Fireball, did you ever work the Chicago-LaCrosse WI I.D. pool? There was a joint right next to the main in Lynxville WI, It was a strip joint. I was a student conductor with my regular conductor mentor(He asked me to try and line my assignments up with his turn cuz we were close in age and he was from a Chicago neighborhood I knew and he wanted me to act as his brakeman!)and we were short on time, The hogger was a La Crosse guy(a good head but a little goofy)and he wanted to kill the job at Lynxville so we could wait at the joint for the relief van and he could eyeball the "ladies". Needless to say, my conductor didn't agree with that and we croaked a bit further upline. Most of the pool crews carried phone #s and menus from eating places along the route. If we would be going in the hole for a while, they would call ahead,place an order, either walk over or have it delivered,whichever applied. This worked well on the dinkies. There are a lot of pizza and sandwich joints trackside on the "Racetrack". Call ahead and they are more than happy to meet the train at the stop. Railroaders are pretty good tippers! Charlie
Thank you for your gracious comments Chuck C. I miss Wayne(Watash) too! He had another wonderful dimension to add to the story thread. His experience was with workaday steam locomotives doing their daily toil. The romance of the rails is not really so much the fast luxury passenger express train pulled by powerful locomotives, it is really the switch crews putting together trains or taking them apart. It is the humble way freight delivering one or two cars to a customer enroute.It is the hostler shuttling locos around in the roundhouse area,keeping them clean and serviced and ready to go for the next crew. Wayne and I both knew about that, he with steam, me with modern day trains. The romance comes to play in the ballet and symphony of the moving cars and engines, the switchman huddled next to a box car in a pouring rain while he tries to get a look at his next moves from the switch lists. It's with the conductor walking his train thru knee deep snow because his train went into emergency and he has to find out why and see if all his train is still on the rails. It is in the crew sitting in a siding on a low priority train,waiting for hours on end for the "big ticket" freight trains to go by, sometimes they never even turn a wheel in 12 hours. It doesn't sound romantic, but that is body and spirit of railroading. You do it because the trains MUST move,the goods MUST be delivered so that commerce can continue. It's all in the color of the glass you look through! Charlie
Charlie, your right on with so many thoughts and words. Being X-Military, and also retired, there is so many things, that people miss in their lives. You and Watash have brought a new realm too so many people reading this thread. The qustions and your answer's are a gift to the Model Railroader. OK, I'm a model HOGGER, so be it. OH, too be young again, (Would I do it Differently) YEP Give me Three of those real GEEVO's and let go of my ear's...............I know what I'm doing here.... LOL
Charlie, your tales of meals-on-the-run reminded of something amusing from about 40 years ago. The New Orleans & Mobile was still L&N property through Gulfport, MS, and I was about to cross at 38th Street when I realized there were four B-I-G EMD products stopped just shy of the crossing with a l-o-n-g string of cars back towards NO. All of a sudden two guys come hustling out of Breaux's Grocery, one with a large bag of Po-Boys (Subs to you Yankees), and the other with two 12-packs of Cokes. They tossed their goodies up onto the cab floor and quickly climbed in after. Then in less than 30 seconds they blew for the crossing and those EMDs started growling. Like you say, everybody's gotta eat....:tb-cool:
What service were you in? I was in the Army for only one 3year A.D.enlistment. I wanted to get into railroading via the Transportation Corps, but the personnel clerk at the Induction center told me that would require, at the very least, a 6yr A.D.committment. Seems like the Transportation Corps is pretty elite. When the Savanna(IL)Army Depot was still active, I would sometimes see a switcher over there. The BN went right thru the S.A.D. Sometimes I could see the troops marching to work in the A.M. It is no longer a military reservation but there is a freight car leasor/rebuilder who uses the tracks to store cars. The north end of the reservation is still virgin prairie land. There was a big flap going on several years ago when the State wanted to build a prison on that land. They didn't want to use the south end since that ground was polluted and would cost money to clean up! The environment won out! Charlie
Hytec, when I worked afternoon Nabisco Job at Eola, we would take "beans", park the power on usually the "short" track at the east end,tie it down and walk across N.Aurora Ave to a Dominick's supermarket and buy some lunch there. Three of us rails with our reflective vests and clothing and our radios always drew attention. Charlie
Ahhh yes Lynxcille! I didnt know about the club there. We went over to the Speedway for donuts all the time. Now down in East Dubuque when the clubs were open there.....well yeah thats another story Giardonos delivers as does Jimmy Johns! Let the guy come up and blow the horn and its a good tip lol.It pays to know where to stop. I know I get sick of Subway and if I have to sit and wait 5 hours for some BS I am all for heading over to someplace nice( or a dive heck I dont care)
I blocked Obee's crossing once when I was in the program qualifying on the I.D. pool. It was at 02:30 and I got the signal quickly. Nothing was ever said. And I've heard about those "places" in E.Dubuque!! LOL Charlie
Dear "Storytime" group, I will be taking a brief sabbatical from the thread for a while. I should return on or about Easter. Be good to each other. Think up topics you would like to know about prototype railroading or get some questions ready to see if I can remember a story. Charlie
Hello Gang, I am back online. Any questions? A very Holy and Happy Easter to those of you to whom it has meaning! If not, I wish you the Joy and Hope of this holiday! Charlie
Likewise, Happy Easter and welcome back! The railroad museum I occasionally volunteer at has a Paducah-rebuilt GP8. Apparently when they did the rebuild they either got too much or not enough concrete in the short hood to weigh down the front truck, so now the engine has a bit of a balance issue. It still runs good but has a bit of "personality", as it were. I wonder if you had any stories related to the individual eccentricities of particular engines or trains or routes, or classes/types of engines, what have you?
