Trying to remember how that "double drop" was performed on the Earlville Turn
at Cat brought to mind a humorous incident that happened on that job in 1974
which by pure luck didn't turn into a disaster.
That year Cat was shipping finished equip. at record levels. We were
routinely working 12 hrs a day and bringing in 30 plus car trains every night.
The two
long sidings parallelling the mainlines held about 30-33 cars plus the w/c
when shoved right up against the derails on the east end. The one nearest the
main held a couple more cars then the one closest to the plant fence due to the
switches at the west end leading into the plant and connecting the
runarounds/sidings. So each day we'd be faced with how to pack 7 lbs of train
into a 5
pound trk. when making up the outbound train for returning to Eola. We would
build our outbound train on the siding nearest the main as it held those couple
extra cars. We did this for weeks never having any concern as to the hazard we
were creating. How?
Each day/night we'd pull 26-30 loads of Cat equipment off the three loading
trks and the two high wide measuring trks. along with mty lumber flats,coal
hoppers,gons and loads of scrap. One night while switching trk 12 and 13 we
noticed a mainline hotshot go into emergency while running by our expanding cut
of
outbound cars. We didn't give it much thought until the DS came on the radio
asking if we had high wide loads setting next to the mainline. We'll yes we
did; just like everyday. It turns out the westbound Galesburg crew had a high
wide in their train that couldn't pass another high/wide of more than x' and x"
and it sure looked to the their head end crew that our stuff was wider than
their tolerances. They walked their train by ours w/o further incident. From
that
day forward we had to call the dispatcher when building our outbound train if
it had a measured high/wide load so he wouldn't route another one on main 1
with a high/wide.
leo
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