I must have missed Jeffs email somehow.
Keep in mind that over the decades things changed but heres a overall listing
of how the locals worked under the Q. at Montgomery.
Sheep Yard was handled by the Lyon Job, if needed, Back then all that was over
there was the sheep yard. As the industrial park was developed a new job came
on that became the Armour job. It handled Armour/Dial,All Steel etc and if
there was any stock work. At any time any engine in the terminal could be sent
to spot stock. I worked the 4PM swing for awhile and on Sat & Sun,as the Aurora
engine we had to be available for spotting stock.
Both the Armour and Lyon Jobs were OT jobs. In fact the Lyon job along with the
Alley job were some of the last jobs w/steam in 1952. As Lyon Metal changed to
trucks the Lyon Job became the afternoon Nabisco Job. For awhile it was kind
of funny as Paul Latino (afternoon Eola YM) would call the Lyon Job on the
radio and they would answer as the "Nabisco Job", then the crew would call in
later as the Lyon job and Paul would answer the Nabisco job. Both the
Armour,Lyon and later Nabisco jobs went to work in mid afternoon. The afternoon
Nabisco job really went into OT mode when Datsun expanded.
Back when there was stock business in volume there would be sheep Yard" extras
that spent the entire time spotting and pulling mty stock cars.Have some
stories about those from "bones" Mathers and "Smitty"
I think the "steel place" that Jeff is referring to is one of the newer
occupants of the old All Steel plant. All Steel came from another location in
Aurora. While Lyon Metal made lockers,All Steel made office furniture. They
didn't do much by rail after awhile as trucks took most of their products out.
Caterpillar: Blt in late 50s.W/o my notes I recall it opened in 1957. First
service was an engine from Eola. As the plant grew and the Rockfalls w/f
changed ,the Earlville Turn became a 6 day a week job out of Eola,and did all
work at Cat. I worked the job during the spring/summer of 74 and we ran for the
house each night to get in before going dead. Went to work at 11AM. Usual train
in and out was around 30-35 cars. There were days when I recalll 50 and 60
cars. We had tread plate,blocking material,mty flats and gons inbound. Outbound
was scrap and dozens of machines each night. We often had to wait until 8 or 9
PM to start switching the loading docks. We'd pull 23-24 loads every night. For
awhile there was even loading way down on track 3 that had been the orginal
loading platform. We switched that trk twice a day for another 4-6 car loads.
We would run to Earlville during the day doing any short work at each town.
I am not aware of Cat ever being served by a road thru train.
When Cat first came on the yard/road men were in seperate lodges and Cat was
road territory but w/in the switching limits so yard time at Cat had to be
accounted for and a road man could be assigned to offset the time the yard guys
spent at Cat. Same thing applied at Nabisco when it was built. By then the time
offset was simplified so that a road man was allowed to bid in the "foremans"
spot on the morning Nabisco job, every so often to offset the yard hours at
Nabisco. Bob "Rocket" Meade worked the job whenever it came up.
As to the rumor about Cat and Armour coming back all I can say is I talked with
2 of the Burlington Junction principles at a recent shippers conference. They
gave no indication of leaving. In fact they asked me about the above history.
They also mentioned "izzy" Jr at Rochelle..
Leo Phillipp
-----Original Message-----
From: copivd <sholding@sbcglobal.net>
To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, Aug 29, 2010 10:07 am
Subject: [CBQ] Re: Lumber District / question
Jeff
You asked about Eola Switch engines and I had hoped Leo would let us know the
number. In the Summer of 73 I caught the Agent North Aurora Job for two weeks
It was just a day spins clerk job after the recent introduction of COMPASS(the
reason I got hired in the first place) at the time there was a morning and
afternoon Nabisco Job, Armour Job, and West Chicago Jobs. They all left early
and returned about 3PM with another job on duty at about 3PM and it was my job
to do all the computer work(at the time all punch cards) you had to Spot and
Spin the decks and get the computer to take the info(dirt had a habit of
getting in the card readers)before you could give the afternoon jobs the lists
to do the switching. So I had the day foreman and the afternoon foreman both
standing there waiting till I got the Computer work done much to the dismay of
the Train Master who did not like anyone standing around. The clerks had if I
remember right IBM 1050's while the operator had a 2770(h igh speed) 1050's had
a bell while the 2770 had a buzzer which later working Third Trick Operator
Charlie(YDM) kept complaining because it kept him awake
Steve in SC
--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "superconductor80" <superconductor80@...> wrote:
>
> The BNSF switch job is the CHC 105 out of W. Ave. It is a regularly assigned
> job now on duty at 0659 M-F. It is probably a quit job but I haven't worked
> it yet. Rumor has it we may be getting the Sheep Yard back so the Armor-Dial
> Job (303) and the Cat job (307) may go back on. We'll see.
>
> Speaking of the Sheep yard, what jobs worked there in the Q days? What was
> the Caterpillar plant (Montgomery IL) like back then? There are a lot of
> tracks that are no longer used. I have heard that the job that served that
> facility was a through freight. Also, how much business was done with the
> Steel place on the north side of the sheep yard by the Montgomery plant? Were
> they all Eola jobs?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jeff
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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