In my 40 years of working as a locomotive engineer I only came close to jumping
once that I recall.
One day in the late 1970s I got called from the extraboard to deadheaded from
Sheridan, WY to Gillette by crew van. I had not worked east of Clearmont for
perhaps a week. The BN was digging several large cuts to straighten out the
CB&Q's "S" curves between Oriva and Felix where trains often slipped down and
stalled. The last time I had passed that point ties had been laid out on the
new roadbed. In the intervening days MOW had installed a switch at the east end
of this work to allow movement onto the new line. Earlier that day, unknown to
me and my crew, a tractor had pulled a couple of strings of rail off a ribbon
rail work train. The rails were spiked down at about every 5th tie then the
rail train backed onto the newly laid rails. The work train tied up just in the
clear on the new line. The dispatcher did not see fit to inform us of this new
switch nor of the tied up work train. Unfortunately the engineer went home
leaving the headlight on bright. I got called for train #75 at Gillette.
Running at 49mph I came around a curve to see a bright headlight shining at me
up the single track rails. Since we had a train order meet with an eastbound at
Echeta my first thought was that crew had ran the meet. I bigholed the train
while the head brakeman was going out the front door and I followed him. That
headlight kept getting bigger and closer. The headman was down on the steps
waiting for the train to slow before jumping. I told him to jump so I could get
off. He finally said he was going and at that moment I realized something
didn't look quite right. So I grabbed him by the collar and said "Wait a
second!" Now he is trying to jump and I am holding onto him. I can see what the
situation is with the new line and the work train and we roll over the new
switch and into the first "S" curve of the original line. After stopping I
shakily go back into the cab, reset the air, and radio the conductor what
happened. He seemed to think it was funny. When I tried to move the train there
was a bone jarring THUMP. The lead unit had very big flatspots. But that is
another story.
Another night I was pulling my westbound into the siding at Felix for a meet. I
was getting close to the west switch when the opposition appeared at the curve
west of the switch. I was just stopping when the eastbound, about to pass us,
went into emergency and stopped. I asked the engineer what was wrong and he
said that his head brakeman had "joined the birds" meaning he had jumped from
the train. Apparently the headman hadn't been paying attention to where they
were at and had forgotten about our meet and when he saw my headlight he
figured there was going to be a head-on. Luckily he landed in a deep snow drift
and was unhurt.
Another night a decade later I was on an eastbound freight coming through the S
curves at Kiewit about 6 miles west of Sheridan. An eastbound coal train was
loading on the Bighorn Mine loadout track and its locos were stopped at the CTC
control point. My head brakeman suddenly let out a war-hoop and bolted out the
front door. I big-holed the train. About that time he comes back into the cab
and sheepishly says that he woke up, saw the flashing yellow light on top of
the coal train locos, and thought we were going to collide. I grumbled about
brakemen who don't pay attention to where they are and what's going on, reset
the air, and continued home to Sheridan.
One of the worst feelings is when you see a tanker truck on a crossing
immediately ahead of you but it is not marked. A friend of mine hit an empty
molasses tanker at a feed mill. You only have a few seconds to weigh the odds
and decide if its likely to be gasoline or something more benign. Do I jump or
stay?
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