Redwood Empire Division
Tales of a Young Towerman
Editor's Note: This is the first installment in the stories
of a young tower operator/yard clerk.
There are many parts to this story, page down to see each
new chapter.
From Jan-95 CALLBOARD
In my younger years, I was a Yard Clerk for the New Haven (NYNH&HRR) Railroad in New York City, and when I went to college in Illinois, I found a job as Towerman (Leverman) for the Chicago and Northwestern Railway. I actually went looking for the New Haven job because jobs were scarce after World War II, and I couldn't find decent work in New York City that paid well. So I applied to the New Haven because at the time I was a member of the old Pelham "O" Gauge Model Railroad Club, in Pelham, NY, and I heard rumors that NH was hiring. I went to the Harlem RiverYards in the Bronx, which are the yards (there were several) that one must pass through to get to Hell Gate Bridge. I don't remember the details of my interview, which was brief, but they hired me as an extra board yard clerk, which meant anytime day or night, seven days a week. My job with the CNW began about six months after I got into college in Chicago, and that was accidental in that a friend, Ted Cole, a member of the Evanston Model Railroad Club directed me to Pete Gladhill, the chief of Communications and Signals, Terminal District. After a ten minute interview, he said "You're hired for summer vacation work. Report to Wood Street Tower to break in to relieve the day shift Leverman so he can get his two weeks off."
Over the course of several articles, I'd like to relate some of the experiences I had with these two railroads, and why I am still an admirer and fan of both of them, but for different reasons.
The New Haven in 1946 was a big railroad, spread throughout NewEngland and did have interties with the Canadian border. It also ran hundreds of passsenger trains daily, not only between Boston and New York, Grand Central Station, but also to Pennsylvania Station on 34th Street in New York for through trips to Washington, DC. The New Haven was a serious freight hauler,getting freight from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn on Long Island and sending it north via the Hell Gate Bridge. Oak Point Yard was just off the north side of the bridge, and this yard provided freight for Cedar Hill Yard in New Haven from car ferry floats received from various New Jersey railroads via the East River,Upper New York Bay and the Hudson River. The only other near source for freight traffic was the Poukepsie Bridge which crossed the Hudson River at Poukeepsy, about 40 miles north of New York City. So Oak Point Yard was a busy terminal for car floats and local traffic origination, and Harlem River Yard just south of it, originated much local traffic, including semi truck trailers on flat cars, express and mail delivery by passenger trains and LCL freight house type traffic, which for the railroad was still profitable. One of the interesting facts was that the New Haven was electrified completely in the area between New Haven and NewYork City, with all switching and transfers being done by electric switch engines. The overhead wire system was 11,000volts, AC at 25 cycles per second, and with care, you could observe the flicker in the lights around the yard due to this low rate.
In the "old days" [my old days are in 1946], a yard clerk was responsible to keep a record of all received cars and all forwarded cars and where they were located in the yard, including any that were bad order and had to be shopped. In today's computer age, it would be easy, but in those days, the way bills travelled with the transporter, usually the conductor on a freight, or with the captain of the tug delivering the carfloats. So no advanced knowledge of what car numbers and car destinations were generally known before the freight arrived at the yard. The yard clerk had to go out to the receiving tracksand go down the track and log each car number in its sequence. He did this for each track in the yard. Fortunely for me, this wasn't too big of a yard.
Greg Austin
Editor's Note:
This is the second installment in the stories of a young tower operator/yard clerk.
From July 95 CALLBOARD
My job at Oak Point Yard for the NYNH&H RR was to log in all freight car arrivals by car number on the receiving track, either have someone make up a switch list for the yardmaster or as I did later, do it myself, and finally keep tabs on all outgoing tracks. In the beginning, I did a lot of walking, especially between storage tracks with about 2 feet of space between standing cars. Frequently, when I was walking/logging a track, the switching crews would throw cars into the track, or come in and couple up and pull the track for switching. When you are not use to this, it raises the hair on your head when the car next to you is suddenly moving at 5 to 10 miles per hour. After a while you get use to it and in fact you make use of it by standing still and checking the cars as they go by.
