Frank Bradford continues:
When I was in the fourth grade it was probably only one year like elsewhere they used the same engines all the time on the same jobs so I used to go out most afternoons and walk over toward Alameda Street. We had a farm down there of course most people don't know about farms in Watts but we had one and then there was a Chinese farm behind us and behind that was a Japanese farm and then they had the Snodgrasses and Tweedy had a small farm. There were the Valenzuelas and we called her "Old Lady Valenzuela" was an heir to the rancho and was one of the Ablas. Ours was one of the first purchasers to buy a section from the heir of this Mexican rancho. Anyway I used to go over there and watch the #2414 go by. I remembered the number for years and years because it must have been someone up in the 1930's that I was talking to someone at engine service up in the San Joaquin Valley and I said something about this #2414 and he says there's a #2419. Needless to say even the #2400's weren't the same and even #2415, 16, 17, and 18 may have had some differences but #2414 and #2419 were practically identical engines. Also along then too which kinda goes back to a number of years ago was that on the box cars, Southern Pacific box cars with the SP logo with the sun setting on it, of course there were a lot of T&NO cars then but also GH&SA. Now GH&SA were Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio which hasn't been lettered on box cars for I don't know how long.
At that time people didn't travel light, when anyone went
anywhere how else would they go but by train? So their luggage was
pretty heavy they had maybe two or three leather suitcases and a
trunk and these they wouldn't take down and check at the checking
counter like they do now. The AT&SP Transfer Company would handle
your baggage from your home and take it down to the depot and check
it in with the railroad and coming the other way they would pick up
your baggage including your trunks and steamer trunks and whatever
and take them to your residence. It was the name that kind of
intrigued me, AT&SP, I knew it didn't mean Atchison Topeka and
Southern Pacific but on the other hand what the heck else did it
mean? I used to see these transfer trucks everywhere because there
were a lot of travelers and no automobiles that went anywhere or I
mean any great distance, no airplanes certainly, buses, so
everybody traveled by train. Along during Coolidge prosperity the
SP bought 20 engines, Baldwin I think, but anyway they came out here
in one solid train of engines and as far as I know that was the
first time that anybody had engines delivered that way usually they
had them come out one or two at a time and when they got to their
home road then they would go into service. Anyway these were known
as the "Prosperity Special" and they were 3600's Santa Fe type and
each engine had along its running board a large sign that you could
see from fairly far off that said "Prosperity Special". It was a
big publicity gimmick for the SP and they took them on SP trackage
out to Exposition Park and stored them over there on the north track
there for publicity purposes and for people to go through them and
look them over. I know one of the things that I found out, I mean I
was quite familiar with air brakes because I could do almost
anything with the PE because that was my thing, of course there
isn't much of it left anymore but when I'm out with my wife I'll
point out some street and say, "There's where the PE went." Anyway
they were stored out on that track and one of the things that
intrigued me was, what did they have H6 airbrakes valves or whatever
they were, there was the "Jam". Now this intrigued me quite a
little bit and of course I've never forgotten that. Its something
that stuck in my memory for a long long time. You'd see one of
these "Prosperity Engines" out on the main line and for quite a long
time after that they'd still retained that sign on the running
board.
SWITCHING: Maybe the same situation exists now because they've taken up most of the track. Anyway you had to run around these cars and shove all of the slack in, you had to use a little brake on one end and shove all the slack in and then you would barely clear on each end. But in spotting up sheds Joe Maggio, who was the carrot king and I don't think he's on anymore but he always used a baseball as a logo taken from Joe Dimaggio. He had a hard place to switch when you were spotting up because his door weren't the same as the car doors and some you'd have to shove the slack in and stick some chucks down there to hold it and then stretch the next one. You really had a job doing it, one man would have to be on one side of the car watching the doors and the other one would be giving signals. Another place that used twenty cars a set and if you had a real good engineer you could shove back in there and if he used his air right you could stop with every car bunched and it was right where it belonged. Other tracks you had to be in with all of them stretched or some stretched and some bunched. It took a little knowledge but I worked out there for a long time.
Another sign you had was "Baby Load" which meant they were still loading it and it was kind of loose. Well, you get a load like that and the conductor was back in there and he would grab his right elbow with his left hand and his left elbow with his right hand and then rock it back and forth like rocking a baby. The engineer and the other crew would know that you don't move that load very suddenly. I mean you just eased into it and moved it.
We had a couple of them that we really bounced around. One of them there was a straight track and then you went around a wye, a big curve and you really had to wind the thing up, wind the engine up and kicking it to get it around it because you wanted it to round the curve enough to clear the straight track. Well, this stupid head man I had, all the head man is suppose to do is pull pins, they're not suppose to ever touch a switch but he thought I was going over to the shed and he wanted to switch into the shed. Of course I got way up there and boy we really wound up on it. So instead of going up the track and around the wye it went into the shed where they were icing the car. All the electric lights inside the car came out and the platforms between the...nobody got hurt fortunately.
