Russ made the following statement and it brought back a flood of fond
memories.
<Drawbars down...when a drawbar was broken as in "got a drawbar"..the
whole
> mechanism would come out of the car and fall to the
ground...normally between
> the rails...This apparatus is extremely heavy and would normally
require two
> men to drag it out from under the car and from between the rails>
One memory in particular relates to two Trainmen, neither of whom
were among the brightest lights on the Christmas tree.
It seems that their train suffered a drawbar failure while gion' up a
long, steep hill. Lucky them, it was a "right ender" which means it
was out of the trailing end of the car, no "bullchain" required.
Why the Conductor found it necessary to walk all the way up from the
waycar to the separation was never determined. (this was during the
period when only one Brakeman was used on a train but the waycars
hadn't been pulled off yet)
Well, while he "guarded" the rear part of the train the head man rode
the bad order up to the next siding to set it out. After gettin' rid
of the one-lunger the Brakeman started back down the hill to look for
his train. (it was after dark) With luck he found the train and made
the joint. The Con. was still at his "post" and began to walk back
to the rear end after the train was coupled and the air pumped up. ???
Now re-read the statement that Russ made at the begining of this
message, especially that part referencing this heavy apparatus and
what must be done with it.
After the head man had made it back up the engine the Engineer
started to pull. Well, he got 'er goin' and went about 10 or 12 car
lengths before the train went into emergency again.
This time our two heros soon found that which they had forgot about
earlier, the busted drawbar. It was just about where they had left
it too, right between the rails. This time, however, the problem was
not as easily solved as the first one was. Seems that they had run
over their own drawbar and put three coal loads in the dirt.
Four eyes are better'n two????
Karl
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