Frank Bradford begins:
Flimsies:talking about flimsies because nobody hears about them anymore and I've sometimes wondered how much the average current railfan knows about them or has any conception of how they worked. Flimsies could be in the form of what we called "Rubber Stamp Orders" -the same order over and over again serving the same purpose. We got a "rubber stamp" order up at Santa Barbara...every night, now I'm just putting in engine numbers because I could just as easily say, "XXX"..but every night you'd get an order, "#833 has right over #834 and #836 Burbank Junction to East Santa Barbara and has right over #832 Burbank Junction to Oxnard." It would also say, "#832 take siding Oxnard." #832 was the "Smokey" which was a way of saying "SMV"-the Santa Maria Vegetable. This was a hot train however it had to pause in Oxnard to pick up and block the perishables -it had to take the siding in Oxnard to do its work and very often we would get an order at Seacliff...it was a shorter train till it got to Oxnard and would normally take the siding which meant it would get an order saying, "#832 take siding, meet #832 at Seacliff." Or it might say, "#833 meet #832 at Seacliff, #832 take siding." On the night I'm thinking of we had two #832's. To explain how that railroad on the coast works...on the SP westward trains are superior to eastward trains of the same class, this discussion is about freight not 1st class, but in order to reverse it the westward trains were 3rd class and the eastward 2nd class which made the 2nd class eastward train superior over the westward trains. When they would turn around the other way they would give the westward trains right over the eastward trains and would make the westward trains superior again. Every night we would get this order the "rubber stamp order" "#833 has right over #834 and #836 Burbank Junction to East Santa Barbara and has right over #832 Burbank Junction to Oxnard #832 take siding Oxnard." On one particular night they had two #833's so the order was changed a little bit. Very little..the dispatcher didn't notice either that the order read "1st #833 has right over #834 and #836 Burbank Junction to East Santa Barbara. #833 meet #832 at Oxnard #832 take siding Oxnard." We got these orders at Santa Barbara. We also got an order that said, "#832 do take siding meet 1st #833 at Seacliff." and the dispatchers initials. I refused the order and wouldn't take it. Of course you had to go through the operator, you didn't have to but I mean if you had something you didn't want you went through the operator to get the dispatcher, so I told them I couldn't use the order. It went back and forth and the dispatcher kept saying, "It's a good order, we use it every night." And I still wouldn't so the question is why? I explained to him that it had to read, "#832 takes siding and meets 1st #833 at Seacliff instead of Oxnard." This was because without the "INSTEAD OF OXNARD" on there it was not a good order. That's one of the problems you can get into with rubber stamp order that everyone has read a hundred times. If the change is very little the person reading it puts the words in the way they've always read in his own mind. Instead of saying that 1st #833 had right over #834 and #836 to East Santa Barbara it changed it a little and said "1st #833 meet #832 at Oxnard." So even the dispatcher didn't spot it and he kept thinking that it was good. Finally I went to the phone and called the chief to correct the problem. When the operator came back on the first message was, "Well, the dispatcher apologizes." He gave an order then that order #so and so forth, the one to meet at Seacliff was annulled and then gave us an order that, "#832 take siding, meet 1st #833 at Seacliff INSTEAD OF OXNARD." These things come up and may seem simple but it is these little details that are very important.
Rubber stamp order:when I first started working I was on the
LA extra board (brakeman's extra board) and I was called on night to
be on the Santa Ana local (this would have been in 1943 or 44). At
that time there wasn't any industry or anyway very, very little. in
other words they had the "Merry-go-round" that worked out of Santa
Ana. This went up to West Anaheim and did a lot of the work in
there. They called it the Merry-go-round because at one time it
used to go down from Santa Ana, went to Newport, over to Huntington
Beach and then up to west Anaheim. One time when we were down at
"Tin Can Beach" which is down beyond Huntington Beach, this was one
of our favorite beaches. We saw this SP Merry-go-round coming along
paralleling the PE track and the fireman on the Merry-go-round had a
PE timetable in his hand. With all of the rolling and rollicking of
the engine, the track wasn't very good, I remember seeing him trying
to read the PE timetable because there were two tressels down there
where the SP Santa Ana River would have been one of them and where
the SP used PE track to cross the tressel. I don't know but they
probably used "Yard Limits". They did have this merry-go-round
which when they discontinued or abandoned that track down there to
Newport and opened up to Huntington Beach they just kept the name.
Railroads tend to keep names forever. So the merry-go-round did the
work around Anaheim and Santa Ana. They've got those two big
haulers now that I guess originate in West Colton, the Buena Park
and the Anaheim with sometimes a hundred cars each. Back then the
Santa Ana local left in the night time, I think, from Firestone
Park. They would do all of the work all of the way down through
Downey, Norwalk, Buena Park where they had Gliddens where they used
a lot of flax seed also Progresso tomato stuff where they used all
kinds of tomatos in there and West Anaheim. Even though they had
the merry-go-round doing some of the stuff if we had cars for
anyplace to be spotted down there we would do it. While there are a
couple of hundred cars a day now, we handled just this one little
Santa Ana local with a 1000 Hp switch engine. It was an EMD but I
forget the number...#1421 or #1422. They later used two of them but
we're talking about when I was going down there and they used either
a Mogul or a consolidation, usually a consolidation. Also at a
later time we made one trip down there in a Mike. But Mike's
weren't permitted on there because they had too long of a wheel base
and couldn't get around some of the curves. They had to have
messages from the superintendents but one time they were out of
power and we had to use a #3200 but when we wyed it at West Anaheim.
