w/o exception the most exercise I got working on the Chgo/Aurora division
was at Rochelle,IL. I went home tired from either job.The town had been a
minor
industrial player until the mid/late 60's when the town fathers and the RR
began promoting it's location.
Up until this time the city power plant,Delmonte #110 and 115 plants and
Swift along with an occasional car for Caron Spinning and Rochelle Furniture
and the stock traffic were handled by the Rockford wayfreight coming down each
night. Standard Oil had a pipeline terminal that fed diesel and gasoline into
tank cars but they were switched primarily by the Milw(probably because the
bulk of cars went to the Milw road for fuel service). As development kicked
in the wayfreight couldn't make it back to Rockford each night before dieing
and the Rockford switch engine then didn't have power.
So management cut the Rockford w/f back to a Flag Center turn(though it was
"advertised" to come down to Rochelle if needed) and added two "road
switchers" based at Rochelle. It went from a 16 hour ringer to an early quit
job.
By the time I started working these jobs in '73 there was the day(6AM) and
the night(6pm) jobs and Delmonte plant 199 alternated between the Q,Milw and
CNW as a separate additional assigned job. In '73/'74 the train crews still
chalked cars on these jobs because of the sheer volume of cars they handled
each shift. Other than Eola I dont recall any other location still chalking
cars at this late date. The day job switched primarily the west end of
town(Delmonte 110,115,Rochelle Asparagus,and dug its' cars out of the road
crews set
outs,etc) The night job switched the east end of town(Carnation,the power
plant,Swift,Standard Oil,Rochelle Furniture,Caron Yarn,made the 199 delivery
and
p/u ,etc and made up and broke down the road train set outs/pickups). Both
jobs were 12 hour ringers w/o any real effort needed to stretch things out.
I was part of a crew one night that put together a 62 car p/u for an
eastbound one morning in '74. We typically had 30-40 cars but Carnation was
really
in overdrive that week.We filled yard Carnation three and shoved it around
toward the building door on plant #4 until the east end cleared the mainline.
It
was a train all by itself !
The move that always got my attention was when the day job would come down
to the depot from digging their Delmonte cars out of the nights s/o's on the
either the pass or storage(there wasn't a yard in town, everything was
switched off the mains, both jobs had radios assigned early on as there was
little
straight track in town) and would proceed to drop a string of cars into the
"pocket" or pass right in front of the depot and across a busy street xing so
the cars would be on the correct end to switch the plants. They also did the
same thing when the night job would come downtown with less than 5 minutes
left and the crews traded on the mainline. The night job switched everything
with the switches opening to the east and everything on the day job opened
westbound. So when the night job ran out of time(a regular event) we would
shove
downtown and the day job would make their slick drop in front of the depot for
all to see !
I caught the day job from time to time off the extra list and found it had a
neat advantage over the night job in addition to sunlight. At the end of the
day when the last car of outbound tin cans were pulled from the can plant and
it was time to head for downtown the crew had built the outbound train on
Delmonte 3 which ran uphill steeply to the east. So the crew would bleed off
all but a car or two,put the engine in the clear on Delmonte two or 1 and then
let the outbound cars roll free westward onto the main(after getting
permission to occupy it) as the main line ran uphill westbound to Flag Center.
There
was no danger as no matter how many cars were involved they rolled west
until the grade stopped them and then they started east. By this time the
engine
was on the main and headed toward them. A nice easy coupling was made and the
engine proceeded east to the depot with the cars in tow on the "right" end
for the night job to handle. Of course if the day job ran out of time this
step was eliminated and the day crew shoved downtown and then the night crew
made the drop in front of the depot.
Just remembered a nuance about the job. Swift would load a car of tallow
that needed to be weighed so the night job would pull the car and run it to
Flag
Center and leave it for the Rockford w/f to take to Rockford and weigh.
Occasionally the car would come back as overloaded. Even then I wondered what
damage that was doing to the light weight rail and gravel ballast on the branch
?
Leo
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