Gerald and Folks,
The old rules required train service employees to live within one mile of their
on-duty point. While that was for the employee’s benefit, it was more for the
benefit of the crew caller, who had to walk, run, ride a bike, or whatever to
multiple residences to call a crew (remember, most of those crews were 5 men!).
Company vehicles for crew callers did not come along until much later.
My dad, who was a crew caller on the GN in Havre, MT., knew which window to rap
on at night (to not wake the rest of the family up); and if engineer Smith was
out of town, that engineer Jones would be at Smith’s house, with Mrs. Smith,
when it was time for him to go to work. If the employee was not at home, he
knew which bar to find the employee in.
One old crew calling story he told: The brakeman had been fired by the
trainmaster for whatever rules infraction. The Japanese crew caller had given
up looking for whoever he was trying to find. He was known for just pointing
at somebody at that point and telling them they were called. Well, he found
the former employee at that point and told him he was called. The former
railroader protested, “the trainmaster fired me.” Who would let a silly little
detail like that get in the way of getting the crew called? Not our crew
caller! “You called!”
The former employee gave up protesting and took the call. He made a couple of
trips before he crossed paths with the trainmaster that had canned him. “I
thought I fired you?”
“You did,” was the response, “but the Japanese caller put me back to work.”
After some thought, the trainmaster knew he couldn’t beat that and let him stay
working.
Another old crew calling story, I believe came out of North Kansas City. This
was in the days of the old crew calling board. Everybody had their name on a
tag and the tags were rotated as men were called. It must have been a holiday,
for the board was puny to the point that they ran out of men and there was
still one train to be called. The caller, fairly new, realized there was one
name on the board, but not in active status, but laid off status. Risking the
rath of the terminal supt. for delaying the train, he finally called the phone
number on the tag. “You are called for work.”
The man responded, “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
Getting exasperated by this time, he replied yes. Actually, if he had already
called everybody on the board that was even a maybe, he was already
exasperated, but good caller that he was, he was still trying to find somebody,
anybody, to go to work.
Well, in due time, the employee showed up and made the trip up to Lincoln, and
made a trip back to Kansas City. By then somebody had figured out what had
happened and when the man tied up, they politely thanked him for his services,
escorted him off the property, went into the crew office, took the man’s tag
down and proceeded to beat it into a hundred pieces.
The man had been fired quite some time ago for repeat Rule G violations and was
never to have returned to work, except for the crew caller who had no one else
to call.
Chuck Hatler
KC MO
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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