After a short time, I got to know the yardmasters, who told me what tracks they were switching and what tracks were being made up for trains to New Haven, Conn. So when the switch engine pulled the track for switching, I knew what cars went where in the outgoing track. This was not a big yard and if a freight was to originate here, it took several tracks to set the train. Naturally, the yardmaster had to know the end of the train because he put the caboose in first. If the train was to proceed beyond New Haven, cars for Providence and Boston were put on the head end track. I have seen cases where three tracks were involved which meant that the road engine [usually 3 EF-1's coupled, which are box cab electrics at 1,700 hp. each] would pull the first track out through the yard throat to the outgoing tower [Tower SS3 in this case] until the train cleared the switch for the second track. Mind you, all of this was done in days before radio, which meant having brakemen with flags/lamps at each blind turn in the track to signal the engineer. After clearing the second track switch, the switchman would vigorusly signal the brakeman ahead of him who would in turn signal the head brakeman near the engine to stop. The switchman would throw the switch and signal everybody to back up slowly. After they coupled up the second track, checked the air on all the cars, they would signal the engineer to move forward. By this time the engines were on the main line [which at Oak Point Yard were for freight use] and pulling forward toward Van Ness [SS5]. Brakemen were not allowed to stand on the top of the car (pre FRA days) because there was an 11,000 volt, AC., catenary 4 to 6 feet above the top. After another pull forward and a slow backup, by this time with 60 cars or so, the switchman has the train connected, with air coursing through the lines to pump up the reserve tanks. My job was to make sure all those cars in that train had a waybill and a train listing was made up by hand (on a typewriter usually) listing the order front-to-back. What gave me a fit was the last minute changes of consist that the yardmaster would pull on one of those tracks. Naturally, you had to have the waybills ready for the conductor before he left to hop on the caboose. Oh, incidentally, while all this long track switching was going on, half the yard was out of service because this long freight was blocking it. That's the trouble with small, single ended yards.
One of the interesting features of this yard were its switch engines. They were Westinghouse steeple cab electrics, B + B configuration with all wheels 80 inch drivers. They were all geared for low speed, high torque, and when they moved you could hear this growling whine halfway across the yard. These engines were chiefly employed to pull cars off the car floats which arrived several times daily at Oak Point.
Greg Austin
Editor's Note:
This is the third installment in the stories of a young tower operator/yard clerk.
From Oct 95 CALLBOARD
I'd like to divert to my other favorite railroad, the Chicago and Northwestern Rwy [now part of UP]. I had mentioned that I moved to Chicago to go to college [IIT] on the GI Bill. I needed money to keep going, which meant I had to have a part time job. I was visiting a fellow model railroader at the Evanston, IL. Model RR Club when I mentioned my miserable luck finding reasonable paying part time jobs. He then described the job he had with the CNW. He was a towerman (official title is leverman), at Evanston Tower on the Milwaukee Division. He invited me up and without hesitation I showed up one day to inspect the facility. As we were watching trains go by, my friend said that I should go see Pete Gladhill, Superintendent of Signals, Terminal Division to see about a summer job. This was in early summer of 1948, about five months after I arrived in Chicago to go to college. It was a short interview. Told him I knew Ted Cole, Evanston Towerman, and I did work for the New Haven RR. Pete said, "Fine, show up at Wood Street Tower at 7 am for three days of training and you can take over the third trick job for two weeks". Of course I was delighted.
Wood Street Tower, Wisconsin Division.
The Chicago and Northwestern Rwy was at this time a large commuter service railway and had many intercity trains as well as mail and express trains. From Chicago, the hub of the Route of the 400 network, there were three divisions. Going north from Madison Street Station, passenger trains went through several junctions to get to the Wisconsin Division, which ran from Wood Street tower to Barrington, generally heading northwest from Chicago. The other divisions were the Milwaukee Division which ended in the city of the same name and the Galena Division which went directly west to Clinton, Iowa.