While we went around the wye we had the conductor walk along beside
it to make sure it stayed on the rails. It did a lot of squealing.
There were a lot of places where steam power wasn't permitted..awful
lot of trackage..you don't find that anymore. With diesels they can
go anywhere. On the Santa Paula Branch there was a bridge out there
so they sent the Santa Paula local out of Los Angeles. To get over
the grade there between San Fernando and Newhall they usually used
two units and they used any kind whether they should have or not.
So we had a 4000 which at that time was one of the heaviest engines
that they had, six-wheel truck and very heavy, along with something
like a GP9. So anyway we went up to Laminaria and it was a very,
very rainy night and there's a very long spur track and then a sharp
curve right at the top. Going up we could feel things kind of
rocking away as the track would sink a little on one side and then
the other. When we go to the top going around this real sharp curve
the engineer asked me, "Do you think we're on the ground?" After he
stopped I said, "I don't know lets try it and see what happens." So
we went just a little bit and sure enough we were. By this time we
had radios so we called in and said where we were and what the
problem was so they'd already had a derailment up at Vincent so the
skip truck was up there..so they came over. At the same time the LA
Division was having some kind of a big shindig for their officers
somewhere in LA so anyway we got the trainmaster from Oxnard. So he
was up there even before the truck got there from Vincent so we got
some little bits of what must have been 2x4's because he was going
to try and rerail this engine in the mud. Of course it was all he
could do to walk because he had just come from that big celebration
and there was no rule "G" for the officers so between that and the
slippery mud he was having quite a time of it remaining steady. He
kept having the engineer take it a little bit and then he'd stop and
then go a little further and the trainmaster would say, "Keep em
coming, keep em coming." They inched forward and then leaned over
till the steps were down in the mud. Just about that time the skip
truck got there the car boss he said to cut the engine off of the
back and have him back out of the way. I said, "We've split the
rails...you're down between the rails all the way clear down to the
switch there." Boy I mean, he just about went to pieces. I told
him, "Well, whats-his-name told us to do it.." So then he went up
and started in on the engineer and the engineer said, "Well the man
says keep em coming..you have to do it." Well, that was all for
that night they had been working at Vincent all day and then come
over here and gotten into this mess. They took the train crew by
carry-all and took them back to LA. I wasn't out there the next
day but I was talking to one of the crew that was and when they
tried to take off the put the engines on the ground again.
Well what I was trying to say that with these rubber stamp orders you get into problems a lot. Especially if you have someone who doesn't read them every day. I was the flag on the Santa Ana local and of course the whole crew, except me, was on the head end where the work was. We stopped at Gliddens down at Buena Park to do our switching there so I went back to flag, nobody called me in and all I could see was the markers on the caboose starting to get closer together. There is another little thing that comes in there...while coming back...the reason I was out flagging and the rest of crew thought I shouldn't be was because I read the orders and they didn't. Same great big long order as every other day because they had to put everything on one order since there was no place to contact the dispatcher, at least not for orders. Now what was I going to do in Buena Park at two in the morning? Maybe someone would think I'd gotten run over or something so I thought, "Well, I'll call the dispatcher." So I went to the little box on the pole. There was no dispatcher circuit down there, just a message circuit so I turned the old magneto on it and that got me the PBX in LA. Now, "Tucker 7272" the PE's number was close to SP's "Michigan 6161". So I got the operator and asked for the dispatcher who handled the Santa Ana Branch. I said something to the effect that, "This is the flag on the Santa Ana local and I got left at Buena Park (in other words don't come looking for my pieces)." So the dispatchers voice that came back said, "Where did you say you were?" and I says, "Buena Park." He asked, "What are you doing up there?" I told him, "Out flagging and I got left." There was this long silence...and then he asked, "Are you an SP man?" Well, I figured..what else? So then he said, "This is the PE dispatcher." The PBX operator probably didn't even know the SP had a branch to Santa Ana because they were still running what they used to call street cars even though now everyone calls them Interurbans. They had a Santa Ana local too. When I did get back in the caboose again up in Norwalk I had a red hayburner and my regular white lantern and hitchhiked about two O'clock in the morning up to Norwalk where the crew had gone to beans. The conductor looked me up and down and said, "Well, didn't you read the orders?" Well, I had but he hadn't. Every night down there they had a line on the end that said, "Not protecting against extra trains." On this particular night that was missing so I should have been out.
