RE: Ravenna
I caught the Ravenna Switch engine which was a night job (12:01am to 8:00am)
summer of 1956. When you caught this job off the extra board you were stuck
there for three weeks. My memory is fading, but seems like this was a 6 day
job and by contract was only supposed to work 5 so each man took 5 days off
every 5 weeks, so the extra man relieved each switchman for a full 5 days.
I can't remember the name of the old hotel...Dale...help me out. Anyhow that
was before anything was air conditioned. Trying to get a "days" sleep in an
1890s hotel with no AC when you were working a night job was not a good
thing.
Here's another little story to go with that. Some nights there wasn't a lot
of work and sometimes we'd be done by about 2:30am or so. The procedure was
go grab a waycar and pull it up in front of the depot... The foreman would
go and sit in the depot with the operator and the rest of the crew would bed
down in said waycar until it came time to work an inbound train. This was
before the waycars were run through and every train had to have its waycar
changed...Under the union agreement the crews would change their own WC's if
the switch engine was not on duty. Under the same agreement was the
provision that if an inbound train was called in within an hour of the switch
engine's going off duty the switch engine had to be held over (on overtime)
to change the waycars.
Anyhow at that time No.43 was due at Ravenna about 3:30am or so and No. 42
about an hour or so later. The way the train crews worked was that No.41
which was the short local train left Lincoln about 7:00pm and arrived at
Ravenna sometime around midnight. Since this was a short (5cars or less)
train he only carried a conductor and one brakeman. 43 was the long train,
still with a Pullman at that time and hence required the 2nd brakeman 42 was
his counterpart eastbound.
The way that the jobs worked was that the conductor and brakeman going up on
41 would come back on 42 early the next morning. That gave them a layover of
about 4 hours or so. However 43 carried the second brakeman (flagman) who
would turn right back on 42 along with the conductor and brakeman who had
come up on 41.
Anyhow one night we were "on the spot" in front of the depot and a couple of
us were dozing in the waycar when 43 came in. We kind of roused up a little,
but didn't look too lively.
Shortly after 43 left the foreman, I think it was Court Firestein that night,
came out of the depot and said...you guys better wake up, Billy Loos (the
Trainmaster) is in the depot. He had come up on 43 and would go back on 42.
We got up and went over into the depot. There still wasn't anything going
on so we just sat around "chewing the fat" with Billy...he was a pretty
friendly guy....
In an hour or so when 42 came in Billy got on along with the flagman who had
been in the depot with us. As 42 started to pull out we walked out of the
depot and stood on the platform waiting for 42 to clear so we could go back
and resume our slumbers.
As the rear end of 42 cleared the platform the flagman leaned out the
vestibule of the rear car and yelled....."All right.....everybody back to the
sack".....
Just one of those little memory flashes from the past.
By the way Dale....did you ever know or meet Eff Stewart the old retired
trainman who lived at Ravenna. He was a good friend of my grandfather, who
insisted that I go over and see him while I was there....I did and we had a
great visit...It's a shame I don't remember any of his tales.. He was a
member of the real old-timers club...vintage 1910.
Pete Hedgpeth
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