Some of those tracks you really had to wind them up to get around a curve. The head man I had wasn't doing very well and when I walked up to tell him what I wanted it went right back into the shed because I'd forgotten to line the switch back up. Neither one of those ever said anything. I mean they could charge the company because it would take a few hours to get the car loaded again. Most of the crews down there had a real good relationship with the shippers. I mean they would really do everything possible that the shipper wanted. That's where our money came from.
I liked switching, I mean at first I didn't but I got pretty good at it. They had a lot of them out of LA and out of Oxnard they had that Ojai local that used to work Ojai. When they were building that dam up there across the river up at Ojai we used to haul up an awful lot of cement. Of course that made a job last longer, I mean beyond the season, because otherwise there was just the shed up there. On one job we had down there every afternoon we had "Joe the Pigeon" and he'd fly right over the top of the engine, two or three times he'd get over the top of the stack. It was downgrade there and there wasn't a whole lot coming out but there was still that draft coming out that would get him and up he'd go but he'd still stay right over the top of the engine all the way from Ojai clear down to the bottom. I worked the Santa Paula up there for awhile. Of course when "Joe" was up there that was a steam engine but I worked the Santa Paula too with a steam engine but also for a time after they had diesel on it.
Those first road switchers they had, I guess they had four of
them, they were 1500 horse power, three axle trucks, and they were
some of the first ones that came out. It would start in LA, go down
to Wilmington, back to LA. It was the Fillmore Local not the Santa
Paula, it would got to Fillmore. The Santa Paula Local would come
out of Oxnard and it would pick up from the one that had come from
Wilmington and LA to Fillmore and they would take that to Oxnard and
then back to Fillmore, Fillmore to LA, LA to Wilmington and four of
them were kept on that one job. They looked like a pretty good
sized engine back then. They were built with six when trucks
because then they could use them on light rail. That's the
blooming problem with 40 foot box cars. You never see any of them
around here but you see a lot of them in Canada and I asked somebody
up there about it and they said they have so much light rail out on
the branches going to the wheat elevators that are only used during
the season that it wouldn't hold a covered hopper. And another
thing when we were up at Church near Hudson's Bay that elevator up
there won't handle anything but 40 foot boxes but boy they sure run
that wheat through those conveyor belts 35 mph and they weigh it
twice on full speed. I think they have four tracks, unloading
tracks, and when they unload a car its every three minutes. They
pull the car in with a mule. They upend it one way and then upend it
the other. Meantime they've got two ships outside loading with four
spouts into it. They've only got about a 90 day season up there and
when the elevator holds 30 million bushels and when the last ship is
gone they fill the elevator full. Of course that is fairly slow
track up there but that is one place where most of the 40 foot box
cars go.
RIDING THE DAYLIGHT: I had heard a lot about the daylight, I mean the SP really had the publicity out that it was the most beautiful train in the world which I think it really was. I think it was the first Sunday in March, March 7th or 8th. I rode it up to Santa Barbara and back. They used to have Sunday to Tuesday tickets and it may have been a Sunday to Tuesday ticket but anyway it was good on Sunday. It was $1.40 round trip to Santa Barbara and it was a reserved seat on the thing. They had articulated cars on there. Everything was light weight then they didn't have the heavyweight cars they got back into. I think they had a combo right on the head end and then they had the first GS-2's in the daylight colors. A GS-1 was just a 4-8-4 and just black like any other engine. I think it was #4410, which would have been the first on, anyway one direction was #4410 and the other direction was #4411 so they used the first two engines in the series. It was really quite a trip. It was a beautiful train and when I got my ticket for a dollar and forty cents I got a booklet with it that I guess was worth $1.40 in itself not then but now. I really liked that trip.
SWITCHING AT CHINO: Another one I took was in 1948 when I was working on the "Potato Peeler" which was a whole trainload of potato's that came out of Chino. So this "Potato Peeler" used to do the switching at Ontario including going down to the juice works. That was where I dropped a carload of sugar which was pretty heavy and on a steep grade. There was no possibility that a diesel could do it because we didn't have too far to go because that was when they were paving Mission Blvd and the track only went down to the edge of where the highway was going to be so we didn't have a whole lot of room. We had a consolidation and you could really wrap it up. We had a good engineer and when he got the pin that's all he got and he got his reverser ahead and he got more throttle. Of course the throttle was already pretty well open to begin with and when he got some more you would almost think that engine was going to jump like a jack rabbit because the car really had to be moving to get up that grade and up around the bend. I think it four times to do it. The first three times we didn't quite get in the clear but the fourth time it got in there. I wouldn't have been trying to drop a car in there except that I goofed. I had it on the wrong end of me. That job always took a long time. After we would do the switching we would go to Pomona and then we would go down the Chino Branch and the switcher down there that switched all of the potato sheds would shove the cars up the main line. When they got ready for us to go we would back down against it and they would be on the other end as a helper as we would go on up to Pomona and back again if we had time.
