Duncan, My memory of the Keokuk switch moves was just a wee bit off. I
asked an oldhead hogger last night at work about those moves, and he shed a
little more light on them for me. In the mid sixties the freight trains
used freight main one and the main line was for the passenger trains. No.
80 which was a second class southbounder would come in on frt. main one and
make a cut on their headend setout. After setting the cut of cars out, they
would tie their power onto the pickup track and the switch engine would have
swung the rearend of the train over to the pickup track. Often they would
remain tied on to assist the train as it departed. I remember going out on
the platform of the waycar and reaching over the railing to grab a chain
that was attached to the pinlifter of the waycar and cutting away from the
switch engine. As I recall we were almost always shoved out of town up at
Burlington which was an even harder pull than Keokuk. You might wonder
about all these assists we required but you need to know that we only had
one engine most of the time. Something about a term called "river grade"
that the company believed so strongly in. Well enough about the everyday
mundane chores of a young brakeman even though pulling that chain on the
waycar was almost as intimidating as leaning out the door of an old greyback
with one foot on the stepladder and one hand on a grabiron and catching
orders at 65 or 70 mph. Later, Archie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Haydens" <kliner@socket.net>
To: <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 1:05 PM
Subject: Re: [CBQ] switching practices
> Duncan, In the latter years, the northbound local would come up the
> mainline and there were two crossovers right around the vicinity of the
> Hubinger tank spots that went from the main to # 1 and from # 1 to # 2
> track. As I recall we would set out in # 1 and pick up off of # 2. I'll
> get some more details on the southbound 2nd class train in the evening as
I
> recall the switch engine grabing our waycar and the rear end of our train
> and setting that out and doubling our waycar to the pickup and back to the
> train. More later, Archie
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Duncan Cameron" <d.cameron@sympatico.ca>
> To: "BRHSlist" <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 12:06 PM
> Subject: [CBQ] switching practices
>
>
> > I've been trying to decide how faithfully to try to reproduce the Keokuk
> yard (reduced number of tracks is a given). At the time I'm modelling,
> there are two freight trains daily -- one northbound, one southbound.
From
> the operating data sheets published by the BRHS, it looks as though the
> Keokuk cars would be on the head-end of both trains. Can anyone suggest
to
> me the moves that would be involved in removing these cars and placing
them
> in the yard for local delivery, and as well those moves that would be
> involved in placing outbound cars into the train. I believe Keokuk had an
> assigned yard switcher so I suspect that it would do the work rather than
> the road engine (I may be wrong on that though). Specifically, I'd like
to
> know where the road engine might wait while the cars were being switched
in
> and out, whether the waycar would be removed (there doesn't seem to be a
> waycar track in Keokuk), and whether the whole train would likely have
been
> pulled onto the switching
> > lead or only part with the rest left on the main or an arrival track.
> The more detailed the responses the better, as it will let me know exactly
> which tracks and switches I need to include and which can be "compressed"
> out.
> > Duncan Cameron
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
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