Early one morning I take the call to work the 5:00AM Mail. This was one of
three jobs running between Eola and West Chicago each day to keep the General
Mills plant switched continuously. I had caught the afternoon and night jobs
before so I thought I was familiar with the workings. This was in the early
70's
when General Mills was shipping from four trks at least three times a day with
extras running to the plant on Sundays. Up until this day we typically went
to West Chicago with a train that would fit on one of the 4 yard trks when we
arrived at the yard adjacent to the plant. Typically there would be two open
trks,one to yard your train and one to come back thru to get on the west end
and
start making up the strings of cars for the plant,etc. So this day we pull
into West Chicago and when we reach the east end we have to pull out to foul
the
main (which is our way back to the west end) in order to get the w/c clear of
the main on the west end. So I've got to hang onto a couple cars. When the
crew met in the geeps' cab back at Eola noone mentioned this possibility and
not
having run into it before I asked the hogger what the normal plan in this
situation was. He replied just hang onto a couple and set them over on one of
tracks on the east end.
He and I proceeded with this plan but of course there wasn't enough room on
either of the trks for two cars so...... we coupled up began to make room by
starting to shove west. During the process I received a violent washout from
the
west end coming from the waycar steps with a newspaper. Cutting off and still
hanging onto one car we pulled up and backed down the main to the w/c where I
was met by Rip who proceeded to rip me from top to bottom. Luckily we didn't
corner anything and ended up making a drop on the car into a trk on the west
end. We then went about the long overtime day of switching the production plant
and the other customers around town. After that day I knew what to do with
the excess cars when we got to G.M.!
It wasn't long after that day that I started catching the afternoon mail on a
semi regular basis and we we're going to West Chicago with 40 and yes at
least twice with a 60 car train ! Talk about a switching nightmare.
Today when you cross the West Chicago branch on RTE 38 in West Chicago you
may find 3 or 4 cars in the entire yard. It all goes by truck and the rail
loading docks have been converted to truck.
Leo
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