I used to get called for the relief outfit with the hook every once in awhile when they had it because I was on the extra crew. We went out to one out there at Northridge where some kid, actually not a kid he would be pretty old you know, but anyway we called him a kid that had thrown a switch under the train and tha isn't easy to do. I mean I wouldn't want to be there and doing it. So it was right there at the overcrossing at Northridge. The cars went over the thing and everything else. I was out working on that for awhile. They would bring out the relief outfit because it had the dinner on it, box of tools, mostly they would use the hook to pick up the spare trucks lying around and stuff like that. They were 100 to cranes out there.
The worst one I ever saw, of course I wasn't in it, was at El Monte where they had a head on at very high speed. That was human failure by two humans. They had a train in the siding at El Monte for a meet with the Gold Streak westbound. The speed limit was 60mph, nice high green signal but when he got close to the switch points the switch points were pointing into the siding right onto this train that was in there because he was moving a little eastward, had already started moving. So the unit that was eastbound went right in and ontop of the westbound. We were living in El Monte then and just happened to come down there. Of course i had no problem going in and wandering all around it cause all the SP police department knew me. Somebody took some pictures of it and it was quite a catastrophe. But that was when they were putting in the State Street Branch down the freeway and they were just putting in the switch leading off of the main line onto the branch so the signal supervisor of course would be putting in part of the switch and he had gotten time up until I think it was 4PM. Anyway he had until 4PM to work on it. Meantime he had bypassed the signal so it would show green but 4 O'clock came and he was still working out there and still had this bypass on. Of course the dispatcher had his switch locked, the signal locked which should have been a switch too, if there had been a switch locked it should have been up there on the CTC Board. But when they got another dispatcher in there the signal supervisor should have either called in and got an extension on the time or else quit by 4 O'clock. The dispatcher had this board locked the new dispatcher must have come in and saw it and thought the signal dispatcher should have been through and he unlocked it. Well anyway, he unlocked the board down on the CTC when he shouldn't have and the signal maintainer should not have worked over 4 O'clock without saying something. So it was that the switch was lined in with a green signal. Signal failures don't happen very often that one there was human failure. But they did have a clear signal one time, a high green, with a train in front in the block that was not human failure. That was at Spadra, Spadra hasn't been, well the still have the hospital there. Its west of Pomona. So there was a train that had hit an automobile at Valley Blvd across crossing at Spadra so it came to a stop just across the highway and there was another westbound behind coming along on a clear signal that went right in and doubled the caboose. It looked like they took a beer can and just doubled it. The reason it had a clear signal was that when that first westbound struck the automobile the automobile took out the instrumrent panel so it shorted it out and showed green behind it.
That's very rare. The same thing with crossing gates. They
don't fail very often. Sometimes they stay down when they oughta go
up but not veryt often up when they should be down. Almost never.
You don't have crossing problems like you did because you've got
overpasses on the main highways. At Al Hambra one time they were
going eastbound with a westbound coming in called us on the radio
and said, "There's an awful lot of fire coming out back aways." So
the head brakeman said to go back and see if you can find the
problem. So I walked up to the head end and when I got up there I
asked the head brakeman if he found the problem. No he hadn't but
the cab had come off one of those roller bearing cars so the car was
right on the axle itself. It wasn't gonna go very far.
So we were
stuck there and we had every crossing in town blocked. I called the
dispatcher and asked him if we could go very slowly and take the car
out. And he said, "Not on my railroad!" We were in yard limits
there and in other words if we were going to go all over the ground
lets do it in LA yard. So we called the yard and when they came out
and so we finally set the thing out and that was a day with a very
well paying job because we got a yard date for setting it out, we
had three run arounds go passed us at 50 miles per each cause they
got out of the yard ahead of us. But the thing was that while we
were there we had the whole city tied up. Every crossing there was
and so along comes this cop sergeant and I thought we're really
going to get something said to us now. You can't tell about these
cops because they don't know much about a railroad usually. Its
hard to explain anything to em. But anyway this one came up to me
and he says, "Who's your hoghead?" This didn't sound like the usual
cop and he climbed up on the engine and went in over to our hoghead
who said, "We've got some problems here.." and explained the
situation. Well, anyway he got all of the baracades out. It was
Alabam Smith's son, Alabam Smith was one of our charecter hogheads
so he was familiar with all of the operations. One of the other
kind was out at Downey and we clobberred a car down there that was a
painter and he had the trunk of his car full of paint. So we had a
brightly colored engine when we got through. But anyway while we
were down getting all of the information and so forth the police
came up as usual and he climbed up on the engine and went over to
the engineer and said, "Let me see your license." The engineer
says, "I don't have one." The cop says, "Ya gotta have a license."
"Nope" he says, "I don't have one." Well, the cop insists, "Well,
ya gotta have a license of some kind to run one of these things." So
the engineer says "Get off of my engine, you can't be up here its
not permitted..its a federal offense." So the cop said, "You're not
going to leave here until that engineer shows me his license." I
guess he got on his horn and after a period of time his sergeant
showed up and as soon as the sergeant showed up we took off. But
some of them are like that. Just no understanding.
