<*>[Attachment(s) from qutlx1@aol.com included below]
First a couple disclaimers,I observed the maneuver I'm about describe in
1973-75. But I assure you the same maneuver was done when the equipment was
Chinese red. Familiarize yourself with the sketch below so you can follow the
story. I drew this from memory so it's not an exact 100% track layout but very
close.
The double drop took place several times a week on the Earlville turn
wayfreight. The job was kind of two different jobs in one. After leaving Eola
around noon the job performed the heavy industrial switching at CAT of spotting
inbound material, pulling scrap,etc. then in mid to late afternoon the job
became a classic agrarian wayfreight deliverying Lumber, fertz., feed and
spotting mtys. For grain loading between Bristol and Earlville on the mainline.
Even occasionally delivered a new tractor or combine to a freight dock. Dinner
was had at a restaraunt along the way. One of the favorites was what today is
the Bull Moose at Sandwich, a preserved CBQ passenger car that we've discussed
at some length on this list previously.
Upon returning to CAT the job backed onto one of the tracks that paralleled the
mains outside the fence.The mainlines were higher than what we called the
"main"and "fence"', which were in turn higher than the plant tracks. In other
words the perfect place to make a drop. After shoving west of the gate, the
loco. angle cock was closed, all the air bled from the two-four frt cars and
waycar.
The head man was stationed at the fence trk. Switch, the Condr walked down to 9
trk. Switch.
The train was run a comfortable distance westward on the long lead. Tom
positioned himself on the footboard of the loco. next to the lead car. All is
set. Tom gives the engr. A sign to head east, then when he's comfortable with
speed and distance he asks for slack, pulls the pin, unloads from the
loco.,runs in the opposite direction of movement of the rolling cars and boards
the lead end of the waycar. The engine is lined along the fence trk. the head
man then lines the fence switch toward the plant while Tommy back on the waycar
pulls the pin and cranks just a touch of handbrake to slow it while the frt.
cars roll eastward around the curve toward the plant. When they go over nine
switch the Condr. Lines that switch for nine and the waycar rolls to stop in
the clear on nine and is tied down. The frt. cars stop rolling as there's a bit
of a bowl on that track. The engine comes off the fence trk. and is coupled to
the frt. cars which are then placed on either the "Main" or "fence" as the
first cars in tonight's train back to Eola.
The waycar resides on nine until the last move of the night it is tacked onto
the rear of a 24-28 car train for Eola. The rest of the night is spent pulling
loads and spotting empty flats on trks. 12 and 13. The outbound loads are
coupled to the wayfreight cars. Which is then runaround and job heads back to
Eola.
This is how the crew of Condr. Shields, brkmn. Neitzel and Neary (hopefully I
spelled their names correctly too lazy to go dig up a seniority list) made the
maneuver.
On the other hand the crew of Condr. Besco,brkmn. Trumper and Phillipp just
dropped the entire wayfreight train and waycar from the west upon return onto
either the "Main" or "fence" and then as the last move of the night doubled
that onto all the loads coming out of Cat and then ran around the train and
went to Eola. Just demonstrates there's different ways to reach the same result.
Things got much more complicated when the outbound train exceeded 28 or 29 cars
as we couldn't run around the train to leave. That's when all kind of
variations came into play like shoving the wayfreight cars to the far west end
of the spur so as to clear 12-15 car strings coming out of the plant and then
going out to get them as the last move, bringing them up to the
"Main" switch,cutting them off just west of it, then running around the train,
coupling the engine on the east end and shoving back to make the joint hanging
onto 28-29 cars. We had no radios.
Another maneuver was to "borrow" mainline 1 for a couple hours and leave a
string of CAT loads on the mainline. Then at the end of the night runaround the
28 or 29 cars along the fence line and double the cars on the mainline onto
those and then head east. This left the dispatcher with a single track railroad
from Montgomery to Bristol. It also created quite a scare one night for a west
bound Galesburg hot shot which happened to have a high wide load in his train.
But that's another story.
We did leave CAT one night with a 60 car train of which all but a few were
loads of machinery pulled by a single GP7.
Leo
<*>Attachment(s) from qutlx1@aol.com:
<*> 1 of 1 Photo(s)
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CBQ/attachments/267850537;_ylc=X3oDMTJvcW5rdHFhBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzE3MTI3BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTA2MzY5NwRzZWMDYXR0YWNobWVudARzbGsDdmlld09uV2ViBHN0aW1lAzE0OTkxODQwMDM-
<*> IMG_1655.JPG
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Posted by: qutlx1@aol.com
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