The old RAILROAD MAGAZINE was replete with "caller" stories.....Funny
thing...they don't change much over the years....Only the names and the
railroad.
When I was braking on the Q here in Lincoln in the 1950's there was a female
caller....Always answered the phone..."Call Girl"....Imagine that today.
Pete
-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Hatler <gnhistory07@live.com>
To: CBQ <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thu, Jan 27, 2011 1:08 pm
Subject: [CBQ] Re: Employee Moves and Crew Calling
Pete and Q fans,
That is interesting that even a regular job had to be called at El Reno. The
other term for it was ‘shagging.’ Not sure where that came from.
With centralized crew calling, everybody has a phone, cell phone, pager, and
they are usually watching the computer if they know they are first or second
out.
In my days as a crew caller, 1997-1998, I have sent the trainmaster to
somebody’s house in the middle of the night when I could not get an answer on
the phone. I even sent the sheriff out to one employee’s house at 2 in the
morning. I knew that she lived out in the toolies by herself and she never
missed a call. Boy, was she surprised, and she called me right away and took
her call. I was truly concerned for her safety. But if she had answered the
phone, she would have had to take the call.
Employees had a way of not answering their phone if they did not want to go to
work, and even though it was a miscall, they usually beat the wrap after
confessing their ‘sin’ to the trainmaster and being chewed out.
One of my caller bosses told the story of a guy that would not take answer his
phone, so he drove over to the house. The employee’s unfriendly dog was in the
front yard, and was not going to let the caller in the yard to knock at the
door. He still managed, somehow, to get the employee’s attention, and when the
man stuck his head out the door, the caller told him, ‘you are called.’
Crew callers were very good and very persistent in getting their man. We knew
that if we delayed one train, then we were going to delay every train for
hours, usually until sunup, when folks would begin answering their phones.
Often times, it was the wife who would answer, and hand the phone to the
husband, as if to say, ‘it’s time to go earn some more money for the family,
go!’ This was especially so, if we had already canvassed the entire board, and
then had a new train to call. Once you had a new train, you would start the
canvassing all over—that is to say, calling everybody on the list—and I do mean
everybody. By the time we had woken up the wife two or three times at 2 in the
morning, and she had to get up and go to work or get the kids to school, she
just wanted to sleep, and she would answer the phone, and maybe even take the
call just to get the phone to stop ringing.
One night I had a Z train to call at Havre. First out engineer turn was vacant,
the extra board was depleted. I called the second out man and asked him if he
would step up to take the call. Perfectly legal on my part, but he had the
right to turn it down and wait for his turn to be called. Also perfectly legal.
He refused.
I called the trainmaster, told him to order up the junk train for 30 minutes
after the z train. The train was in the lineup so what I did was also legal. He
did. I called the employee back, because his turn was now called. I said ‘you
are called for the M XXX XXX. Do you want to step up and take the Z?’
The Z train would be at the away from home terminal in under 2 hours. The M
train would be there in 6 hours to 10 hours.
‘Yes, I’ll take the Z train, you SOB.’
‘Thank you, and that is Mr. SOB.’ We rarely let name calling get to us, because
it was an everyday occurrence. The fellow that called you names today would be
the fellow that went to work ahead of turn tomorrow. All part of the job. If
the employee was really obscene, then we turned it over to the managers and
they took care of it.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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