They had one, I wasn't on it, but the conductor was by the name of Richards. Actually he was one that the SP didn't want around to much either because he was the kind that was getting his back hurt and then suing the company for $9 million or something. He was one of these cantankerous guys but this particular time the train had some work to do in Oxnard and it wasn't too unusal at the 5th Street crossing that hangs over there you try to get off as soon as you can but it still hangs over there a little bit. So anyway he came down there and took conductor Richards off to the station house. So before Richards went he told the brakeman, "Now don't move this train until I get back." So they took him down and one of them went to the engineer and told him to move the train. The engineer told him, "I can't move this train without a proceed signal." So they went in and got the trainmaster so the trainmaster said, "There's nothing I can do about it, the conductor is in charge of the train." In due time conductor Richards showed back out again. Mostly you don't have that problem but now and again you get some.
It was back around the time that I first started. It was normal for the conductors to keep the bills and they had to carry the bills somewhere. Well some of them would stick em in their belt which was a good place to carry them. Of course that was also the time that the LAPD was out picking up the vagrants off of the trains out at Lincoln Park. So anyway they picked up this conductor who was walking up to the head end. The conductor tried to tell em he was a conductor and all the police would say was "Shut up! You're not suppose to talk!" So the conductor didn't shut up and they finally got him down to book him. So they were taking all of this stuff of him and they said, "What's this pile of papers?" Well he says, "Waybills on that train." They asked, "What are you doing with them?" He says, "I"m the conductor." So he went back too.
I don't think waybills are as important now as they once were.
They used to be the sole reference. I mean the only other way you
had to do anything was to back track the car or several cars if it
was necessary and of course they used to operate a lot differently
than they do now. Much more inefficiently. A train would pull into
the division terminal, except for certain hotshots, by the usual
train would pull into the division terminal, the conductor would
bring in a list of the train up to the yardmaster, the yardmaster
would go through the list and decide what cars he wanted. Nothing
was blocked, I mean he might have cars that he wanted scattered all
through the train and they needed to be switched. So then the
yardmaster would give the switch foreman the list to break the train
up and take out what cars he needed and maybe put some others in and
then they would take the list and put it in a "Jumbo". A "Jumbo" is
a book about so thick, very very thick, and it contained a list of
every car that came through the yard and on the last digit of the
number and it didn't make any difference what the initial was. In
other words if a car was 149867 the next car was 367 they would go
down to the next one. So the only way they could back track a car
if they didn't know where this number was which happened they would
go to the last place, the last yard where they had picked up the car
and they might have to do a little more than that since they may not
have known exactly where it came from. They would go through their
"Jumbo" till they found this car and find out where it came from on
that particular train so then they would wire that place and they
would go through their "Jumbo" and you'd just keep going back and
back and back till you got to the originating terminal. When it got
to be computerized was when I found I wasn't liking the work anymore
and in some ways it would become more difficult because the old
switch list was maybe four or five inches wide with 40 lines on it.
It was easy to hold in your hand. You got three copies, I mean
there were three copies, one copy stayed in the office the train
crew got two copies one for the conductor and one for the brakeman
who was helping do the work and the only thing on the list was the
work that you had to do. Cars that you had to spot or cars to be
picked up or cars to set out or you could have something on there
like "pull all cars" in such and such a shed. In other words there
might be 16 or 18 cars or it might say pull all the empties. Then
when you got computers you got an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet and you got
five copies. One copy stayed and you got the rest of them. And the
darn thing, you couldn't handle it, because they were 8 1/2" x 11"
and then you were suppose to put on there the exact time that you
spotted anything. Of course this came in at the "Picle" thing, the
pickle works, which was a good idea but you could do that sort of
thing with one of those little ordinary switch pads. There were
times when you would get the list and you would have on there every
car that was in the district that that place handled or every
place in the district that that switcher handled.
Maybe you only
had one or two cars to move so you'd have to go through this whole
thing trying to find out what to do or what not to do. Their "picl"
system pronounced Pickle means the Perpetual Inventory Car Location
and that was done with computers but the computers that used IBM
cards and so in a place like out of City of Industry they had slots
for every industry or whatever and everytime anybody moved a car why
then they would take their IBM card and put it to where it was moved
to. So then when they got ready for a car to go out for say a train
to pick up they would do their hand sorting but they usually were
kept pretty well sorted anyway. So then they would take their IBM
cards and go in where they had their machinery but then they had one
of these things that had a whole lot of long things on them with the
numbers and letters on and then it would come up and put on the
wheel report or the outgoing list. This had all of the information
on the car, the car number, destination, all of the things tha the
conductor used to do in the caboose. That worked out real well.