One time they had this section gang out doing some work at Ontario and we picked the domestic water car and took it to Pomona to fill. The only thing was that when we got ready to go back the dispatcher gave us the whole railroad, I mean we just barely had time to get there on our 16 hours. We went through Ontario with the whole thing wide open and there were all of these guys on the section crew pointing to our car because they wanted their water and they had to wait until the next day to get it. We weren't gonna stop. They used to put #371 in the hold for us.
Speaking about time...they used to have the "Garbage Local". Los Angeles used to dispose of its garbage to a hog farm in Fontana. Of course in Fontana now you couldn't have a hog farm but they had one then. On the average there was 12 up to 15 cars of garbage to go out and feed the hogs. There were two qualities of garbage. There was Number 1 garbage and Number 2 garbage. It looked to me like both of them had the same number of maggots per square inch and they both smelled the same. But you would have to take them in there and switch out the Number 1 from the Number 2. Sometimes the stuff would slop over the end of the car if you weren't careful. They used gondolas that were dedicated cars. They had drains on the bottom so they could steam clean them and the water from the steam would run out the drain holes. That was seven days a week. I don't know the exact spot they loaded it but it was just the city garbage that was collected, I think the Number 1 was probably western garbage and number 2 was household garbage but they all looked the same. We had a brakeman who became a conductor later on who was on one night and he, it was all covered with canvas, and he ran along on night off the top of a box car and jumped down on top of this garbage which should have been alright because you land on the canvas with the garbage below is soft. The only thing was that the canvas had kind of rotted a little and he went right on through the canvas right down into the garbage.
This was when Western Union was still delivering telegrams. Of course if you were on an extra job you had a "Hold-Down" on it for I think 10 days. In order to give it up it had to be written and you had to write, "I wish to give up my hold-down on job ______". This was before central tieups so when they job came in I got off in the yard somewhere and there was no use going in if I didn't have anything to do. But I had to give this written notification when I wanted to give the job up. I went to the western Union and I said to send a telegram. At that time telegrams were delivered by a boy on a bicycle, which I did at one time as well as working for postal telegraph. Anyway I put on it, "I wish to give up my hold-down on the garbage." Whoever took it probably put it over the phone and they wanted to know what "hold-down" meant. I had whoever was taking the message a little befuddled.
One time when I was working down in Indio, when I first started, the rest of the family was up there in Watts. I wanted my wife to know how much money she could use out of the checking account so I sent her a telegram. I used her father's name, "Uncle Harry left you $40 love Frank." Well, that sort of got Western Union too and when it came it was a "Two-star" message. If it was a death message Western Union used to put two stars over the address.
I always got along pretty well with the crew dispatchers too.
That time I overslept after they called and said the train is ready
to leave. I went out there and got my orders and got the bills and
of course I had to make out a delay report, so much for getting the
engine out of the barn so I put down, "Wait for conductor 25
minutes." I could have covered it up. We used to eat sometimes at
Loma Linda. When you would stop to eat you would be there a long
time. Sometimes you got in and tied the train down but I never
liked to put down more than an hour for eating. The agreement said
that you had a reasonable time to eat which really can mean
anything but just on general principles I would put down 50 minutes
or 55 minutes or so. For the rest of it I would write, "Tie train
down", "Engine run around train", "release hand brakes", I mean all
kinds of stuff. Anyone who would look at it would know what the
whole thing covered. Of course one time we wanted to eat so I asked
the dispatcher if we could eat in either Ontario or Pomona. He says
Ontario is full and I've got both locals working at Pomona so the
only place would be Basset. I told him we had a setout at Industry
and we would be half the night getting to Basset. He says the only
other place there is Montclair and I told him they wouldn't be open
until 6 O'clock. So he said, "That's all right go in there and wait
till it opens." and this was about 3 O'clock or something. Anyway
we weren't any hot train and if we went in there we were off his
railroad so he doesn't have to figure out about putting us in a
siding somewhere. So I put on the timeslip then, "Wait for
restaurant to open 3 hrs." Of course the trainmasters go over these
delay reports and they will have a stack of them and every once in
awhile something will catch his eye and he'll just take that out and
put it by itself. He probably figured that if I actually put, "Wait
for restaurant to open 3 hrs" there must have been a reason for it.
The main thing is that as long as you normally perform your duties
as you should...of course if I put down three hours twice a week it
might be a little different.