On the Wisconsin Division, there were three tracks from Wood Street to Barrington, with the capability to run trains in either direction on the center track. Since a lot of commuter traffic came out of the Wisconsin Division, it was very busy during rush hours and busy during the day when local freight service was out switching along the main line. Therefore, work at night was slow unless a freight came in from Barrington or the mail trains were late.
Wood Street tower was an easy tower to learn. It was an armstrong tower where all switches, signals and locks were moved by your strong arms through levers in the tower floor. Armstrong towers were always two story buildings because the levers were on the second floor and the interlocking bed, which was vertical placed, was on the ground floor, underneath the lever bed. When you threw a switch, you were pulling the lever, which pulled the rods, assuming the dog locks were in a position to let you move it, which set the dogs to a new configuration, which connected to the long rods outside the tower which ran [at Wood Street] 100 to 1200 feet to the turnbuckle which then moved the switch points. The maintainer at this tower earned his keep, because he had to keep all of these rods trouble free. Each switch had a lock lever associated with it which in some cases went out to the switch point to lock it after movement. Signals were also handled by armstrong movement, but generally the lever movement changed a switch box inside the tower which effected the signal outside, which was wired from the switch box to the signal head. The last type of lever was the route lock lever which was always set next to last to allow the signal lever to move. If the route was not aligned correctly (as could happen because each switch moved individually and the route had to be checked in the dog locking bed by means of the route lever), the lever would not move. So you had to check the route again until all the switches and switch locks were aligned properly. There was one other route lever used, directional lock on the center track. If it was out [meaning it was locked in your favor] you had the center track for northbound trains. If it was in, you called the tower north of you, in this case Kostner Avenue, and requested the route lock. Route locks were set up between towers [interlockings is the proper nomenclature] for center track operation. If a directional route lock was against you, you could not get a signal to go into that track.
There were two signal bridges at Wood Street. I remember the signals as semaphores signals and all bridge signals for interlockings are three high. The upper signal with three aspects is for the straight route, the middle signal with three aspects is the diverging route [going onto the center track at Wood Street is the diverging route] and the lower signal is a two aspect signal, called a Call-On, and is a restricted speed signal used for any route. The tower had separate levers for the high signal and the Call-On.
The tower served as the three track to two track junction. Two tracks came from Clybourne Tower, just south of Wood Street. The Y switches in the diagram are high speed switches [40 -50 mph.]. The crossover and switch into Clybourne Yard were slow speed switches. Clybourne Station [Wood Street] was also a local station stop for commuters to and from Chicago.
I can remember working nights there. Two or three commuter trains would go by during the period between 11 PM and 1 am, and then the late evening mail train would go by at 1 am, which is the only move I made to align the center track for it. And then it would go quiet, until about 5:30 am when the morning commuters would start. Occasionally, there would be a freight train from Mayfair [a yard north of Kostner Tower] that wanted to go into Clybourne Yard. That was the most work of the shift as I had to align the crossovers and the switch into the yard. Since there wasn't any passenger train traffic clearing the freight into the yard never posed a problem.
How did one know which passenger train took the middle track? The timetable told you. If there was a change, the dispatcher rang you up and gave you the word. Of course in those days, there were such things as white flags/markers on the engine that you had to what for, and also green flags/markers for the following sections. That happened occasionally, and usually nobody told you about it, because you were supposed to be watching the trains as they went by.
Greg Austin
Editor's Note:
This is the fourth installment in the stories of a young tower operator/yard clerk
From April 96 CALLBOARD
Deering Bridge, North Chicago River
The other division I mentioned in the last installment was the Milwaukee Division that went straight north to Kenosha, Waukeegan and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was a three track main line also, starting at Deering Bridge and ending in two tracks at Evanston, IL. Deering Tower which controlled the two tracks to three track split, was mounted inside the counter weights of this huge bascule bridge at the pivot end of the bridge. You had to climb a series of stairs to get to the tower going through the mechanical room housing the bridge motors [electrical] to go into the lever room.
