WMNB4THRTL "By the late 1920s, newly constructed freight cars were taller than most cupolas. This prompted the invention of the bay window caboose, pioneered by the Milwaukee Road and the Baltimore & Ohio. Built with one set of windows on each side, projecting out from the side wall to form a viewing alcove, the bay window caboose allowed the conductor and brakeman to view each side of their moving train. This type of caboose was cheaper to build than the cupola, and also helped solve tunnel clearance problems faced by many eastern railroads." Would this really solve a problem though, because wouldn't it then be that they would be too wide? Must be not, huh? It seems like it though.
"By the late 1920s, newly constructed freight cars were taller than most cupolas. This prompted the invention of the bay window caboose, pioneered by the Milwaukee Road and the Baltimore & Ohio. Built with one set of windows on each side, projecting out from the side wall to form a viewing alcove, the bay window caboose allowed the conductor and brakeman to view each side of their moving train. This type of caboose was cheaper to build than the cupola, and also helped solve tunnel clearance problems faced by many eastern railroads."
Would this really solve a problem though, because wouldn't it then be that they would be too wide? Must be not, huh? It seems like it though.
Consider that the bay window is basically a shelter for somebody who would otherwise be sticking his head out of a side window. In fact, some railroad's cabooses (NYC was the biggest one) had bay windows that were basically just a box over a window, giving the crewmen a chance to look along their train.
Most cabooses have/had carbodies that were narrower than those of the freight cars to begin with. Perhaps bay-window cabooses were narrower yet, I haven't checked. But consider that the bay window would be the widest part of the body...on a freight car, you have ladders and grabirons that stick out beyond the width of the body and still have to be within the clearance diagram.
Besides, your most effective inspection of a train is done as it is going around a curve, so you can actually see one side or the other better.
WMNB4THRTLand this passage: "Cabooses were expensive to build and maintain, unlike regular freight cars, which earned their keep. Extra switching moves were needed to add or uncouple a caboose at the end of a train, and they required caboose tracks at major yards, as well as carmen and laborers to work on them and service them" What's a 'caboose track?' Would it be a special siding just for caboose(s)? If so, I can see how that would be a pain!
What's a 'caboose track?' Would it be a special siding just for caboose(s)? If so, I can see how that would be a pain!
Far better, in those days, to have a track where all cabooses could be taken for servicing (fuel, water, office and operational supplies, etc.) than to cart those supplies to some other yard track where cabooses might or might not be accessible. Better for the yard crews, too, to have them out of the way. Before cabooses were pooled, you had to be able to get specific cars off the caboose track for the crew that was taking the train out. If it were an away-from-home terminal, there was a time when the caboose was where the crew actually slept.
WMNB4THRTLOn the subject of cabooses, what else is/was real interesting about their function, history, etc. Of course, I do know they are used rarely today, but it what setting do they survive, and better yet, why? Why do a few places still use them? I realize why they faded out and their functions met in other ways, but if so, then why do some places still need/use them?
There may be people here who used cabooses more than I actually did, so I'll let them comment on this. Just remember that they were office, cookhouse, and bunkhouse for crews on the road, and an observatory from which the train could be checked. The most likely use today is as a shoving platform, to protect someone who has to protect the leading end of a long shoving movement.
If you can find anywhere a copy of The Railroad Caboose, by William F. Knapke, you'll get an eyeful.
WMNB4THRTLPS Also, IIRC, I've heard stories of a lot of these depots having dogs, who often fetched the hoop-up sticks (sorry if that's not the technical term) used for mail/messages. Can anyone confirm or deny such info? Also, I heard that very often, even 100 years ago, women often worked as the teletype operator at these depots?
Any dogs would have had the agents/operators for their masters--they wouldn't have been on the company payroll! Before the handing up of orders with the forked stick that you may be familiar with, they'd use hoops or looped sticks. The crewman would have to take the entire hoop, undo the orders, then toss the hoop off at the far end of the platform (if they were charitable). A dog to retrieve them would be kind of nice to have....though an eager kid might have worked as well!