I got into the darn thing down at TWEEDY one time. Those darn General Motors plants when they worked they worked because they carried little or no inventory at the assembly plants. Its all between GEMCO and TWEEDY and Detroit and Cleveland or wherever it came out of. So the auto parts themselves normally don't get in until early in the morning after midnight, sometimes 3 O'clock before you get em. Well, then you've got to line everything up for every track 1,2,3,4,5,6 and right on. That takes a lot of switching to do it. For GEMCO they had what they called the Chatsworth or extra-Chatsworth because they didn't have a Chatsworth local. Sometimes they would run two or more of those one right behind the other. I mean like the "Gold Streak" would come in and the head end of that would be auto parts so you would get an extra Chatsworth out for just that. All you would have to do is make a cut and pull out and put your caboose on. When you got out there, this is about the only place that they would give you a consist when you left, but you got a consist by wire so you knew what was on the train. You'd call GEMCO by telephone and they would tell you over the phone which track they wanted each particular car on so you could have your switching done before you got out there. So you would make a cut and hang maybe 25 cars or something and switch them out. Boy, I mean BANG BANG BANG! and then you would get the rest of your train and switch it out.
I was on at TWEEDY there one night, they had a train master down in El Centro and they had another one working with him or above him whatever who was really awful. All of the regular crews who worked down there even those who had lived there for years moved out when he came in. Well, this other guy wasn't to bad. The bad one was named Nations and nobody wanted him. I generally got along with everybody but I never worked under Nations so I don't know. Anyway one night down at TWEEDY they got kind of a jackpot so we worked quite on through without eating to get the railroad back where it belonged again. Two or three nights later we got all wound up fairly early and the trainmaster there, Kelly, said, "Well, its about time to go to beans but wait till we get this one car and then the work will be all done." So then he told us to take a good long eat. The only problem was that everything wasn't quite done because General Motors had put in a new roadway and you were suppose to cut it but that was a track that you normally didn't go in to. So we didn't know anything about this so we just left our cars sitting across where they wanted to run the new automobiles. Of course General Motors never says anything to anybody in LA...they've got a private line straight up to San Francisco. So the Terminal Superintendent and his assistant came down and we weren't there. That must have been just after Kelly left because we were gone a long time because the place we were going to go to breakfast was closed so we went up to Huntington Park and it was one of those times when it took forever to get waited on and it was a stormy night. We were gone for a long time but normally it would have been all right if it hadn't been for this thing..well when we got back they really started landing on me. I told him it had taken a while to eat and he said, "I don't care how long it took, I can eat in twenty minutes." I told him he usually didn't have any trouble with me and he said he knew that which was why he was surprised. It ended up all right but he was kind of hot because General Motors called and then I guess he was down there an hour and a half waiting for us and there was no other job around there.
That was a place where now and again they used to send their student brakemen. Which was a poor thing to do because nobody had time to try to teach them anything because you're working so busy. So one night I was down there and I had two brand new students that had just hired out and one that had only been working a week. I couldn't do anything with them so I was doing everything myself..practically. The trainmaster came up and started to say something and I said, "Wait till I ride this car down and make a heel." So I came back up and he says, "It looks like you have some green help haven't you." I says, "Green isn't the word." So he told me to do what I could and he would send another job up to help. I figured that maybe they should send one student down there but not the whole crew.
Making a heel means to tie down the handbrakes because I was
working a down grade and so you have to have something down below to
put the other cars against so they'll stay put so you tie about six
hand brakes on the lower end or whatever is necessary but usually
six. In LA Yard, I mean A-Yard, it was mandatory for six brakes
there. If you got in and didn't have time to tie em down yourself
you had to get a switchman to do it for you. The only time the
switch number did was they had a job that must have gone to Dolores
and then went to Pasadena so LA was an intermediate point so as an
intermediate point it was the yard crews obligation to tie down.
They had all of these things that you had to watch out for. I was
out at Colton one time and the yard crew was suppose to tie it down
because it was an intermediate point and one of our brakemen who was
ambitious went and tied the thing down so they switchmen of course
time-sliped him for it. Now the switchmen were always looking for
any little infraction of their agreement at all why they would turn
in a time-slip on us. If the yardmaster did something or if any
official....for the brakeman, the roadman, any help they got the
better they liked it. I guess the difference is that if you're a
switchman as soon as you get your work done they come out with
another list. You worked your eight hours or whatever while on the
road you worked by the mile so the faster you go the better you are.
I know its all together different now because everyhting is all
consolidated with everything else. One time we went to pick up some
cars down in the harbor. The engine was supose to go back over to
Long Beach to tie up. The trainmaster was down there so he told us,
"You can take the engine over there with you if you want to or do
you want to go home." So he asked the engineer to take it over and
he said, "You won't tell anybody will you if you happen to find any
switches lined for you?" That was so if any switchman was around
they wouldn't know that somebody else was lining them switches for
them. It was an altogether different situation.
Dave Crammer: What was it like running over a grade? An example of course was the big potash train, the Duffey Street Diasaster. As a brakeman what was it like working with steam engines.
Frank Bradford: Back when you had steam engines that was what your retainers were for. When you were at the top of the grade you would set up a certain percentage of retainers. It would depend on the tonnage and what it was. That would hold back part of the air while the engineer was recharging his train line and then you would have to stop at certain points for ten minutes for the heat to radiate out of the brakes. Of course the speed limit was 20mph or something like that. So everything was kept under control but it had to be kept under control. That was one thing the brakeman did when you had all of those brakemen coming down the hill. Every one had 17 cars and it was up to them to check everything.