Deering Bridge is a three track Bascule bridge with a long span. A good picture of it can be seen in the first Model Railroader Encyclopedia Book. I have seen several scale models of it and it is quite a bridge. As towerman, you were required to operate it. The tower interlocking was an electrical machine, meaning that the switches and signals were operated by electro’mechanical levers which sent electric signals to the switches and signals wayside. Pistol type grip levers, quite common for most GRS Co. interlocking machines, still pulled dog locks in the re mechanical locking bed just below the levers. When you pulled [or pushed] the lever [assuming it was not locked] to operate a switch, you could pull or push it 80% of the way to a stop. After the switch machine moved to its new position, an electrical signal returning from the switch released the lever stop. Then you completed the movement of the lever to permit the locking bed to function.
This tower had bridge locks which when operated placed a pin bar lock in the rails for each track. The rail locks were never released unless you planned to raise the bridge.The main line operation was the same as Wood Street Tower, asking for the middle track route lock when trains were to be routed northbound. Usually the fast trains used the middle track, like the 400s, fast mails and and some suburban express trains which had their first stop at Evanston. There was a lot of local traffic, with at least a half dozen local stops. There were also spur tracks for many service industries along both outside tracks. This resulted in local freights coming into Clybourne Yard during the day and evening [you may remember, I said in the previous installment that Clybourne was the next tower to the south, about a mile away].
As I remember, I got one chance to practice opening the bridge. The towerman at the time insisted on having the maintainer there, in case he had to slam-bang the bridge locks back in place when the bridge was lowered. Now you have to realize that we are up about 50 to 60 feet above the trackway, and the tower control room is part of the bridge structure. So, when the bridge moves and all this massive structure does is shake, you wonder what you’re doing up here! Two one-hundred horsepower electric motors move the rack-and-pinion system to pull the bridge beam upward. An old street car electric controller controls the motors. After you set the signals to red on all tracks, you have to release the bridge locks and other safety locks which permits you to engage the controller.
The maintainer, a real worrier, says "Now, move that bridge slow like, and don't race it up because it might run away and tip backwards". Oh well, I've put up with worse. So I engage the controller to Notch One to start moving the bridge. Big electrical relays bang in and you hear groans in the motors when it tries to pull the bridge beam out of the landing socket on the far side of the bridge. Towerman says, "Notch it higher'. I do one notch and it still groans, so I do one more. Then I hear the motors take off. Of course the whole place is shaking and groaning because these racks are moving along the side of your building and you see the concrete counterweights going by your room. Then you look out the north window and see the span raising up at you [the pinion for the bridge is below and behind your position]. I raised it up to about the 60% level since there wasn't any boat traffic and shut down the controller. The bridge continued shaking until the beam stopped moving.The procedure for going down was slightly different. I started the motors after using the reverser and it went down fast. Towerman says, "Hold up at five feet above the landing point, then put it [the controller] into high and ram the bridge home into the socket". Sounded strange to me, but I did it. When that bridge beam hit the socket, it shook the bridge something awful!
Towerman says, "If you don't do that, you'll play hell gettin’ those bridge locks into the iron". What a way to land a bridge!One Sunday on a hot July day I heard a sailboat whistle for the bridge. Sundays on a railroad are dull, as there isn't any freight, and only a commuter or two. I looked out and saw this thing - it looked like a large row boat with a tall stick. He just wanted to see me open the bridge. So I checked the dispatcher: no trains due, only a light engine northbound in 15 minutes. So I opened the bridge. No problem. This dinky sailboat goes through and up river, waving at me as he does! I bring the bridge down to slam home level and put in high. Wham! What a shake! Tried to put the rail locks in place. Won't go! Maintainer says, "Try again". I bring it up about 10%. Slammed it home into the socket again. Tried the locks again, but no go. By this time, the light engine showed up, an E1 Pacific steam heading for Waukeegan. I tried several more times and still no luck. Maintainer says its too hot, rails are bent out of shape. Finally, I called the dispatcher and told him my problem. I said we can flag the engine across as the rails do line up, but I can't lock the bridge! He murmured "go ahead; if the engineer agrees, do it!" I got the red flag out, went down to the track and walked up to the engine. After I told the engineer my problem, he looked out at the tracks ahead and decided he could try it. So I started walking across the bridge on the walking deck, with the engine following me. We got to the far end and looked at the alignment of the rails in the trackway. Not a problem. The engineer whistled off and pulled the Johnson bar out and took off. It took me another hour before I got those damn rail locks closed, just in time for the evening commuter. I never operated the bridge again because I had other tower assignments which took me away from this area.
