Charlie,
When I called on West Burlington Shop post merger to the early 1990s, they had a full time resident staff engineer on site. He created drawings, maintained and updated drawings, issued and reviewed modifications, distributed drawings and information to the field and was involved in any special projects in the shop. His office was located in a loft near and above the general offices. Of course, his activities were coordinated with the Mechanical Dept. to whom he reported. Many older drawings were maintained in his office. While I did not have a responsibility for the RR before merger, I suspect that the Q maintained a similar position when they controlled the operation of West Burlington. They probably had similar positions at the other major backshops such as Aurora, Denver, Havelock and possibly even Hannibal.
That said, I recall one visit when repairs were being made to a wrecked locomotive. Several shop people, including the bay foreman, were gathered around the front of the locomotive discussing the best way to complete a certain portion of the the repair. A drawing was made in chalk on the end sheet of the locomotive and that was the plan they followed in completing the repairs! The specific drawing probably vanished with the paint job.
Bill Barber Gravois Mills, MO Fri Oct 12, 2012 7:21 am (PDT) . Posted by:John-
My point is that, while North American railroads had creative individuals working for them in far-flung locations it was not total anarchy…..most lines had management systems in place that required people to follow established protocols in the course of their daily work. Interesting deviations did happen the vast majority of work was done “by the book” down to very small details. There were areas of local variation …..routing of lines on steam locomotives, interpretation of lettering during the sign-painter era, etc… but standardization was normal. There are drawings for the smallest details of equipment and even down to tools used in the conduct of business.
Sometimes we note the unusual (how many one-offs got made in plastic because they were of enough note to make it into a Cyclopedia or other publication?) and the ordinary goes un-noticed as common background noise.
It is like the notion that everyone coming through Immigration got their names Americanized…..while that did happen, it was not “normal”….plenty of people are “stuck” with their original European names…because the immigration people worked off of the Ship Registries….and especially the German Lines had bureaucracies in place to make the paperwork very accurate. I know this based on my own last name!!
On the other hand, one of the problems I had when I worked at Kato was trying to convince the Japanese that two units were not painted exactly the same….something that would not be possible in Japan as they are suicidal about following rules there.
Charlie Vlk
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