Rupert
It's called money in the bank, but I'll let the "griever" i.e. Leo, explain it.
John
On Thursday, April 24, 2014 7:19 PM, "dhartman@mchsi.com" <dhartman@mchsi.com>
wrote:
I'm still laughing, Leo. (it sounded vaguely familiar). I'm beginning to think
you were a black cat :) Looking forward to close call #3. Doug (ps: I should've
guessed Shoe was involved
when so many lap backs were there)
----- Original Message -----
From: Leo <qutlx1@aol.com>
To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 18:33:23 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [CBQ] Close Calls 2
Based on the feed back from close calls 1. I'll give it another go. If I've
told this one before I apologize.
This true story,like close calls 1 is a BN story. But almost all the players
are former Q guys and nothing at this point(mid 70s) has changed from a
cultural standpoint. That came later about 1980-81 in a big way.
I'm braking in Lew's turn in the C&I pool. He's off on vacation or layed off a
trip. So double EE catches the turn off the Condr's extra list. Were called for
a 2nd or 3rd/185 out of Cicero on duty at 3:15PM. The Q would mostly have
identified this as a X north. The trick is to get us out of the yard right
ahead of the dinky parade. Everyone managed to get that accomplished and we
plod along with 80-90 mty lumber cars and maybe two or three loads. As usual
we're under powered but can make reasonable speed, as long as there aren't any
hills. Did I mention this is the C&I pool ?!
So we are going up Waterman hill (westbound of course) at maybe 10-15 mph. It's
a cold,misty,damp November/early December night. Not quite cold enough to snow
but still miserable. Right at the top of the hill with the curve on my side
double EE asks you got any sparks on your side ? I flip open the window and
gaze really hard, nothing but black ahead of me. Nope, nothing on this side.
Double EE grabs the radio handset and say "stop the train" ( is this starting
to sound familiar ?)
Once stopped we peer out the back door and once again the ties shows cut marks.
So we walk up and just about 12-15 ahead of the w/c is this mty 40' box car
with a trailing pair of wheels off.
They are off to the North side and outside the North rail so that's how double
EE was somehow able to see the sparks.
Here's where the story gets a bit detailed and long. Double EE decides were
going to retail this puppy ourselves. I mean how hard can it be to put one pr
of wheels on an mty 40 footer back on the rails ?
He advises the DS of the situation and the battle plan. So we make a cut and
the head end goes to Shabbona siding and the engines come back to pull the car
on. One minor problem. There are no frogs on the Waycar or the engines. We try
gathering up various bits and pieces of lumber,ties,rocks,etc to give the
wheels a path the get back on the rail head to no avail. By the way it's now
raining.
So there's a train behind us(85) and somebody else sitting at Steward
eastbound. The call goes out to check and see if you have any frogs. The
eastbounder at Steward (Shoe) has some on one of his units. So our power goes
back to Shabbona siding and Shoe comes to our assistance.
The frogs are lugged to site. Oh sXxxx what our we going to spike these frogs
to the ties with?
The hunt is on and spikes are retrieved from the ROW. So we set the frogs and
spike them down with the standard 3 lb hammer on every w/c and engine. Needless
to say the wheels just kick our frogs out of the way. We have no blocking to
lead the wheels up to the frog so when they get there it's a big verticals
lift, not to mention we're trying to climb up 136 or 151 lb rail. This isn't a
yard derailment.
Ok,it's time to say uncle and call the Eola wheel/ rip truck. They take a
couple hours to get to site. They had to get the Carmen out of bed and then to
the truck at Eola. In about 15 " minutes the car is rerailed.
So the C&I has been tied up for about 4 hours, there are 6 trains holding.
Lesson learned call the wheel truck first......
By the way road crews didn't get paid extra(arbitraries) like yard jobs for
rerailing. On the other hand I do believe a number of,100 mile lap backs got
filed from the incident
Leo
Sent from my iPad
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