All,
Leo has the system down pat. Yes, that track was the North
Main heading toward Galesburg before the elevation.
One more thing to add. Somewhere along the line a beer
distributor got located in Montgomery. If the need for a
stock setout at Montgomery coincided with a SLRX car for
Montgomery being ready to leave Galesburg that beer car
would be put with the stock, usually on the head end.
While this did not always work out this way it happened
enough times to consider it the "Desired Train Makeup".
I have seen yard jobs going out to spot and unload stock
come back into Eola with over 50 empty cars. I think that
if the Lyon Metal Job did the spotting they would leave
the empties there and over time the tracks would start to
fill up.
Russ
----- Original Message -----
From: qutlx1@aol.com
To: cbq@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, 11 November, 2007 14:45
Subject: [CBQ] Montgomery Stock yard operations
Rory,
What follows applies to most of the yards history,not just the fifties based
on what I saw and was told by those who were there over the years. I'm sure
Steve can fill in any blanks from his days at the tower and at Montgomery.
Both mainline and C&I through frts set out cars of stock on the "sheep yard
lead" which was exactly at the apex of the 'V' where the two lines met. This
required a long back up move from the Aurora Depot to the lead. I believe
this track was the "old North main" from pre-elevation days and let me tell
you
it was in the same condition. I wouldn't want to take a road unit one inch
farther than necessary on it. Light rail and cinder ballast. This could be
one
interesting move if the occupants of the cars were called by nature to do
certain things. It was also often cold,rainy,snowing or just hot and smelly.
At
least one of my "brothers" tells the story of hanging on the side of an
ancient stock car while some cow let go and he climbed back up into the
engine cab
soaked. The C&I crews had the longer move as they sometimes had to go out
over Main St before getting a reverse signal. The mainline crews could cut
off
at the "stove works board" to make their move. The cars were set just in far
enough that the engines cleared the board(signal) to get an indication to
come
back out. If there were cars already on the track you just tacked yours on.
By the time I was around we were setting out only feeder cattle and sheep.
Nothing was being fed and reloaded for the Chicago Stock Yards.
But the old timers and my grandfather often talked about being ordered as a
yard crew from Eola to go to Montgomery and unload 30 and 40 cars of stock.
Typically if there just a few cars set out the Lyon Job,Aurora job or one of
the set Eola jobs would be told to go down and spot them. But if business
was
heavy; my Eola roundhouse engine assignment sheet shows extras being ordered
from Eola to Montgomery for the express purpose of unloading stock. Bones
Mathers told of more than one occasion of going down to spot 30 or 40
cars.He
even told a story of getting "buried" because while down at the chutes a
mainliner s/o another block of cars on top of him and they had to go out via
Montgomery to get around the cars. I worked the Sat. and Sun. Aurora job in
the
early 70's one summer and we always had to check with both the Mainline and
C&I
dispatchers before taking our early quit to ensure no stock was enroute.
Imagine switching passenger cars one move and the next your shoving around
stock
cars !
I don't recall anyone talking about going down to reload stock for Chicago
but for decades this would have been a normal operation.
The mtys would go to Eola and be picked up from there. Whenever I spotted
stock on a yard job the stock folks from Montgomery and the Consignee were
there
waiting and they did the actual unloading. See Steve's dissertation about
crawling into a car and unloading sheep in an early BB.
Leo Phillipp
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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