Dave Crammer: They checked them after they were stopped?
Frank Bradford: No, after they were stopped. Because you had to stop for heat radiation. It would depend...on the beet train for instance or something like that you would turn up every retainer. Even after they got diesels...of course now they keep the helper in so that they can use your dynamics downgrade too. When they first started using them on some of the trains you left a lot up to the engineer. Not legally but sometimes the conductor would ask the engineer, "How many do you pops (they called retainers "pops") do you think I'm going to need?" So the engineer would know what he had and how he could handle it. Sometimes though you would get a cantankerous old goat. We had the beet train which the rules required, this was before they figured in the dynamics on the helper, so anyway the rule was on a beet train you turn up every retainer but as I said you would ask the engineer. This was because the beet trains were always the same so when an engineer handled them alot he knew what he could do and what he couldn't do. So I asked this one how many pops he's gonna need and he said, "Well, you know, whatever the rules require." We got up to Beaumont and he called back to me and asked, "How many retainers do you want?" and I says, "All of them." Well, that was what he said at the beginning. He says, "All of em?" "Yup, all of em."
There were two different times that we went over Beaumont with an ore train 13,425 tons, it was always the same. The 25 tons was the caboose. Of course we made our running air test and started over the other side and that ore train really took off. So we paused part way down...the helper engineer woke up...he was just in "Run 8" going down the grade. I mean it's understandable because you're going up that grade in that same run 8 and you have that same throb and same sound and if there is anything that is going to put you to sleep that is going to be it. Especially if you don't have anything else to do...the engineer on the head end has to watch out for signals. I came over another time and had four units cut in right ahead of the caboose and started down the other side and you could hear those engines in run 8 back there just pushing the train so I called on the radio and said we had them in run 8 back here so anyway we stopped. Anyway we managed to stop even though we had four big units pushing us. (In regards to Diuffey Street) I don't know how that engineer got that far not knowing the tonnage he had. When he picked it up at Mojave, Mojave is just like dropping down a well and if he didn't notice it then well of course then he's got to haul it upgrade. He might not have noticed it so much on the upgrade but when he got out of Mojave he should have felt it...if he'd been handling it very much anyway.
I know the job that brings it out of there at Searles. I think its only 80 tons per car..80 tons per operative brake...they usually had some empties with them to give you more braking power. I remember one crew came out of there and there weren't any empties there. Well, they came out with the tonnage and its a pretty good grade there but they knew what they had back there and knew how to handle it. I know that when they got down to Mojave the trainmaster said something about it. He didn't say anything very much or do anything but he mentioned it..there were no empties there to do it and no possible way to getting back until someone brought some empties...I mean you couldn't have a 100% loaded train. As I said, you could do a lot of things if you knew what you were doing...knew ahead of time. I guess up there on Cajon where you go over to fast to begin with when it was too late and then you pull the air on the back end that put out another unit of dynamics...put out all the units...everything.
I guess the SP is pretty bad about having power that dosen't do what its supose to do...not as bad as they were a number of years ago. For awhile there for two or three years you never went out unless you had two or three units conk out or you were stuck for somebody that did have...somebody you were meeting or something. Then they got a lot better after that.
During the war they were short of so much stuff. The
depression was on and the railroads were hurting for business and so
they had old cars stored around that were ready for the scrap heap.
In other words they weren't even operative. Then all at once along
comes the war and they had to dredge out everything that they could.
When we come to "Cabeese" or "cabooses" or whatever..they used box
cars to make cabooses out of them. Santa Fe did too. In other
words they would take off the doors and then they'd put a step down
there in front of the center door and then they had that curved grab
iron so you could mount the step. They weren't really too
commodious and then of course you had to have a way of going out the
back end of the car. They must have put a door in because you could
get out there and put the markers up from inside. Everybody hated
to get them but you did every now and then. I was on the
Westmoreland Local one time, of course Westmoreland isn't reached by
rail anymore, but it was always a good job like any of the lines
down the valley. Anyway there was a guy down there by the name of
"Smokey" Bartlett. He was a conductor and with these cars with the
doors at the center you feel like lining the switch as the door goes
by you. Of course on a regular caboose the whole thing is over the
switch by the time the door goes by and on this one only half the
car was over. So this brakeman lined the switch under the car so one
end started going one direction and the other end another track.
Have you ever seen a heavy freight car lean over on its side? They
do it very slowly. Etha (Frank's wife) and I were down in Brazil
riding a train down there and Etha says, "That car ahead of us is
going over." And I says, "Yes, so are we." We weren't going very
fast and we went gently over. Well, that's what that caboose
did...just leaned over flat on its side. They had one of those
telephones right near there and I was up near where the conductor
was and he went to the phone, cranked it up and when the dispatcher
answered....well he had to get the dispatcher as it was a message
service so he had to ask for the dispatcher. When he got the
dispatcher on the line he says, "They done it! They done it! I knew
they'd do it!" He didn't say who he was or anything. I guess he'd
been worried about that caboose going over for a long time.
