Railroaders' Nostalgia > Mad Dog Chronicles #74: Setting the Record

Setting the Record
All through the fall and winter of 1973 and early 1974 things gradually improved at West Colton. We had worked through the hardware and software bugs. All of the new hires were now well trained. All of the regular yardmasters knew the new systems and the idiosyncrasies of the new yard. In general we were all six months wiser and six months older. We would still experience an occasional crisis. We lost the entire yard inventory at least twice that I remember. This required a recovery procedure that forced us to stop virtually all productive activity while the inventory was reestablished.

One factor that was helping here was that after November we had passed the fall peak season. December and January are slow months on the railroad. This is traditionally a slow traffic period. By now we could keep up with arrivals on all but the heaviest of days. On occasion there would be line interruptions that would back up traffic. The best way to cope with these temporary floods of traffic was to make sure that the bowl was straight, everything that could be trimmed was pulled down and all of your rehump rails were cleaned out.

By the time we got to the end of January, both Gerald Hoops and I could work up in the 150 car per hour range. My personal target was to be able to push 1200 cars over the hump in one shift. We rarely had enough traffic to achieve this goal except on Saturday and Sunday.

In mid February McClanahan and Jansen decided that it was time to see just how much we could hump in one day. They selected a Thursday, perhaps the third week of the month. All day Wednesday, Gerald, who was on days that month straightened out the Bowl while the trim yardmasters attempted to empty it out. No trains were to be set in the key bowl/departure tracks after noon. When Gary Boswell came to work at 3 pm that afternoon, Jansen, after looking at the inbound lineup, instructed Boswell to do nothing except finish up with the rehumps. We were going to hold back all of the arriving trains to build up an inventory. Of course the receiving yard carmen were working hard to give us as many oked trains as possible. When I took over from Boswell at 11 pm there was almost nothing left to do. We had the cleanest, straightest bowl that I had seen in months. We had at least six hump cuts ready to go. The crest yardmaster was keeping his hump engines busy doubling some of these trains together. We had all gotten pretty efficient at building 225 plus car hump cuts. At about quarter to twelve I had the first hump cut approach the crest of the hump via track 902. The second hump engine was sent up to stretch his designated cut. It was already doubled together. We kept the third hump engine down at the crest in case we needed to shove a bowl track for room. We need not have bothered.

We started to push that first cut over the hump at precisely the stroke of midnight.

McClanahan and Jansen hung around for that first cut. We had it humped out by a quarter to one. I think we had no stops or missed pins at all. A very good omen. Bob and Jerry went home to bed. And we dug in for a very productive night. Everything worked like it was supposed to. I remember that night as one where I was relaxed for the entire shift.

Gerald Hoops showed up at least thirty minutes early to relieve me. I remember that we had just finished our seventh hump cut when he walked in to the planners office. Our count was close to 1400 cars at that point in the morning. As the next cut started to approach the crest I gave Gerald his turn over and the current inventory sheets run the way he liked them and said as I walked toward the stairs that I wished him luck and expected him to do even better than my team had done. I remember passing both
Jansen and McClanahan as I walked down the stairs. 1400 and humping I told them as I headed home for a nap

I too showed up extra early to relieve Gerald at 3 pm Gerald was going to come awful close to 1400 cars on his shift, too. We talked about what shape the bowl was in at this point. Not too good was Gerald’s assessment. While we had been trimming all day we were still close to 1800 cars in the bowl. The crest yardmaster was having to put more and more cars into rehump rails with every new hump cut. That is not the biggest alligator either said Gerald. The line up for tonight is going to be unusually light. You are going to run out of cars to hump was Gerald’s prediction. That was Jansen’s prediction, too. He told me that if there were any bad orders in the empty ore gons, I might consider getting them out by humping that train. This was something that we never did under normal circumstances.

The predictions were correct. We did run out of cars to hump. There were six bad orders in the empty ore gons. We humped that whole train while waiting for the carmen to finish working an inbound train from Taylor yard. We started to reach down into the bowl and pull back rehump rails. When Gary Boswell relieved me at 11 pm there was nothing left to hump. The receiving yard was totally empty. All Gary could find to do was reach in and hump the hold track and the OK bowl for cars that had gone through the one spot.

I hung around until midnight. I think that the final hump count wound up somewhere around 3368 or maybe it was 3364. In any case, that set the record. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever pushed more cars over the hump in any 24 hour period.

It would be several more weeks until we would hump over three thousand cars in a day in a production environment. We reached that goal some time in late March on a Sunday

mdo
.10/15/04

Your story relates how you and your team set the record for humping at West Colton at around 3365 cars. This was over 30 years ago. Do you have any idea how many cars are being humped there now on heavy traffic days in the midst of this traffic surge that UP is experiencing?

Dick
Roosevelt, Utah

2ebright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Your story relates how you and your team set the
> record for humping at West Colton at around 3365
> cars. This was over 30 years ago. Do you have any
> idea how many cars are being humped there now on
> heavy traffic days in the midst of this traffic
> surge that UP is experiencing?
>
> Dick
> Roosevelt, Utah

Last Time that I checked it was in the 2800 to 2900 range

I just love it when a plan comes together! Finally!

steamjocky

I was a terminal trainmaster for PC in the early 70s at Elkhart, IN. I mainly worked 2nd trick and often humped 1000 cars. Don't think we ever did 3000 in a 24 hour period, though. Due to longer cars I believe the days of humping 1000 cars in an
eight hour period are over. Used to love humping a train of reefers, they went over the hill real quick!

On more than one occasion George DeLillis has told stories of his personal best 24 hour hump count at WC. IIRC that was at least decade later. As with yours, it only happens with a lot of advance planning and the right flows of inbound traffic.
And that other RR wanted to do 5000 a day at Englewood.