This brings up now the swing brakeman. Other roads may be different, the SP at the time that a train was ready to leave the yard the swing brakeman would make a check of the train. He would go along with one of those 40 line lists and he would make a list of the train, every car in the train and so then he would roll the train out making sure all of the wheels were turning. Also when I first was there you'd have to keep track of all of the cars that had flat wheels. You'd check those off and then you would make a list of those and send it off at the first telegraph office as you went by so that you couldn't be blamed for flattening the wheels. In time that went out. But when the train would leave the yard there were two chairs and a desk big enough for two people to sit at the desk. So then the conductor would have his train book. The train book used to be the legal thing and you had to keep it for seven years and that was a legal instrument and that was the reason that as soon as you were promoted to a conductor that was one of the things you were given..a train book. Also on the SP you were given a "44 Key" which opened the warehouses because you had to take freight out of the car and put in in the warehouse. Well, anyway between the conductor and the swing brakeman things went a lot more slowly then they do now. In fact 35 miles per hour when I hired out, that was the high speed limit. Nobody was in a hurry for a number of reasons. Money wasn't worth as much as it was, nobody tried to keep their inventory down to what they had to sell yesterday, and nobody expected things as a rule. So when the train would go the swing brakeman would read off his switch list to the conductor, the conductor would have the bill and put it right to the car number, destination, contents sometimes, and whatever in his train book. That had to be in the trainbook. When a brakeman was promoted to conductor he got his trainbook right away. He always carried that with him when he was working as a conductor and that's why when they said someone would rather be a conductor on a lousey job than a brakeman on a good one just a matter of egotism so they called him "Book Happy" because the book was the badge of the conductor. Usually the brakeman, though other conductors might do it differently, the brakeman would read off the car number, the conductor would check the bill, put it in his train book and trhen he would give the brakeman the destination and any other little information he wanted. Then he would put that on the list to give to the yardmaster when they got into their terminal so he really needed that third brakeman. Now for that the third brakeman was a good idea and when they had the fourth man if you would stop across a crossing somewhere the fourth man could help to cut the crossing if you were going to be somewhere for a long time. Of course the fourth man didn't always know how long they were going to be there. One time I was out near Narod which is now Montclair, it used to be Montclair on the SP and Sunsweet on the UP now its Montclair on both, we stopped across a road crossing out there that wasn't used very much and I was fourth man so I walked up to a car which had a fellow and his girlfriend so I says, "We're gonna be here quite a little while. I can cut the crossing if I need to but instead of doing all of this work if you can go around the other way I'd appreciate you doing it." "No" he says, "This is the place we've been looking for, we've been wanting to park and nobody is going to be bothering us here." Actually we didn"t have to cut the crosing there because it had one of those signs there that said "Revokable Crossing" which meant permisson to pass revokable at any time. So if it had that you didn't have to cut it but even there you usually did if there was a car wanting to cross.
Every now and then you would clobber automobiles. Clobbered one out in the San Fernando Valley one time. No grat tremendous amount of damage done but some. Anyway he says, "trains don't come out here, there hasn't been a train out here in three months." Two a day go by but he just didn't happen to see em so he wasn't even looking. Back when we had steam engines we clobbered a motorcycle or he clobbered us whatever on Peck Road in El Monte so the motorcycle wasn't too damaged, the wheel was kind of bent a bit but otherwise from that it wasn't damaged to much. The only thing was that that was as far as the engine would go. The engine wouldn't go any farther because it broke off the cylinder cock. If it hadn't been for that grade up to San Gabriel and it had been all flat it would have probably gone on one side but we couldn't pull up the grade.
They had steam engines up until 1960..1959. The last place I was on a steam engine was down in the Imperial Valley. It must have been 1959. They had just started using diesels down there and they had a small caterpillar over at Holtville.
Have you ever seen a three cylinder steam engine spitting out
tin cans as it went along? Down in Mexico they had one. It would
be going along and all at once out would come six or eight tin cans
out of the stack. We were paused down there and there was shall we
say a midden of tin cans so they poured a lot of tin cans down the
smoke box and every once in awhile out they would come. One time
too, this was with a diesel, I mean with steam engines they'd keep
going anyway but diesels weren't that way.
So anyway I was up on
the coast somewhere between Camarillo and Moorepark we stopped our
train out along the track there and went over to some house beside
the railroad and asked if they had a garden hose that would reach
out to the railroad. They looked at us like we were cuckoo but we
were having water problems so we needed to add a little water but
she didn't have it so anyway we limped on until we got up to
Moorepark and pulled in the siding there. Actually there was a
train that was superior to us at Santa Susanna so that was as far as
we could go at the time. Of course I got on the phone and by that
time they had phones at every station and sometimes other places
where you could actually take a train order but you weren't suppose
to unless necessary. Anyway I was on the phone and I called the
dispatcher and told him we were stuck so he got the train at Santa
Susanna, I gues the conductor must have been in the office there
because that was what they usually did. Maybe he was talking to
Harry Bidwell because Harry Bidwell was the operator out there. So
anyway he got the conductor of this third class train and I told
him we will not leave Moorpark and you can come on down here. Of
course you are supose to have the engineer in there on that too but
I told the dispatcher that the engineer was busy and we weren't
gonna go anywhere. So we stayed there. But anytime you had gone by
a clear order board and then were restricted at that station or if
you were at a wayside telephone and where restricted there then the
dispatcher had to have a verbal understanding with the engineer that
he wasn't going to go anywhere.