I had another one one time going up the coast and they had a semi-cranky conductor. The marker on this thing had a latch that was not holding it steady so this thing kept going around and around and around. Somewhere up along the line the conductor looked back at the marker and it was showing red when it should have been showing green...I guess it was showing green to the rear. He said why don't you do something about your marker its showing green to the rear and I said, "I know...just wait a little while and it will show red."
On one of the very first trips I made out of Indio was on the rear end...rear end man. That was the one where the conductor wanted me to go up and trade off with the fourth man because he said he had more experience. The only thing was that I had had three or four trips and I had a lot more experience than the fourth man because that was his first trip. When I got on the caboose...I used to read a magazine that started out as "Railroad Mans" and I started with the first issue that came out in 1929. The first time it came out it cost 15 cents down on West Pico Street. I had read railroad stories and I knew the rear brakeman, although it was illegal for me to be a rear brakeman because California had a state law that no one could be a flagman without a years experience. But they didn't have any brakemen with a years experience around so I was the flagman and I had read in railroad stories that the "parlor man" or rear man...part of his duties was to get out and bring the lanterns..clean out the lanterns..light em up. This was because they still used the red light then that was a hay burner rather than electric lanterns. We did have a conductor there, Tom Finity, who said never would he use an electric lantern...that he was always going to use a hay burner. He always kept his polished up. Anyway I reached in, I think we kept two of them we didn't have an electric red one, so I cleaned it all up and I had some soot on it so I took it out on the step as the train was leaving and turned it upside down for the soot to drop out. Of course as soon as I turned it upside down the font came out and the globe came out and all the pieces ended up along the yard track. So I dropped off and went back picking up pieces of this lantern and then had to catch back up with the caboose and got back on it again. When I started out I had a lot of, well they are funny now but back then.
I knew a lot of what was going on. Take train orders for instance...I understood them pretty well. Way back when I was just a little kid somehow or other I got a rule book from the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis Railroad. "Big Four" is easier to say but I really studied that rulebook. I was ten years old but i was always interested in trains so as far as train orders were concerned I knew quite a little bit. I knew the general rules but as far as uncoupling an airhose full of air I didn't do so well on them. Incidentally out at the hog farm one time I was supose to uncouple and I did but I didn't wait for the slack to roll back and and when it did roll back I had all of this slop that came down over me. I knew all of the maggots were the same because they were all exactly just the same.
Dave Crammer: So when did they build Taylor Yard?
Frank Bradford: During the 1920's some time it must have been because I can remember when it wasn't there. They had "A" Yard and "B" Yard and "C" Yard. "D" Yard was a hump yard and that's where I worked as a student "Hobo" riding the cars down almost out the other end. They used to have the yard office down where "B" Yard and "C" Yard met. It was there till around 1960 and then they moved it up to the top end. They put in what was considered at the time an electronic yard..certainly not an electronic yard like they have now. The way they worked their "squeesers" then they went through a master squeeser first and then they had a squeeser that was controlled from each side and that second squeeser whoever was doing that depended on how fast or how well they ran out of the primary squeeser. Well, then they got down in there and the secondary ones could see if it was going to fast and they would bring it down to where it was. Then of course they would have a trimmer that would come along and get the cars together and pull them down into "C" Yard.
In other words when you would bring a train into "C" yard normally you were supose to walk from the rear end up to the yard office. Sometimes they had taxi service and would bring you by taxi to where you were going and sometimes pick you up. Before they had that taxi service they used Yellow Cab an awful lot. The'd deadhead you all over by cab. I got back from Tweedy one time on a Yellow Cab. Most of those guys knew where the yard office was because they usually made other trips down there. This one night I was coming back from Tweedy and we were on the Santa Ana freeway or way out east some place and the driver got lost and I was asleep. When I woke up I said, "Where the heck are we?" So I told him how to get back and he said, "Maybe I'd better put this flag up." I mean he couldn't turn in all of that milage and expect to get paid for it. If you had to give them directions you'd come off of the Glendale Freeway and you'd say, "Go down here to the stop sign and turn left...and then go to the next traffic signal and turn left...and then go to the next signal and turn left...and then you go to the end of the street and turn left...and then you turn right." But you turned left off of the exit off of San Fernando Road, then left onto Fletcher Drive, and then left off of Fletcher Drive onto another street, and then left off of that one which paralleled the freeway and then to the right to go into the yard.
Dave Crammer: Tell me about some more cranky conductors.
