John,
Thanks for the response confirming my understanding of Roustabout service.
Now here's the specific example I have stumbled upon dated 1896. I ask you and
others to pull out your Q maps of the Aurora Div dated prior to 1932 (thats
key) and follow along on an interesting true to life labor /mgt dispute. What
rate of pay would you expect a Roustabout doing all this switching, as you
describe, to earn: thru frt,or way frt (as road switcher didn't exist until
the mid 1960s) ?
Here we go:
The Condr. on the "Roustabout" based at Mendota,IL writes a letter to the
Aurora Lodge of the BRT asking for the local chairman to pursue a change in rate
of pay for his job as he does not believe thru frt rate is correct. He goes on
to explain in detail that after leaving their orginating terminal of Mendota,IL
eastbound they proceed to Earlville where the switch out the eastward &
westward sidings for cars going into Earlville proper, and onto Ottawa on the
Fox River Branch. They spot the local Earlville business and take the Ottawa and
Baker cars with them. They spot and pull the grain and coal at Baker and then go
on to Ottawa(via Burgess Jct) and return to Earlville. They then gather up
cars for Radley,Paw Paw and Shabbona along with all North (St Paul,LaCrosse,etc)
and Rockford,IL cars.
Upon reaching Shabbona(via Paw Paw) they switch out the sidings there and
put the Rockford and North cars into blocks for the trains going that way. They
take the Shabbona propers to downtown Shabbona for the way frt to spot and take
back with them any cars for the "mainline stations and points west"in route back
to Mendota. They typically can spend 3-4 hours switiching at Shabbona.Once back
at Earlville they put west cars on the westward siding and east cars on the
eastward siding and then finally proceed back to Mendota and tie up.
The local chairman writes the Supt who responds that the thru frt rate is
correct for the job. Later in the file the same Supt writes to agents at Mendota
and Shabbona asking them to ensure that the Roustabout has instructions and does
indeed switch out the North and Rockford cars from the other cars on the sidings
at Shabbona so the North bound wayfreights are not delayed switching out this
traffic at Shabbona.
Besdies the shear volume of switching I was stopped short by the routing of
cars vs what I saw in the early days of BN(which I am assuming was left over
from the Q) in that Eola and Cicero were used to block all this business.
Bottom line, back in the day a road job didn't mean just putting up your
feet under the cupola window.!
Leo Phillipp