shift were passed. As the crest yardmaster pointed out, neither of the hump engines had even been to beans yet. I began to dread that impending morning call from the General Manager. It was going to be bloody awful, gruesome. While trying not to panic, I felt a sense of impending doom,

Necessity is the mother of invention. I called up the trim yardmaster again. Look at the names of the engineers on your trim engines and read them to me I asked. I am looking for engineers who are qualified on the hump engines. He actually had two that night. Have either of those crews been in to beans yet I asked? One is just going in to beans and one is due out in five minutes. ‘Tell those guys that are just coming out of beans that they are going to get to give the third hump engine some exercise. (That engine was tied down that shift in one of the set out tracks at the hump with no crew called for it) Wallahh! We now had three hump engine with only two called for that shift. I drove to the trim and personally picked that crew up and delivered them to the third set of hump engines.

And why not? After all, I had been kidnapping trim engines all night long. Good thing too. By the time Mr. King called at his regular 6:30 am we had a half way decent hump count for the night. We were getting close to 700 cars over the hill. Both of the other engines were against hump cuts. “We are ready to come to the hump with another 300 cars”, I told King. “ I have my other two hump engines against those cars right now. No reason why we can’t have over a thousand cars in the bowl by 8 am” “Don’t give me another one of those Ongerth, were going to have, hump count guesses” responded King. “Umm and I thought that you guys were only calling two hump engine assignments on Wednesday nights”…. We had to make a few adjustments last night was my response.

mdo
10/14/04

I want to tell you how much I've enjoyed your stories. My youngest son recently became a railroader (Conductor on CP Rail), and your wonderfully written stories provide me with a wonderful window into my son's world.

Not to mention, that some of the jargon he uses is starting to make sense, god help me.

Regards,
Doug

MDO -

Again you provoke some great memories from me. Tales of one shift loading the bowl yard and departure tracks and leaving the next shift with litlle room to wiggle sounds very familar - albeit at a different yard only 80 miles away. Keep writing!!!

TIOGA PASS

mdo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...
> Then disaster. We broke in two only a few cars
> east of the hump engines. The east end of the cut
> ran away. ...


I had to chuckle about the "disaster" as I can somewhat relate to that.

Up until UP took over Eugene we had a hump here also. Unlike West Colton, the hump/crest at Eugene was next to the receiving yard, about 1/4 of the way down from the west end, so hump engines would have to pull cuts westward out of the receiving yard and then shove eastward back up onto the hump. To maximize humping the yardmaster would quite often have hump crews double two tracks together in the receiving yard and then bring this one monster cut up onto the hump. This of course would require a long pull westward out of the receiving yard and onto the "70 Lead" (Hump lead) and then a shove up to the crest. The engines would sometimes end up almost to the CTC signal at Eugene siding during this pull back move and the cuts could push 125 cars or so at times depending on tonnage.

The pull out of the receiving yard itself was actually uphill. Eugene yard is laid out on a very slight grade with the east end of the yard slightly lower than the west end. It is a very minor grade but tell that to 10,000 tons of dead weight and a switch engine. The top of the crest is roughly level with the top end of the hump/70 lead and when you would start humping often the engines would end up actually being higher than the crest of the hump. BTW, the engines used in the late 1980s and 1990s were an MP15AC with a slug attached and it was always amazing how much tonnage a set like that could pull; VERY slowly at times but you would get there eventually.

Another comment about the Eugene hump is that it worked by cab signals. The cab signal arrangement had a lot of different indications but only three were actually used: Hump Fast, Hump Slow, Stop. There was also a loud gong in the cab of the unit so any change in cab signal also sounded this gong. Any other commands, such as when doubling tracks together or pulling back off the crest if a switchman missed a pin, were handled via radio by the hump foreman rather then via the cab signals.

One thing about cuts of cars is that they will also act somewhat like water when in a sag. In other words, if left alone they will balance out in a sag just like water in a hose. As applied to the hump here the cut should balance out with the west end at the top of the hump lead if the east end is at the top of the crest. Of course if you have cars over the crest, especially loads, this can affect that balance.

Anyway, one day we pull out this monster cut of cars out and are shoving the hump. About 15 cars from the crest the cab signal would become active when the cut entered a circuit in the track and the cab signal would go to "Hump Fast" and the gong would sound. This was a good indicator that you were getting close to going to "hump speed" (the switchman on the point of the cut would also give a car count around this same point). Then as you approached the crest the foreman would change the signal to "Hump Slow" and you'd reduce your speed to around 2.3 mph and start humping. For the engineer he could also go into "hump mode" by getting out his favorite book or magazine. <G>

So we're humping away and I'm still way west of the hump lead meaning the west end of the cut of cars that I'm attached to is above the crest of the hump. Everything is going fine until the foreman changes the cab signal to "Stop" and the gong sounds. I immediately stop the cut. A few seconds pass and then there is this frantic radio call saying, "Stop the hump, stop the hump!" I casually tell him, "I'm already stopped"; then there's a long pause.

Fortunately no major damage was done. Part of the cut continued over the hump and into the bowl. The retarder operator clamped all the retarders down "full" and that combined with the cars balancing out at the top of the hump lead avoided the cut from heading towards Portland. An inspection of the cut by the switchman discovered that a pin had been pulled just ahead of the hump engine about about 15 cars or so. Once that was coupled back together we were able to pull back over the hump and resume humping again. However, I don't think I'll ever forget the sound of that foreman screaming in the radio to stop the cut that day. I didn't know anybody could reach octaves that high before. <G>