Bill,
Any time a crew was unfamiliar with a section of track, a pilot would be
required who was qualified on that territory. While extremely rare it could
even happen on ones’ home division. One example would be an entirely extra crew
with no one in the crew with any experience on a section of track.
Another example I’m familiar with would be the division of labor between the
two Aurora,IL lodges. One based at Aurora and one based at Galesburg. The
Galesburg based men operated the “mainline freight pool” between Cicero and
Galesburg. The Aurora based men operated on the mainline as far as Mendota,
with the exception of mainline passenger to Burlington and for short while to
Ottumwa and then everything else on the Aurora division. I won’t get into all
the finer points of this arrangement.
So a case could develop where a Galesburg based Aurora div. crew could be
ordered to make a side trip on a branch where they had no experience. I have
found several incidents where an Aurora crew based at Galesburg was ordered to
make a side trip on the Fox River branch. If no member of the crew had spent
time working at Aurora then no one in the crew would have experience on the
branch.
Another example would be an Aurora division crew based at Galesburg detouring
via the Pea Vine to Denrock, the Denrock branch branch back to Mendota. That
crew would need a Galesburg division pilot to Denrock and possibly an Aurora
Div. pilot on the branch.
Finally, what happens when you don’t have a pilot ? Well here’s an example. I
was working at BN Chgo, div. H.Q. when I was asked how a crew could slide past
a red signal at 16th st. Headed to the ICG Glen yard with a coal train? It
turned out the engineer asked for a pilot as he had never made the right hand
turn at Canal street and also worked to CUS. He was unfamiliar with it. He was
turned down. Despite crawling along with the air set, he got bye the signal at
the Pennsy main. If you’re familiar with this location, it is at the bottom of
a steep grade from Union Ave tower, the signal is hidden from view until you
are almost upon it. In this case the weight of the heavy coal train literally
kept shoving.
I was part of a crew in the mid 70s with the exact same scenario and we managed
to get to and from Glenn yard w/o incident but only with the help of several
voices kn the radio guiding us step by step.
Sorry to be so long winded but hopefully this sheds some light on your question.
Leo
> On Aug 22, 2020, at 9:18 AM, William Hirt <whirt@fastmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dave,
>
> That is what I figured. However, why would they do this? Was there some
> agreement about crewing detour trains because obviously a Hannibal Division
> crew could handle a train on the Hannibal Division.
>
> Bill Hirt
>
>>> On 8/21/2020 2:26 PM, Dave Weber wrote:
>> ottumwa div crews handeling the trains not qualified on hannibal div hence
>> the pilots.
>>>> On Aug 21, 2020, at 1:04 PM, William Hirt <whirt@fastmail.com> wrote:
>>> More train orders from the Hedgpeth/Ohrnell collection.
>>> June 22, 1967 was particularly busy day on the St. Joseph-Brookfield-West
>>> Quincy line as trains were detouring off the Iowa east-west mainline. There
>>> is a track car line up in the Hannibal file for that day. Usual Iowa
>>> mainline trains 7, 30, LW 68 and LC 70 were detouring in addition to the
>>> regular scheduled trains on the line. Train orders from Brookfield and St.
>>> Joseph have orders for Extra 9942A West running as #7. Both sets of orders
>>> have pilots along the C&E. Maybe someone can explain why this CB&Q train
>>> would have pilots on CB&Q track?
>>> Bill Hirt
>
>
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