One of my favorite agent/operators in my years of hanging around the local depot in the evenings was a gal who probably got the job while the men were serving in World War II. No teletype, and probably no telegraph in those days...but she would have to be available copy train orders that the dispatcher might need to send, and sell tickets to what few passengers might want them (and handle the paperwork for the fairly large volumes of mail that still went through the station). Teletype wasn't used much by most railroads--you put your earphones on and copied the orders either by hand or on a typewriter, and had to repeat them to the dispatcher for accuracy, then fill out a clearance form to accompany them when delivering them.
Perhaps the most famous female station operator would have been Kate Shelley, who held down the job at her local station for the Chicago & North Western for a few years around the turn of the last century, after her famous crossing of the Des Moines River to save the passenger train from disaster.
WMNB4THRTLAnd, this from a Wikipedia article, "...from 1853 to 1874. The depot provided the village with daily mail, express, and passenger service by means of an omnibus" Would this 'omnibus' probably have been like a stagecoach-type thing, or? (The village they refer to is 3 miles away.)
Would this 'omnibus' probably have been like a stagecoach-type thing, or? (The village they refer to is 3 miles away.)
To quote Michael Flanders, "Bus comes from the Latin omnibus, meaning To or for, by, with, or from everybody." So just think bus.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Many thanks! I did figure the dog would belong to depot master.
I meant to type 'telegraph,' not 'teletype.' oops
Nance-CCABW/LEI
“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” --Will Rogers
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right! --unknown
CShaveRR Any dogs would have had the agents/operators for their masters--they wouldn't have been on the company payroll! A dog to retrieve them would be kind of nice to have....though an eager kid might have worked as well!
Any dogs would have had the agents/operators for their masters--they wouldn't have been on the company payroll!
A dog to retrieve them would be kind of nice to have....though an eager kid might have worked as well!
This gave me quite a chuckle. Chasing after hoops was my little brother's thing. Once the train had passed my Dad would give the OK, and Dave would light out after the hoop.
Our dog Peter, on the other hand, never felt that "hoop fetching" was in his job description!
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
Thanks everyone! Bruce, I had you in mind as being able to contribute richly to my inquiries! I think I should have worded it as "focused on northeast US but all depot info sought" bc I dare say, it's probably very similar, if not nearly identical, in many/most/all cases!
I understand a cond. had a sheet for every car he had on his train. I imagine the freight info, origin point, destination point, what else? Is this accurate? Wouldn't he also have to plan how to drop each cut of cars and then recouple train, etc? I'm most interested in all about the cabooses, and the depots, too, as I posted earlier. Thanks a bunch!!
Conductor would have the "waybill", which is a basic and (almost) indispensable legal document as the contract for transportation of the shipper's goods to the consignee by the carrier; also, a practical one, because it has the information to which you allude - plus car number and reporting marks, weights, routing if other than carrier's choice, other special instructions, etc. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waybill - compare with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_lading
See also images at:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_of_Lading_-_Southern_Railway_Company_front.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_of_Lading_-_Southern_Railway_Company_back.jpg
See also: "Waybill" at: http://trn.trains.com/en/Railroad%20Reference/Railroading%20Glossary.aspx?letter=W - neither "Bill of Lading" nor "Switch List" are in that Glossary, though.
I don't have much more info on them - let's see what Bruce, Carl, zug, and others here who work with them on a daily basis can add.
For switching, it may be "all in his head"; or in the form of a "switch list", which could be scrawled on the back of an envelope, or neatly compiled and printed out - depends on the operation.
On a lighter note: Have you ever seen the pen-and-ink drawing of the Station Agent - J. Pluto Bolivar - in "At The Old Depot", by C.D. Poage, 1930 ? See the following link, and esp. the comments below it:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wb5kcm/1457506573/
(I have a full-size print, too. Any resemblance to some of my former workplaces is purely coincidental !)
- Paul North.
