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OK - here's another question I had that I've been wanting to ask that's about what I thought (and mind you - I'm not a RR professional) was an unsafe practice. When I worked in downtown Cedar Rapids I kept a close eye on all the activities in the Illinois Central and C&NW yards in town - near the Quaker Oats plant and the power plant there just off 1st Ave. The C&NW operated the old Rock Island yard and the IC had their own and the former MILW and WCF&N yards too. I saw CRANDIC (Cedar Rapids & Iowa City Rwy.), Iowa Northern (operating the old Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Manly stretch of the dearly beloved Rock Island), UP and Chicago Central & Pacific as well. Cedar Rapids was a much under-mentioned train-watching hot spot. Anyway, on more than one occasion, I saw the CNW switch crew give a car a shove and set it rolling on its own into the former ROCK yard. A brakeman was riding on the car and I saw him turning the hand brake as he was obviously slowing the car so it would collide at a safe speed with the standing cut of cars. Since he wasn't screaming for his mommy I assumed this was not an accident. The yard they were operating in was not a hump yard (nowhere near that big). I have to believe this is a practice that would be frowned-upon for obvious safety reasons, is it not?
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