Frank Bradford: I never paid to much attention to them really. We had one down there, he had a brother, I guess he was in WWI or something but anyway he had a silver plate in his head. Nobody could get along with him. Then there was another one. I don't remember his name but I worked with him a couple of times and one time I was working fourth man back from Yuma. The train ahead of us had to pick up some stock at Thermal so he was going to need a fourth man from Thermal into Indio...of course Thermal to Indio isn't very far. So they pulled me off of the train I was on and had me get on his train as fourth man. Well, when I got there he'd already done all of his work and he was just pulling out of the yard but he stayed on the head end. I dropped back to the caboose and was back there with the rear brakeman. So when I got into Indio I went up to the yard office where I told him I was his fourth man. "Huh? Why didn't you see me?" And I says, "You were up,on the head end and I went back to the caboose to see you." He says, "I was up where the work was and I'm not gonna pay ya." I told him I didn't care, I had a whole pocket full of time slips so I'd turn one in myself. The yardmaster's name was Downey and he says, "I sent that man down and you'd better pay him." He sent me back to Thermal back to my own train but I should have gone on the extra board because this was the yardmaster not the crew dispatcher. Of course when the timeslips got in they looked a little odd ball. Here I am on one train and then another train and then back again. Anyway I finally got paid for it.
Another time I had a little thing on the San Pedro Local. Of course I took the PE because they were running down to Wilmington to Pier "A" Yard and Gabe Foster was this conductor's name. Maybe it was the same trip. I went down and there was another brakeman who went down with me as the fourth man and head man. Well, he say's I have a full crew here so he sent me back home. I got back home and my wife says, "The crew dispatcher is calling for you." So I called back and she says, "Well, the conductor made a mistake. One of the brakemen laid off but he didn't know it so he just assumed everybody was there." I said, "Well, I can't get back there." Incidentally I took the PE back but to the "D" Street Junction which was the closest to the yard office. There was one going into San Pedro which would then turn around and come back. Instead of still waiting at the "D" Street Junction for the same car to go to Pedro and back I got on and rode it to San Pedro and it only cost me a nickle more so they had come down to the "D" Street Junction and looked for me and I wasn't there. They sent me back home when they really shouldn't have. I was all set to go to bed and my wife says, "The crew dispatcher is coming." I called he back and she said, "Well, they've got a hundred cars and they need you pretty badly so go back down again." I told her I couldn't get down there now because the last car had left. She says, "Well, they sent you home its there baby. Go to bed." Pretty soon she called again and says, "They need you down there." Well, I told her again I didn't have anyway of getting there so she said she'd send a Yellow Cab around. They sent a Yellow Cab down to Watts and I took that to Thenard which was the yard limits. So when I came back time slips started going in so I turned in a deadhead Los Angeles to Wilmington, deadhead Wilmington to Los Angeles, deadhead Los Angeles to Wilmington, then a time slip as fourth man Wilmington to LA Yard. When it gets up to time keeping they want to know what this thing is with three deadheads to get one trip in? That of course was before computers. Now with computers it would probably be done in San Francisco but at this time it was all done in LA. You could go up there and talk to them and they had everything so I explained the situation to them.
They had a deal up there where someone in the time keeping bureau was claiming to loan money or saying you had time coming but somehow he was going south with sombody's money and then he would put your name on a fake time slip. Anyway they caught up with him. Of course they called me in the ofice one time and wanted to know about it and I said he told me I had the money coming and said he was going to loan me some or something but anyway I was honest so there was no problem. Anyway you could go up there and they had the sheet right in front of you. There was one time when I didn't get paid for a trip so I went up there and it was a great big book they would keep everything in so anyway he says, "Oh on this page its that other Bradford." In other words he was turning the sheets over and went past "Bradford, Frank J." to Bradford somebody else and put my timeslip on the other Bradford. Usually though you didn't have any problem.
One time down at El Centro and somehow or other I had laid off or gotten permission to lay off. I went up to the time keeping bureau and went through it and he says, "That's the trouble with these verbal things...I can give you a hundred miles but if you want overtime you'll have to make a grievance out of it..maybe you'll get it in 6 months..maybe you'll never get it." I said, "Give me the hundred miles."
You know when the PE merged with them they got into a little problem. Later they considered everything being local, local freight, and then they got road switchers which you could work anywhere in the area. They still called it the hundred miles but it was the same thing as being on an hourly basis. Which was fine except when the PE came in how are you gonna get this 25 mile limit on the darn thing? So they stretched it out a bit and made it anything within the merged territory like to Redlands or wherever the PE had gone. That brought in a problem with the old San Bernardino Line through Upland, North Pomona, and there because they put in a connection between the Palmdale Line, the Palmdale cutoff, and the old PE line. They got into a little problem with the Trainman's Union because they said, "That isn't merged territory because it's new track." The Palmdale track wasn't PE track or SP track at the time of the merger so therefore they couldn't use it so they had to run the job from Baldwin Park clear out there so I don't think they used to make it even in 16 hours out there. For quite a few years they've been getting away from these rights, minor squabbles, towards lets use what the company can do to make some money and run some trains.