This darn thing of telephones along the line. And as I said before conductors at the time didn't do a lot of what was going on. This was when I hadn't been working for the SP for to awfully long. But anyway I was fourth man coming back from Bakersfield it was somewhere between Mojave and Palmdale and at Mojave we got our stack of orders and the conductor went through em and he told the operator, "The way these orders are we're liable to have a jackpot." And I was on the phone and through the operator the dispatcher said, "You tell the conductor to run his train and I'll run the railroad." So we got to Loban and the phone was always between switches right in the middle of the siding so I was fourth man so the conductor was on the phone just listening in and every so often the dispatcher would say I wish I could get the conductor on that train. So we couldn't go anywhere. Just like the conductor said, we had a jackpot up there. We couldn't go till some other train had come and he couldn't go until we got there. So we were there all afternoon and finally when the fleet came with passenger trains, first class trains of course, there was no restriction on them so then they mailed some orders. Of course the way they mailed orders was the dispatcher transmits and order to some station in advance of where you are to whatever your train is care of #25 or whatever it is and of course he also gives to the train that is delivering the orders a copy of the same orders. Say it was #25 which was The Owl then when he would get up to our train he would throw off a set at each end and that would let us go then otherwise we're just stuck there. Of course if our conductor hadn't been on the telephone the dispatcher could have given him an order. Anyway after the dispatcher said he was going to run the railroad....there isn't anything that required you to go to a phone in a situation like that. Of course there is on CTC. On CTC if you've got a red signal for no apparent reason why then you are suppose to go to a phone.
If CTC goes out then everything stops. Its different now. When I was there you didn't use the radio...could not move on a radio. The only way you could move on a radio was train order territory and you went through an operator first. You didn't do it directly with the dispatcher. Of course you could move slow speed because the dispatcher can give you permission to run a red signal and move onto the next block and the next block you have to stop. Of course they could do it by radio now block to block but back at that time....as a matter of fact east of Colton that was the way you had contact with the dispatcher was by radio.
He could give you permisson to run from El Casco to Beaumont
and then from Beaumont to Banning and then Pershing to Banning and
Banning to Cabazon but you'd have to get permission and you couldn't
go over 20mph. These darn things of how rules are made sometimes is
interesting. They used to have a rule that you were supose to see
the train order signal in reposition and...then you had to see it
clear first...you had to see it red, that's it. And then as you got
closer you had to see it clear. If it was clear first then you had
to stop. And of course the Union Pacific would blow "Toot toot
toot" as they approached and when the operator heard that then he
would drop the signal. But with trains at high speed that dosen't
work very well. So now if its clear you go by. If you have an
order for any train going in the same direction well then you had to
have a red signal. It didn't make any difference whether it was the
train you had orders for or not. In other words if you were holding
orders for a train going westward you had to be ready for any
westward train and if there was a train coming before the orders
were for then you would hand them up a clearance and say no orders.
Some roads, which went back to when they used telegraph, they would
have that "SD" which meant that before the dispatcher could transmit
an order you would transmit "SD" which meant signal displayed which
meant you knew there was a red signal there. This thing of having
to get a clearance if you saw a green signal without the red. First
the crew transmits to each other the indication of all signals. If
it was "Two down" which meant clear on the board in both directions
it means nobodys home. One night the trainmaster was up at Ventura
and so he cleared the trainorder signal for a westbound train, for
#75 which at that time was really SP's pride and joy. And it was
really a real fine train, one of the best in the country, so anyway
#75 came along and here's a clear signal and of course the other
side is red so the train stopped and went back to get a clearance
and the trainmaster came up and says, "Just a test go ahead." And
the engineer said, "I can't go ahead, I have to have a clearance. I
can't take your word you know that its a test. The rule book says
if it is clear, and it was clear when I first saw it, I have to have
a clearance." So they had to hop on down and get the operator out
of bed to come down and issue a clearance. Trainmasters do some
things that aren't right too.
Another thing..the way they change rule books sometimes. I had a rule book up there that says that on finding a burning red fussee the train will reduce speed to 12mph or will not go in excess of 12mph for I think it was 3/4 of a mile at that time. That it would reduce speed anyway to 12mph "Run with caution" which at that time was 12mph. They were pulling a test on a crew so the train was in the siding and when the train started why the trainmaster lit his fussee and when the train went by the fussee he was at 40mph he kept on going at 40mph. So they had them in and criticized them, quite a bit of criticism. So he said, "No, when I was pulling out of the siding when I first saw the fussee I wasn't going 12mph pulling out of the siding. I may have been going 40mph when I got to the fussee but when I first saw it I was going going 12mph." They used to have these things in the rulebooks that would tell you how some of these thing changed and I was up in the San Joaquin Valley where you can see for miles and miles. The operator had a clear signal for the train that was due to drive on by. So anyway this worked out but they had cleared the signal that was ahead of them and been red and they just left it clear. But you could see the darn signal for 6 or 8 miles cause it was back in the country and was red when he saw it back there 6 or 8 miles behind. Then they had another one up on the Rio Grande Division where their rule was that if you got a "Run Ahead" order of a train and then you were delayed so that the train you had a "Run Ahead" on passed you it said that order is anulled or words to that effect. So they had this thing where this train leaving Tucumcari had a run ahead order that says, "Extra 'whatever' ahead of #43 Terasota to Flamenco." Well before they got to Flamenco they had a problem. They also had another order that said "Extra 'so forth and so on' meet #962" at some other station somewhere betwen Tucumcari and Terasota. So anyway, this train got a hotbox not to long after it left Tucumcari so they had to run ahead of #43 quite a bit farther down but #43 went ahead of them so after #43 went this train pulled on out of the siding. Say it had this meet with #962 at Flamenco but when it got to Flamenco they just kept right on going. So they met #962 somewhere way out in the country. Well, they pulled them "out of service" right now. They got back in service with pay because the rule book said that if the second named train passes the first named train this order becomes void. So it was alright because that meant when he went around the order was void. They changed that rule or that part of the order so that dosen't happen again.
