[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