By Greg Austin
Editor's Note:
This is the fifth installment in the stories of a young tower operator/yard clerk.
From the July 96 CALLBOARD
I have described several towers on the Chicago and Northwestern's north side in previous installments. The last one in the group of three is Clybourne Tower, which is an armstrong tower, meaning it takes muscle to pull the levers. A diagram as I remember Clybourne is shown. The basic function was a series of crossovers to move the local switching units from Clybourne yard to the various terminals along the main lines to service a vast manufacturing industry [at that time]. Cutting through the six tracks was the St.Paul [Milwaukee Road], which used this line to service their industries east of the plant.
It was a nice tower to operate. Much of the time you arranged for main line traffic on the four middle tracks left the signals in place for fleeting [allowance to permit trains to continually pass through that signal. Every once in a while the yard would move switch engines in or out of the yard to the local sidings. The rough part of moving a switch engine across the plant to the opposite side was aligning the switches since every switch point had its own lever. At Clybourne, rods went out from the tower to the switch points. In some cases you were moving rods over a quarter mile distance. I remember struggling with one switch because I had to throw my body weight against the lever to get it to move. After getting the points in place and putting the lock rods in order, I could put the pot signal [the wayside down on the ground color light signal] up.
The fun and games for this tower was to schedule a St. Paul move across the plant. The interlocking was very easy. It took one lock lever [assuming all other lock levers were normal] to lock the route and then pull the signal lever. However, the St. Paul was notorious for coming down with 90 cars or more with a ALCO 1500 HP diesel pulling this consist at about 30 to 40 mph. I would very carefully find a slot in commuter passenger traffic to give me 15 minutes to get this guy across. Then I would coordinate with the St. Paul dispatcher for the time to arrive and cross. Frequently that didn't do much good because the train crew had other things in mind, like be ten minutes late to make the crossing. When the St. Paul came into the announceator circuit [a bell rang to tell you he is in range of the tower and if you clear the signal now he won't have to stop!], I would debate with myself whether this guy was going to clear the plant before my passenger trains came into the mainline circuits. Frequently I cleared the signal and the freight would then barrel down the single track to cross those diamonds at 40 mph. I don't know how many of you have heard a 90 car freight train cross six diamonds but it makes a lot of noise! The rumbling was terrific. Of course, nosey me, I was up at the St. Paul end of the tower waving the engineman on to hurry across. Normally the windows were open because it was a hot day [I was summertime vacation relief]. Bang, bang, bang went those diamonds as the train pulled across. Occasionally, the damn train would slow down going into the yard at his end and by the time the caboose showed up I was biting my nails whether I was going to clear this beast from the interlocking in time. Once, one of them stopped completely for two or three minutes with his rear end sticking into the interlocking and keeping the plant locked up. That time also was when I had a passenger train coming on my circuit from Wood Street. Fortunately, the St. Paul cleared and being on the ready, I threw those levers as fast as possible to clear the mains.
The other oddity about this tower was its location. It was strategically placed between a leather works tannery, a Ma Brown Pickle factory, and some local slaughter house. Depending on which way the wind would blow, that was the day for one particular odor to dominate your thinking. Sometimes it was so bad, I closed the windows, but that didn't do much good. After that experience, I never ate Ma Brown pickles again!
Greg Austin
Editor's Note:
This is the sixth installment in the stories of a young tower operator/yard clerk.
From Jan 97 CALLBOARD
While I was employed as a summer replacement for the Chicago and Northwestern Rwy, I remained on the Wisconsin and Milwaukee Divisions. Previously I described the towers that I had substituted as a summer replacement for the regular leverman. It kept me gainfully employed during the whole of summer and I went on the extra board to see if I could keep working while I went to college. Much of the tower work I did at that point was related to the railroad’s commuter divisions and only occasionally would I see freight trains and other mainline passenger trains. During this early period I worked at Wood Street, Clybourne and Deering Bridge towers [which I have described previously]. I went on the extraboard during that winter and worked at Grayland tower, a CNW freight crossing the Milwaukee-St. Paul mainline, did some training at Kostner Avenue and Mayfair, all three towers being at each end of a large wye. The freight line just mentioned came from Proviso Yard which is the CNW’s big Chicago area hump yard. You will read about yard activity in later articles.