Dave Crammer: So what was it like switching with a steam engine?
Frank Bradford: Well, if it came to dropping cars, any drops to make, you can make a drop with a steam engine that there is no possibility of making with a diesel.
Dave Crammer: Why is that? Frank Bradford: Because with the diesel, first of all it has a fairly slow uptake and the only way you can get the pin is with the jam. You have to use the brake on em to get the jam whereas with the steam engine you can pull the throttle away out to really pick up a lot of speed. Then in order to get the pin you bring the reverse lever just barely into reverse and up ahead again so you don't slow down any whereas with the steam engine when you use the brake on it it slows it way down then the engine can't pull away from the car. With the steam engine you have the throttle out all the way all the time and then you use your reverser and then just move it off center a little bit into reverser and then ahead and as soon as you get back ahead then the engine really takes off. I dropped a car of sugar one time at the juice factory in Ontario that was really up a grade. Took about three or four trys to get it there but it did I mean you can drop a car upgrade with a steam engine whereas the diesel is almost useless. Of course they don't switch anymore as much as they did drop cars because you don't have the industries anymore that you once had. In other words a switcher used to really go out and you had work all over the place no you have very little by comparison. On the SP's places where they did so much switching was with wholesale grociers which now they don't even serve. The SP as I understand it from something I read in their Bulletin is that they set up their own warehouse so that the SP can bring in groceries, paper goods, by carload and then deliver them to the wholesale groceries by truck. The problem is that if you take a carload of canned peas into a wholesale grocers it takes up a lot of warehouse space. Of course if you take in a truckload why it dosen't take near as much. So I guess a lot of them have even paved over their tracks. But that was one of the places we had for switching and they had to be switched pretty much on time. Some of them you could anytime but others like the Safeway at Buena Park you had to get in there, they would like it before 3:30, but before 3:45. But you don't want to get in too early because they might still have some more work to do.
Of course the cars can always go back in again but its better if you can take it out empty. But grocers we used to switch were Certified at San Fernando, A.N. Lewis near Northridge, Safeway and Vons at El Monte, Safeway at Norwalk, Hunts at Fullerton. I never worked much around Anaheim. Than there was another wholesale grocer down the other side of Anaheim. I got called down there on time, say for the 8AM job and it was 9 O'clock when they called me in El Monte so they said you have a job in Anaheim. I had trouble even finding the yard office because it wasn't where it had been or if it was I didn't remember exactly how to get there. I got down there and the trainmaster had gotten there and pulled the car....anyway the rear end was the Anaheim Local down there so the Anaheim Local could get as far as to get back home. It was one of those things that sometimes happened, the conductor had laid off and I think they hadn't sent someone down there to replace him. So it was a 8AM job and at 9AM the clerk came in and here's the brakeman sitting there and I think there was a brakeman who was missing too and nobody on the job but one brakeman. Of course the engine crew was there. It wasn't the brakeman's concern whether anyone else was there since he was there. But we didn't have much work to do. We took what the Anaheim hauler had brought in and went down to South Anaheim and switched it out and came back again. Every once in awhile you would get a job like that. Of course sometimes too, one time they called me up when I was living in Downey, I took the call and then a couple of hours later the phone rang again and the caller says, "Where are you?" I said I must have gone back to sleep. She says, "Jeepers, the train is ready to go." I told her I would be out there in half an hour or so but things like that happened but as long as it didn't happen all the time nobody said anything.
Dave Crammer: Now you get to tell me what a conductor does.
Frank Bradford: Now the conductor has a lot of things to do and it would take, well I don't have time because I only have from today till tomorrow morning to tell you this. I don't know what they do anymore but they used to have a lot of duties. What it boils down to was what the rule book said. "The general government of the train is vested in the conductor." Does that answer your question?
Dave Crammer: Yeah, he does everything.