Paul_D_North_Jr Conductor would have the "waybill", which is a basic and (almost) indispensable legal document as the contract for transportation of the shipper's goods to the consignee by the carrier; also, a practical one, because it has the information to which you allude - plus car number and reporting marks, weights, routing if other than carrier's choice, other special instructions, etc. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waybill - compare with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_lading See also images at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_of_Lading_-_Southern_Railway_Company_front.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_of_Lading_-_Southern_Railway_Company_back.jpg See also: "Waybill" at: http://trn.trains.com/en/Railroad%20Reference/Railroading%20Glossary.aspx?letter=W - neither "Bill of Lading" nor "Switch List" are in that Glossary, though. I don't have much more info on them - let's see what Bruce, Carl, zug, and others here who work with them on a daily basis can add. For switching, it may be "all in his head"; or in the form of a "switch list", which could be scrawled on the back of an envelope, or neatly compiled and printed out - depends on the operation. On a lighter note: Have you ever seen the pen-and-ink drawing of the Station Agent - J. Pluto Bolivar - in "At The Old Depot", by C.D. Poage, 1930 ? See the following link, and esp. the comments below it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wb5kcm/1457506573/ (I have a full-size print, too. Any resemblance to some of my former workplaces is purely coincidental !) - Paul North.
Paul_D_North_Jr On a lighter note: Have you ever seen the pen-and-ink drawing of the Station Agent - J. Pluto Bolivar - in "At The Old Depot", by C.D. Poage, 1930 ? See the following link, and esp. the comments below it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wb5kcm/1457506573/ (I have a full-size print, too. Any resemblance to some of my former workplaces is purely coincidental !) - Paul North.
Paul.........I took a peek with the supplied link, {At The Old Depot}, and spent a bit of time looking it over. Much to look at and ponder. A bit O T though {me}....I looked over to the right side of that page and "thumbed" thru the pic's of that Teac Cassette sterreo tape deck. That is really nice and goes back a ways. Looks like a quality unit.
I noticed it, I suppose, because I happen to have a pretty good Cassette tape deck from back, 27 years ago....An AKAI GX7. It's almost never used anymore, but still connected.
By the way, that station agent seems a bit busy being in the depts of the Depression.
Quentin
Thanks! Anybody know of any caboose(s) still in active service, other than on a tourist RR, of course? I hear there are some but I'd like to know of them. Do you know if they use them for switching, or?
Also, I'm still seeking sources of info for depot 'life,' if you will and caboose(s). A special area of focus, as I mentioned, is how important the RR's were/are to America, etc. I know there must be lots of 'stuff' out there, but I'd like to get a hold of it. Is Wikipedia good, or? Thanks; any and all help much appreciated! Have a great weekend.
D&H Caboose 35799 - as seen at/ in Kenwood Yard, Port of Albany/ Glenmont area - Sat., 24 July 2010. Unknown what service it is used for:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2518/5792347158_25e244617e_b.jpg
For the 'depot life' info, get hold of the following, among others:
A Treasury of Railroad Folklore - see:
http://www.amazon.com/Treasury-Railroad-Folklore-Traditions-American/dp/0517168685
The Story of American Railroads - see:
http://www.amazon.com/Story-American-Railroads-Stewart-Holbrook/dp/B0007DF2DA
The American Heritage History of Railroads in America - see:
http://www.amazon.com/American-Heritage-History-Railroads-America/dp/0517362368
Thanks a bunch, Paul! I'm checking on getting those now.
Nance, sorry I haven't gotten back to you sooner, but I was hanging back waiting for specific questions. I guess you need to have some basic knowledge before you can get into specifics. I will recommend three books on depot life, but they are about Canadian depot life. Admittedly, there will be many similarities, but the one big difference is that close to 90% of all manned Canadian stations had the Agent's family living with him, and the number in the US is almost the opposite. Canadian stations weren't just strictly places of business, and from what I have read over the years that made a difference. So here is my list.
The Bohi and Kozma books are more for aficionados of the buildings themselves, but because form follows function, both books have sections on the lives of the Agents and their families. Both on and off the job. For many years the CP book was my favourite RR book, but I always thought it would be better if it was half again as thick with more details of station life. But many might find that redundant.
Mr. Brown's book is different, but it may be of more use to you, as it deals more with stations in central Canada. The population densities of western and central Canada are quite different, and the higher density may be more similar to how things are in your part of the US. It could be said that this is a more scholarly work, and Brown has included observations from non-railroaders about their impressions of station life This has resulted in some non-railroad terms being used, and has also led to some erroneous impressions of station life, much like the print Paul North linked to. The print was inaccurate, but it was funny and no insult was taken. This book does, however, also have good information I have never seen anywhere else, including answers to questions my Dad had always wondered about over the years, but never knew.