In the meantime, I got married and within a year we moved to Lombard, Ill., which is on the Galena mainline for the CNW. I now looked to obtain full time work and go to school nights; and, as luck would have it, the unions [Order of Railway Telegraphers] and management came to an agreement to work a five-day week [six days on, two days off, except weekends, where you got three days off every sixth and seventh weekend]. As a result of this reorganization, new tower jobs opened up and I bid one of them and got it. This was a weird one because I had to work a tower next to Provisor Yard for two nights [JN] and I then went downtown to a tower on the mainline [Noble Street] for another two nights and my last set of two nights [remember, we now work six days in a row] were spent at Lake Street Tower. Lake Street is the terminal tower of the railroad. I say "is" because I believe it is still in operation.
Over the next several installments, I’ll describe Lake Street, Noble Street and JN. The Galena Division is the western direction division which went to West Chicago, Clinton, IA, and Omaha, NE. If you departed on a passenger train out of Canal Street Station [which I believe was in a movie a number of years ago where the train crashed through the station entrance], you passed Lake Street Tower on the right side, then Clinton Street Tower, then you went past the mail/express building on the left side, then past Noble Street Tower. As you continued westward, still in the terminal area limits, you crossed the Milwaukee - St.Paul railroad, CNW’s four tracks crossed M.-St.P’s four tracks, went by the Chicago area coach yard and through the Kedzie Avenue Tower [another tower I will tell you about sometime]. As you went westward, you passed the Chicago area engine facilities to Maywood, which is the approach to JN Tower. After JN, you passed Proviso yard and HM Tower, the west side of the yard. This was the end of the terminal division as far as the tower people were concerned. This division had everything on it: not only CNW freight and passenger, but foreign freight as well. At JN and Kedzie Avenue, I frequently put Pennsylvania, B & O, Indiana Harbor Belt, E, J, & E and others on the mainline between Proviso and the Wood Street [Kedzie Avenue] wye. I enjoyed this division because it was busy.
Lake Street Tower in my heyday was terminating 200 to 250 commuter trains a day [three active lines], 50 to 75 regular through trains for CNW service and all the Union Pacific/ Chicago Northwestern City Trains, such as the City of San Francisco which terminated at the Oakland Mole. It handled all the mail and express [REA was still alive!] for these trains. There was a switch engine assigned twenty-four hours a day. The tower is a 212-lever machine which handled a sixteen- track station into a six-track throat through a series of four diagonal ladders in one direction and two diagonals in the other direction. Since space was a premium, double slip switches existed throughout the plant. We could move engines/trains on any track in either direction. The six-track throat had route locks with Clinton Tower, so we could use those tracks as we set the route locks. During the day this tower was very busy. It required a leverman-director and two other levermen. The director was actually the station yardmaster who handled all the switch engine moves and there were many.
This article is a small introduction to the next three to give the reader a general view of the the whole railroad as it operated. Next time I hope to put some photographs and a diagram or two to illustrate the maze that is Lake Street.
Greg Austin
Editor's Note:
This is the seventh installment in the stories of a young tower operator/yard clerk.
From the July ’97 CALLBOARD
For a little different diversion, I'd like to tell you about the fun I had with one particular tower on the Chicago & North Western Railway. This tower was called JN and it was a little box size two-story wooden building. Most model railroad tower plans look like JN. Anyway, I manned this tower from 11 p.m. until 7 a.m. At the time I was going to college in Chicago during the evening and I would get there in plenty of time to relieve the second trick guy, Louie.