Frank Bradford: Yes, and that also means that no matter what happens or who causes it the conductor is responsible. Now lets see, there was something else I was thinking about. Oh yes, you asked me about steam engines. Well, one think lets take steam vs diesel and you mentioned switching. Now I believe that for switching diesels can't do anything. Of course they don't do the switching that they used to do in the same way. But a steam engine is so much more, the words I want aren't quite here but anyway, versital efficient. Now ah the matter of making a drop, as I said earlier you don't do much switching anymore as it was when everything was carried by rail or almost everything and you had industries all over the place that really required a lot of switching. Unlike General Motors who when they wanted it done wanted it immediately and right now and everything without a hitch but for making a drop for instance. A move that at one time you had to do a lot of because your switches off of the main line or your drill track weren't always in the right direction. So with the diesel what do you do? You rev it, you put on the jam, you rev it up so that you think you can get a little pull away, you release the jam and with the diesel you still don't go very fast, don't pick up a whole lot of speed. You do pick up some then in order to get the pin you have to use the jam, put on the brake and hope that the darn thing will pull away from the car or cars. With a steam engine its altogether a different procedure. You don't have to hold the brake on until you get it going, when you get ready to go you pull out the throttle and when you want to get tjhe pin you move the reverse lever just past into the reverse position and then ahead again and this time you see you've got a whole head of steam in there and the engine just takes away from the car like nobodys business so you can have the car going at a pretty good speed and still have the engine ahead of it. That's one of the big problems with switching with the diesel because there is no pickup at these low speeds. I mean if your just doing ordinary flat switching with the steam engine you can give a great big bump like a goat and they called the goats. With the diesel you don't get that much buck to it. You can use a steam engine and switch out even one car at a time and you don't have to move ahead and take another bite at it which is of course the worst piece of efficiency you can have any time that you reverse your direction you're not doing a very good job of it. With the diesel you don't get this goat-like butt it. So anyway you want to look at it a steam engine really looks much better for switching. On the road you'll have a different situation but it depends on what you are doing there too. Because your differences are entirely diametric. A diesel can develope its entire horsepower from a standing start which is the reason that you have to watch the ground when you are starting out to make sure that you don't take off to fast. But as you develope speed you loose that potential for acceration. As the diesel developes speed it begins to flatten out and dosen't have as much for potential for changing speed whereas the steam engine is just the other way around. You can have a tremendous boiler on a steam engine but when you start out you have to back up, get slack, because no matter how big that boiler is you still only have one cylinder at a time that is able to do any work. Now as you get up into the higher speed brackets say around 40mph at that time you can reach down and get the throttle on a diesel and unless it's way down why you don't get much more acceleration it just gradually eases along a little faster but with the steam engine at around that speed you can use your boiler because you can fill those cylinders up rapidly one after the other and that's when you get your performance in a steam engine is at speed.
About a train that broke in two this was #370 on the SP. The Arizona overnight and it was quite a rapid train which handled just merchandise. One night we were on it and in those days they didn't pay as much attention to speed restrictions as they do with the diesel. With the diesel you are supose to go the maximum speed unless it is unsafe to do so. But they frown upon you exceeding that. Now with the steam engine there wasn't that problem, I mean the engineer went as fast as he though was safe or you might almost say as fast as he wanted to. With the Zipper up the coast on the #271 and it really moved along. In other words it didn't have to many cars and usually we had a 4300 mountain type. I guess would be the one that had more of em than any of the others. It could really get into the upper end of the speedometer scale, if it had a speedometer. But we were on that one night and at Cedar Avenue in Bloomington, needless to mention there was no overpass. There was a lot of truck traffic over and the roadbed crossing was not to well in that the cars had a tendancy to bounce. Now on these AON cars and on the Zipper they were for passenger service although they really were box cars and so they had steam connections on them because sometimes they were used on passenger trains. In other words up in Oregon the one that went from Portland over to Coose Bay always had passenger cars with them which were behind the merchandise cars so they had to have steam for heating. So you had this steam fitting on there and in order for the pin lifter to pull across it had a big dip in it so that when this particular train was going across Cedar Avenue as often would happen the pin lifters would start bouncing up and down and once in awhile they would uncouple the cars which they did in this case. I imagine we were probably going about 75 and the train broke in two. Now if your an engineer on a diesel what are you going to do? Everything except the brake just cuts out. Whereas on a steam engine the engineer reaches up and gets a big handfull of throttle, in other words he wants to keep away from the rear end possibly running into him. And sometimes the head end get quite a little ways away from the rear end cars before he finally stops. Anyway I was the brakeman on this particular night and we came to a stop and the rear portion of out train was across Riverside Avenue in I guess Rialto. So I walked up to the head end. Now of course the head end really didn't know what had happened. I guess people think trains have always had radios but they didn't so everything was done with hand signals. You could do an awful lot with hand signals. When I crossed Riverside Avenue there was an automobile that the rear portion of our train had stopped so I walked up to the driver and i mentioned to him that he would probably be there awhile, or we would be there awhile, so if he really wanted to go somewhere it would be better for him to find a different route because our head end could be a half a mile ahead. He said, "Yeah, I stopped for this train to go by and it went by and there was no caboose and I was just getting ready to start across and here came another train with no engine." So it was just as well that he didn't try to cross there.