One thing it does go on to explain, is that Agents had one employer and one direct supervisor, but they served two masters. Agents in both Canada and the US were members of the Order of Railway Telegraphers union, and this was the part of the job that dealt with train operation. Copying Train Orders, copying train lineups for MOW worker safety, ensuring signals, lanterns, flags were functional, and all of the other things necessary to safe train operation.
Then there was the commercial side, selling tickets, sending and receiving telegrams, collecting COD fees on incoming freight and express and collecting fees to send out freight and express, including full carload freight. In Canada this lead to several scenario's. You had stations where, because of their position on a route, they were very busy if not essential to the safe operation of trains, back in the days of Timetable and Train Order operation. You had cases where villages and towns provided good business to the railway. But then you also had cases where a station was needed to run trains but where the commercial business had gone elsewhere, like to trucks and cars. And finally, you had the more uncommon case where people still bought tickets for passenger trains, but where a unionized worker was not needed for train operation.
The almost total lack of electrified signaling in Canada in the 1930's saved Station Agents jobs, even as the commercial side collapsed around them. During WWII Agents had more work than they could handle. But after that; with the widespread roll out of ABS, then CTC, and finally radios, along with competition from cars and trucks, the Station Agents left and the stations were demolished.
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Continued good luck, Nance, in finding the information you're looking for! Also in your new "job"! They've got a good volunteer, and I'm proud of you!
Yesterday afternoon, thanks to a timely e-mail, I became booked solid for a while. We're working on the freight car book about the C&O's rolling stock that I alluded to on our April vacation. Back in 1979 we began with a book that C&O published in 1937 (they had provided photographs and small drawings with dimensions for almost all of the freight cars on their roster); we added information about builders, dates, history, rebuildings, and dispositions to those pages, attempted to cover the series that they had left out (usually stuff on the verge of retirement), as well as a chapter on cabooses. For our revised edition we're adding a considerable amount of acquired information to our sheets (corrections were included in an appendix in one reprinting; that will be incorporated into the main book this time), and adding pages from another edition of the same book, published after World War II (1946). This will add some more interesting cars, such as heavy-duty flat cars, to the coverage.
Anyway, the old appendix was removed yesterday and the body of the book fortified. Phase 2 (adding quantities and such for 1946) will be done today, and we'll be discussing how the pages from the 1946 book will be dovetailed in with the originals.
(Can't get over some of the neat stuff...C&O had a fleet of "100-ton" six-axle coal gondolas for a time. Most of the fleet lasted through the War, but quickly disappeared afterwards--by 1946 they were gone.)
CShaveRR (Can't get over some of the neat stuff...C&O had a fleet of "100-ton" six-axle coal gondolas for a time. Most of the fleet lasted through the War, but quickly disappeared afterwards--by 1946 they were gone.)
Wow fantastic, Bruce; thanks so much!! I really appreciate that! And..
my gratitude to Carl for the good wishes and kind words!
Bruce, or anyone, I understand that the depot was often the center of the town, not geographically, but socially, etc. People came there to get the news, see their neighbors, etc. Baby chicks and pigs (other animals??) were shipped by rail, as were orders from the catalog--Sears in the US, along with supplies, lumber, etc. It was where you met (and later saw them off) your friends and relatives when they came to visit. Young kids loved to hang around. People were, in general, interested in the trains.
Have I got that about right? What important ideas am I missing? Thanks!
OK, so the site is mucked up, yet again, right now, so I have to reply and not edit!
Communications was another BIG part of this, too, I believe. What else?
Nance,there was another job that small-town agents had. It may not have been necessary in Canada, but in the U.S., if a town was so small as to not warrant having a telegraph company office, the railroad station agent was often the man who handled telegrams; thus he had another master.
Another master yet was the REA. Even though the REA was owned by the railroads, it required separate accounting, and reports and receipts for express service were sent to its office. After whatever was to be sent had been placed in an envelope, the agent sealed the envelope with sealing wax, using an REA seal..