JN was the eastern exit from Proviso Yard, a large hump yard, which handled three different divisions of freight service which went west and north from Chicago. Basically, the tower could route two trains in and out of the yard simultaneously through a series of #10 crossovers and it has spurs along the main that it also serviced. One interesting addition to this 1913 era tower was a complete remote control interlocking box mounted above the work desk which controlled two switches about two miles away. The function was to allow switching freight or fast trains to the express track going east, or take them off the express track coming west. These four track main lines ran from the remote interlocking, VAIL, to Fortyth Street, near the CNW shops. The VAIL interlocking box looked just like a miniature CTC control station, one switch and one signal lever for each junction switch with red and green indicator lights for switch control, signal indication and track occupancy. At the Fortyth Street end, it was one spring switch for the east bound pair of tracks and one hand throw switch for the west bound tracks. A switch tender handled the job during the day with no one there at night. The rest of the tower operation was simple: small grip levers handled all the switches and signals.
I guess I remember JN because I was a member of the Illinois Tech Model Railroad Club (a college club still in existence) and when I went to work, the club members moved the meeting to the tower. JN was popular because we saw much freight, a few commuters and a mail train or two. The freight was interesting because we would see one-car hops (usually a stock car overdue to the Chicago Stock Yards), long freights from the B&O, Pennsylvania, Indiana Harbor Belt, Elgin Joliet & Eastern and others, both diesel and steam. After I started work there, a few of the members would come and help (?!) operate the tower. It got to be the popular thing on Friday nights and at one time I had fifteen guys there in this salt box tower. When the freights went by the tower as they did when they left the yard to go east, these nutty guys would stick their heads out the window and yell a greeting to the freight crews. More than once I saw strange looks from the train crew, but we never got reported. These visits were as close to railroading as one hobbyist can get: here you are playing with the real thing!
I learned the operation of this tower in one day, but the regular guy the I was replacing was collecting overtime to teach me how to run it, so he milked the job for three days. But he didn't teach me some basic rules of train order handling because the first day I went to work at JN alone, I walked in the tower to relieve Louie, and he said "there is a wreck on the eastbound switch at Fortyth Street, the two eastbound mains are blocked and you need to hand out "31" orders (which had to be signed by the conductor and engineer for each train) because all trains will cross over to the westbound main and run east on that track." What a start! Before I got finished that night, I handed out between 20 and 30 sets of train orders to ALL eastbound trains until about 6 a.m. the next morning. The freight crews were always used to just flying by the tower. That night I had to flag them all to a stop and have them sign the "31"s. They were a grumbly lot. In fact, one or two of them got by me without the rear end signing, which I promptly told the dispatcher. (For you young-timers: "31" orders were made up in triplicate, hand written, directed to the Engineer - Conductor crews to give them permission to cross over to the opposite main.) By morning, I had writer's cramp!
Frequently, the tower set up the inbound yard routes for incoming freight, usually based on conversations with the switch tender in the middle of the yard, who set the yard tracks. One day I had a 90-car Pennsylvania transfer coming west and I called "Cecil in the Middle" for a line up. He replied back with a route which I set up. The transfer hit the circuit at VAIL and started through town when Cecil yelled in the speaker "that PA transfer--where are you putting him?" I told him, and he yelled back "that's the wrong place! Send him up the Middle!" I quickly looked up eastward to see where the transfer was, as I had already set up the route and given him a signal, a CALL-ON, which is "15 miles per hour, prepare to stop on site". I figured I had 45 seconds to a minute before he hit the interlocking circuit, so I took a chance. I slammed the home signal lever in, slammed the route lever clear (the route lock didn't have a time lock on it because it was a restricted signal) and threw the switch lever which engaged the switch machine. It locked! I pulled out the route lock lever and cleared the CALL-ON signal again, all in about 10 seconds. About 20 seconds later the interlocking circuit for that home signal tripped, and the transfer was coming into the switches. As the engines went by me, I could see the crew staring at me and the engineer held up a clenched fist at me. As I learned later, they saw the home signal go into red and immediately put the train into emergency braking! But before it took full effect, the signal went yellow again and they released it immediately, which didn't even slow the freight train down. However, they didn't take too kindly to my maneuver. Ah! such is tower life!
Greg Austin