All Alcos and GEs are slow loaders, and to some degree so are EMDs. The best ones for loading quickly is the MP15(?). There is a Switch which can be used for switching moves which makes the loco load real quick! The BNSF mostly used GP-38s for switching. They are pretty good workhorses but they are treated poorly by a lot of guys. I never had much of a problem with them. The old U-Boats we would get from the coal train divisions were pretty good. They had a john that a grown man could stand straight up in, not crouched over like all the others. The U-boats came east to run out their last miles before heading for the torch or sale. I liked all the new power since the cabs were spacious and air conditioned. However the air conditioning was for the ICE electronics,NOT for the comfort of the crew. SD40-2s are really pulling machines, but as they get older they rattle and leak in every seam! Good engines to have for heavy trains though! The passenger engines on the METRA trains were nice, but the older ones didnt have a john in them,we had to go thru the carbody and into the 1st coach to use the john. They were kept pretty clean and tidy since they were always on public display. In Chicago we had a lot of Oakway leased junk, and believe me they were JUNK! What bothered me the most is that the trains were planned for their H.P.T. by the philosophies of the two major sides of the BNSF. The BN side was just enough HP to move the train(and sometimes it wouldn't!)but on the ATSF side it was more than enough. I have seen 6 six motor units hauling mebbe 1000 ft of train. True, some of those trains had dropped cars enroute, but they were still over powered. I NEVER saw 6 units on ANY BN originating train from Chicago or Galesburg, but go over to the Corwith Yard on the ATSF side and you'll see several of them daily! Charlie
Only trains out of G town with a lot of power was the GALLIN with 70Macs and other "Coal" motors heading back to Lincoln.And the CSX trains. Mostly the junk was DIT.Oh yeah also the Northtown would have 4 units. It would drop two and half its train in LaCrosse and then the remaining train and two engines headed to Northtown. As for personality,ANY SW type is a trip to run!I get some IC crudballs on occasion that still have the Switch/road and series and parallel switches and they work!I have pulled into notch one and VROOOMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GONE! What speed? No idea we have no speed recorders in them. Oh did I mention we take them out on the main? SD 40-2's I LOVE LOVE LOVE!Good pullers,quick loaders ( compared to a GE POS)Just all around awesome power.But I think my all time favorite thing to run is any of the former J SD 38's. They can PULLLLLLLLL! I know we have one GP 38 ( former IC scrap on wheels)that will choke on itsel when going from notch 2 to any above it.So I rap it up to about 6 and wehn it finally catches there is smoke and the scream of an EMD. Youd think you would just blast off right? Nope . Just makes a lot of noise is all.
Thanks, Charlie and Fireball... that's interesting stuff... Umm... you both mention engines "loading" slowly and quickly... and, apparently a cab switch that changed how this loading occurs? Can you explain this a bit? Are you referring to how quickly the tractive effort ramped up as you increased the throttle? And presumably this "switch" changes this characteristic?? Are there instances or jobs where "slow" loading would be preferable, or "fast" loading?
I dont know how the electronics of it works, and quite frankly I really dont care anymore. By "loading" we mean how quickly the locomotive will "amp" up and start to pull. The SW type switchers we both discussed had a switch that could be used which would enable the loco to load almost instantly, and as "fireball" states, they would take off like a bat outta hell! On heavy freight trains It is generally desirable to have the power load as quickly as possible so that there is as little delay as possible from the time the brakes are released until the train moves. If you get a heavy train run out its slack before the power gets a good pull on the train you will get a busted knuckle. That was a fairly common occurence on the C & I sub. My buddy Bob got a drawbar (IIRC at Burke).Maintenance just left the rubble there and every time I would go by it on qualifying trips, my mentor would say "There's your buddy's drawbar"! LOL Charlie
LOL! Good story on the drawbar... thanks for the explanation. I'm guessing the key is how quickly the field strength in the generator built up and started generating current... but you don't care about that
I am more cavemanish. I pull throttle,lotta noise smoke,power to wheel we go zoom.I only cared when I had to pass my test.