Once, when I had stopped to visit with the station agent, he asked me to deliver a collect telegram to the recipient. The recipient refused to accept the telegram; he said he knew what was in it and thus saw no reason to pay for it. So, I took it back to the station.
This agent offered to teach me telegraphy, but the railroad would not pay for my learning--so I did not learn the code(about the only code I ever learned was the color code used on resistors, capacitors, and such). He had worked for the Big Four and the KCS, but he sppent most of his working years working for the Southern. Sad to say, he was bumped and moved to a town in North Carolina which was on my way between home and college. Twice, when I was hitchhiking between home and college, I stopped in to see him. The first time, I saw that the Southern had issued a new rule book and I asked if I could have his old book. He was not sure if the company wanted the old one back or not, so he felt he should not let it go. The second time I stopped, he was able to let me have it (now, where have I put it?).
Johnny
I had meant to add an experience I had about forty-seven years back--selling tickets when the Brookhaven operator was busy with communications (I do not remember if it was by telephone on the IC wire or by telegraph on the Mississippi Central wire). He had to tend to the commuication--and there were several people at the ticket window; I offered to sell tickets and he took me up on it. Now, Brookhaven (it was a continuous station back then) does not have any agent at all--either Amtrak or CN--even though the City of New Orleans is scheduled to stop there.
Great, thanks Johnny!! Sorry, but what is REA?
Railway Express Agency
http://www.nrhs.com/archives/rea.htm
Thanks, MC. I maybe should have known that, but I didn't yet.
I think we all got brainwashed by the "Wells Fargo Wagon" tune from The Music Man all those years ago.
-darn, now that tune will rattle around between my ears for days....
Nance, I don't know about the centre of town part. It probably had to do with the personality of the Agent involved. The commercial side I mentioned paid commissions on all the activity the Agent could generate. He literally was the Sales Agent as he went about his life about town. going up to the Post Office to pick up the mail, going to the General Store to get milk and bread, or anything else. He would keep an ear to the ground, and when anyone mentioned something in passing that would lead to a service the Agent could provide, he would speak up.
To get to the points Johnny raised, there was no Western Union in Canada, CNR and CPR handled all telegraph transmissions in Canada from shortly after the turn of the Twentieth Century. They also sold Money Orders and wired money. About the same time CP bought the Dominion Express Company and from that point forward the railways ran their own express businesses. There was no REA in Canada. As we talked about here in the Lounge a year or so ago, Agents were even in the Flower business through FTD. Before 1965 it stood for Florists' Telegraph Delivery.
I wasn't old enough to see baby animals shipped, but I saw big wood crates of eggs, and cans of cream. People receiving catalog orders from Eaton's before Christmas was a big deal for Agents, because the commissions on that went to help pay for the Agent's own Christmas expenses. I wish I could remember some of the odd things certain small towns would ship and receive that Dad told me about. In Irricana though, there was a Hutterite Colony (a religious communal group who farmed collectively) that had their coffee shipped in by rail. It came in corrugated cardboard drums about the same size as a forty-five gallon steel oil drum, and they would get eight or ten drums at a time. You would have to manhandle these drums off of the combine, into the freight shed, and then into the back of one of their grain trucks. The drums would just about fill the box, and the commissions were good.
Depending again on the Agent's personality, you may or may not have a lot of kids around. There were always a lot around our station. Dad got into the business hanging around the station at Meyronne, Saskatchewan, and one of the kids who played with my brother and me went on the work for the CPR. I hope i picked up on everyone's comments.
WMNB4THRTLCommunications was another BIG part of this, too, I believe.
I believe Western Union contracted with the railroads, once they built up their networks, which would have added commercial telegrapher to the duties of the station agent.
There were cases of the station being built "outside of town" only to have the town migrate to the station. Sometimes the original settlement became a ghost town while the new settlement, around the station, thrived.
Highland, MI is such a case. What is now known as "West Highland" was the original settlement of Highland, while "Highland Station" eventually was shortened to Highland, as West Highland became a wide spot in the road.
Don't forget that the mail travelled by rail, too, and RPO's had mail slots where you could mail something at the last minute (assuming the train stopped....).
