I enjoyed the article when it was published. Now a couple stories that will reveal depth of knowledge of two of the authors I know first hand. The other two I know to be knowledgeable but I don't have the same level of interaction with them as I do the two below.
Dave Hoffman managed the suburban operations for many,many years and knew it from every aspect, frontwards and backwards. I'll provide just one example from the mid 1970s. It was about 4:15pm and I was in the locker room in CUS dressing for the evening rush when news filtered in that the 3:05 out of Aurora (this train had many of the most senior men in suburban service deadheading back in for the evening rush, after going home for the mid day split rest, required under the hog law, rather than staying in the city) was derailed near Western Ave due to running over a plug door from a box car door laying on the ROW. Not only was there the matter of having a main of out of service during rush hour but probably 10-15% of the Conductors required to operate the evening rush were on that derailed train. The vast majority of suburban trainman/collectors were "Drones" who had chosen years before to "chuck" their Condrs. Rights and remain or return to brakeman status (For those who aren't familiar with the terms I promise to go into detail about drones, chucking rights, working over town, deadheading, split rest, doubling and tripling and much more in a future Burlington Bulletin article) this meant there were several outbound suburban trains w/o Conductors as these drones were nor longer qualified to work as Conductors. The rule book required a train to have a Conductor and an Engineer.
So I wandered up to "GB" office(where the train order operator and train register were located. There stood Dave Hoffman calmly telling which crews to operate which trains on which depot track and what stops to make and then whether to continue onto Aurora or flip back to CUS for another load. He was doing all this strictly from his head w/o any schedule in his hand or any paper. He threw out the schedule and operated the entire evening rush on a "load and go basis" having some trains operate as skip stoppers and some making all stops. This was before Internet, smart phones, etc so thousands of passengers were entering the station oblivious to the situation.
In a moment of quiet I walked up to Dave and said"you need Condrs, I'm examined tell me which crew and train to take". I was told to take the equipment on track two and make stops v,w,x,y,z. I got the train orders, registered, went down to track and informed the two very senior brakemen standing at the rear of the train what the plan was. Then I walked through the coaches announcing our departure time and stops. We had no intercoms and no radios. By the time I reached the head end Dave or some other mgmt person met me and advise no, now you make stops a,b,c, and d and then flip and come back for another load. So now I walked back through the cars announcing that change. Talk about upset passengers and chaos.
I then made it back to the loco and advised the engine crew the plan and off we went.
Ray Burhmaster and I have talked a few times and he attended my recent Downers Grove presentation and before the start we visited again and began talking about the east end way freight. I brought up something I had found about the east end job in the ETT footnotes up to 1948 and offered my understanding of what that meant for crew assignments. He immediately explained that I was close but not totally correct and went to some length to describe east end way freight practice before the coming of the diesel to the job. Again I will save those tidbits for a future article so they are recorded for posterity.
So in closing I'd say the article was written by guys who knew the facts.
Leo
The article is “Creating the Land of the Burlingtons: Burlington’s
Significant Investments in its Suburban Service 1946-1960” by Ray
Buhrmaster, David Hoffman, George Kanary, and oNorm Carlson in
First and Fastest (the publication of the Shore Line
Interurban Historical Society) Summer 2018 Vol 34, No 2., pages 50
to 65 - with lots of photos.
The very odd looking older steel suburban car with strange truck
covers is on page 55 with an explanation of the car being used to
test Budd’s disc brakes, which I think was covered earlier in response by this group.
I found the article very helpful - and I could enjoy nostalgia for a period I witnessed but knew little about.
The article states that there will be forthcoming article on the
next phase of the changes the Q was making to suburban service but that has not
appeared yet.
Shore Line Historical does not seem to have back copies of that but
interlibrary loan should be able to get copies of the article.
I feel a bit modest in that many of you (including Leo Phillipp) know much more than I do about the
suburban service and are in a better position than I to comment
on the article. And further this article may have been referred to
earlier in these discussions.
Doug Hosler