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
mudchicken Railway Express Agency http://www.nrhs.com/archives/rea.htm
......My first component stereo system arrived by REA back in 1964. Picked it up here in Muncie at the REA office. I'm sure it arrived by passenger train. Back then, it was NYC RR and we still had several passenger trains serving our city...{pre Amtrak}, Shipment would have been from L I, NY.
And, Quentin, when I used Railway Express in 1959, I was shipping home what I could not carry in my suitcase when I finished college. When I went off to college, I mailed a seabag full of clothes and "linens" (I had to watch the seventy pound limit) and hitchhiked with a suitcase. I carried more up, from time to time, (one trip I had my then accumulation of Trains in the suitcase; I did not like to carry it very far at a time), and thus had a little more at the end than at the beginning. In Bristol, Railway Express came out and picked my shipment up; at home, I had to borrow a truck to get my belongings--which came by a freight train (the coach had been cut off in 1963). I believe that it arrived in a Railway Express car, which was still carried on the train.
Johnny....back then it was almost as normal to see REA cars {rail}, & trucks as it is now to see UPS, etc......
I remember seeing adds {somewhere}, advertising: Shipping by REA, via "fast passenger trains". Especially when having electronics shipped.
tree68 Don't forget that the mail travelled by rail, too, and RPO's had mail slots where you could mail something at the last minute (assuming the train stopped....).
Railway mail service is the one thing I can't remember ever seen being done. There was RPO service to our first station at Hatton, SK, but I wasn't old enough to remember it. When we moved to Irricana, AB in December 1956, that was a peculiar situation.
Irricana had always been served by RPO on the CNR line through town. This was their Calgary-Edmonton route. However, in 1954 a major bridge on this line was washed out and it took over a year to get the bridge fixed. All of the towns south of the bridge down to Calgary became the first towns in Alberta to have their mail delivery switched from rail to truck.
Not to be confused with towns that never had RPO service. My Mom grew up near two towns that first had mail service by horse drawn wagon, then by truck, from the CPR mainline. CP did build a branch line through these towns, but never did receive a mail contract.
My brother's father-in-law worked for the then Royal Mail on RPO cars. At their wedding in 1980, at the reception, my Dad and my brother's father-in-law got to talking. In the early 1950's the father-in-law didn't yet have enough seniority to work on a mainline RPO route, but during the summer he did get to relieve more senior men on those routes. Hatton was on the transcontinental mainline. After a bit more comparison of dates it seems about 99% certain that they had been handing mail bags to each other before either my brother or his daughter had ever been born.
(Taking a breakfast break from work on the book...finished with Phase 2.)
The town agents I remember while growing up were, in one way or another, pillars of the community. The one from the C&O (he dated back to Pere Marquette days) was involved in service clubs, the local stamp-collector's club, and so on. After retirement, he was in the area's NRHS chapter. His younger brother was a dispatcher on the C&O; I met him once at Grand Rapids, and met his daughter in college. As for the agent, I remember "outing" his grandson (named after him, as was his dad) on this very Forum many years ago. I don't think he's been around here in years, but he did work at the local hobby shop in my home town.
When this agent retired, he was replaced on days by the night guy, who was a sour-faced and sour-tempered guy who couldn't be bothered with anything (especially kids like me trying to learn).
On the GTW, the local agent was known around town as the baseball coach. He was known for yelling at his team, at the umpires, or whatever--a real ball of fire. But as the agent, he was great...he allowed me in the office to sit and listen in on the dispatcher (daily lineup was given at 1:00 p.m.), and took the time to show me some pictures from the day when Grand Haven was a prominent-enough city to be included in the railroad's name, and took a genuine interest in my interest.
Both of those guys--Denver and Elmer--got their spreads in the daily newspaper when they retired from their respective railroads. Elmer's job went to a traveling agent (Ralph from Coopersville would come in for a few hours three times a week), and the C&O, after passenger service ended in 1971, eliminated the agent in favor of an "Enterprise" telephone number.
I don't remember much about Railway Express' workings with the railroads locally, though the GTW station used to have a REA sign on its outside wall. Western Union had its own office in town by the time I was growing up.
Mail, though, was another story. Around 9:00 at night the truck would come to the C&O station, back up on the platform, and start unloading mail...a few sacks for Muskegon (the next city to the north and the end of the line for the passenger train due in an hour or so), and a baggage-cart full of mail sacks for the southbound train (we called it the "midnight train", though it came in slightly earlier). That mail mostly went on to Chicago. The "milk run", due at sometime around 5:00 a.m., brought most of the mail in from Chicago, so the postal truck had to come again to take that all to the post office. All of this was done under the eye of the night agent/operator, who kept pretty busy on his/her job handling train orders and this business. When the mail stopped traveling by rail, the "midnight train" and the "milk run", along with their mainline connections, lost their reason for being, and were cut off. The remaining passenger trains lasted until Amtrak day.
CShaveRR daily lineup was given at 1:00 p.m.
daily lineup was given at 1:00 p.m.
Thank you Carl. I had forgotten about that.
Line-ups were issued at the start of each trick. Dispatchers would issue them just after midnight, just after 8 AM and again at just after 4 PM, But Section Mens' hours were 7:30 to 4:30 with a hour off from noon to 1 PM. There was a second line-up delivered by the 1st trick Dispatcher at 1 PM to advise the MOW crews of any changes to the morning line-up.
I remember about the time I learned to read well enough to read anything in the office that wasn't locked in the safe, or in books too heavy to lift, reading the office copy of the line-up after the section man had picked up his copy. I can also remember a point about 1961 or '62 when there were no longer any trains listed on that line-up. Only changes from the 8 AM copy were listed. That would have been the end of extra coal drags to serve the household coal market.
There was a cartoon in some magazine back in the '70's showing a group of executives sitting around a conference table looking at a guy presenting a large graph. There were several lines on the graph. They were going up and down in a normal looking manner until at the exact same point on the horizontal axis of the graph, all of the lines suddenly went straight to the bottom. The caption was "This is a phenomena known as the s**t hitting the fan".
Although no one knew it then, the day the last extra coal drag went south past Irricana was that point for the Langdon Sub. The stations on the Sub. closed in June 1965, the Mixed lingered on until 1966, and the tracks were pulled up about 1972.
Today Pat and I both took a break from our respective editing jobs and drove out to Rochelle to see what Railroad Days was like. We were happy to see Jay and Linda Eaton there. I gathered that they were happy to see us, too. Jay said there were no trains in the hour and a half before we got there, but a westbound BNSF intermodal came through as we were walking up to the pavilion, followed closely by two more!
UP seemed to be having some sort of problem. As we were headed west to Rochelle, we saw a couple of stopped westbound freight trains (an auto train between Wheaton and Winfield, a manifest at West Chicago). Eastbounds weren't faring much better--a coal train was stopped at West Chicago and another one between Meredith and Elburn. We saw nothing at all between Meredith and Rochelle.
After we got to Rochelle and BNSF sent those three freights through, a UP train poked its nose out of Global 3, strung out across a couple of grade crossings, then backed in again. That was it (an eastbound BNSF came through soon after the diamond was clear again). As we all were leaving the park, a different eastbound intermodal train came across--this one with four units on the point instead of three.
We needed to cool off at Culver's (thanks, Linda, for giving Pat that idea!). As we came over the tracks south of there, the eastbound intermodal was moving slowly, crossing over from track 2 to 1, clearing the way for the westbound manifest (same one we saw at West Chicago). As we left Culver's, the three-unit intermodal (the one that had poked its nose out of G3) came up, also very slowly. We caught him before Creston, and between Creston and Malta was the four-unit intermodal, still moving slowly, obscuring our view of the westbound auto train (from Wheaton, remember?). Between Malta and DeKalb we saw a short westbound stacker (maybe ten tubs and a DPU!) and a manifest (behind the buildings--never did see which way he was headed). But before we could get across downtown, the three-unit intermodal blew by us, obviously having run around everything in both directions that had been ahead of it, and dragging its feet no more! Kind of nice to see--the freights aren't allowed to go over 50 by us any more .
Tomorrow it's back to the computer for both of us--Phase 3 of the book for me (digging out pertinent data from diagram books), and finishing off the Historical Society's quarterly newsletter for Pat. For tonight, though, I have a few freight cars to research from the trains I saw go by at Rochelle!
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