The switchmen always seemed to be the worst, they'd say the engineers were bad too. The firemen and trainmen never got quite that finicky about what they were doing. Now to mention that Dornfeld, he was a trainmaster, we were up there on the Palmdale cutoff and just after we came out of Colton there is a spring switch up there. This was the thing they would frown on the most. You are not permitted to be beyond the fouling point of your train or between the switch and the fouling point of the track your train is on or closer than 150 feet away. So we were up there with Dornfeld and were doing some flood repair work near Highland and were down there near the switch talking and Dornfeld says, "We'd better get away from this switch before we both get fired." That was the one rule that they watched more than anything else when I hired out. I think it was in 1938 when they had that Tortuga collision. Tortuga is east of Niland. They had a train that normally stayed on the siding, I think it was the eastbound probably #6, stayed on the mainline and the other switch headed in the siding. Both were passenger trains. Let's say that #6 was on the main line where normally they were in a siding since the dispatcher on this night put them on the main line. Then #43, or whatever it was, was doing 60mph down the main and this head brakeman looked up and saw that the switch target was opposite from the way that it usually was. So he saw that where it was usually green it was red tonight or visa versa so he made a wild dash over and lined the switch right in the face of this other passenger doing 60mph and the two of them came together at maximum speed. Of course it was quite a mess. That was when the SP put in that "Rule 104" that you could not go beyond the fouling point of your train toward the switch and it also said that the engineer will be held responsible for the brakeman doing so. So anytime you were a brakeman for years after I first started working if you got down the engineer would either warn you or if you started going up would blow his whistle to let you know you weren't supose to be out there. They didn't want you where you could just look up at it and do it without thinking. That rule is still in effect and that was what Dornfeld had in mind. They're still pretty touchy on that but not like they were just shortly after.
They had a big rearender during the war on the Salt Lake Division. A train had stopped on the main line and they had a flagman out, torpedos, fusees, everything they needed. Another train came right up along behind them and ran into them. The engineer had passed out from natural causes, heart attack, stroke, whatever. The fireman was on his first or second trip and he didn't know how to stop the train. He just sat there going past all of these signals and everything. These things do happen.
There was one thing where you violate the rule when its safe to
do it and everything. I was on the ore train when the PE used to
take it for Japan either at Walnut or City of Industry where they
would change crews, SP crew to the PE crew and the PE crew would
take it down to San Pedro and the harbor. This brakeman and I were
talking about rules. About this rule that you were not permitted to
make a drop over a power switch. Of course on the east end where
you cut the caboose off they have it in there that you are permitted
to let the caboose roll down. At that time they ore train might go
in the siding at Walnut and you would cut the helper off the rear
end have the caboose on the main, line the switch by hand for the
caboose to go against the train. Then all the PE crew had to do was
come out and put their engine on the head end. We were talking
about this thing so I called the dispatcher and when we were getting
ready to cut the helpers out. He says, "So, you're going to drop
the caboose against the traina are you?" and I says, "Its against
the rules." I don't know why I said it but we had just been talking
about this so I told him it was against the rules to drop the
caboose there though they did it three times a week. I couldn't
very well say let's do it anyway. Once I had said that I couldn't
say well let's forget the rules. So we took the caboose with the
helpers down to Industry which meant that the PE crew was going to
have to take the caboose back and put it against the train. This
trainmaster jumped all over me and I said, "Yes, you jump all over
me for some little chickenshit set of rules so what else can you
say?" It was just one of those things when you get into rules. No
and again you do violate them. Speaking of rules there is "Rule
108" which says in case of doubt take the safe course. Anyway
coming back from Santa Barbara we had some time on #33 or something
at Ventura, this other train would wait for us at Ventura till such
and such a time. So when we left Santa Barbara and I kind of
figured we'd have to go into Seacliff and we had a brakeman who had
been working down at Tweedy ever since he had started working at
all. I mean he couldn't read a train order right side up or upside
down. We got down at Seacliff or right at Seacliff and I was
thinking we're supose to head in here. I looked at the orders and I
asked the brakeman and he said, "Yeah, we're supose to head into
Seacliff." But he wasn't actually sure if we were at not. I tried
to call the engineer on the radio but he always turned his radio off
unless he wanted to talk. I pulled the air and we stopped and then
had to back into the siding which took a lot of conversation. In
the meantime the trainmaster was listening in so he called the
engineer and asked him what the trouble was. He said, "Oh, no
trouble, everything is fine." Of course with all of this
conversation and backing up he knew darn well there was something
going on. So the trainmaster asked him, "What time did you go past
Seacliff?" and the engineer says, "I don't know...I don't
remember." That's not the best answer to give when you are running
on time and only have so much time to get to Ventura.
Actually we
didn't have time to get into the clear but the SP wasn't fussy about
that. Finally I got on the radio and said, "This is Bradford...I
didn't know if we had enough time to get in the clear so I took the
safe course and pulled the air." That was all there was to it and
when he asked me what time we went past Seacliff I said 9:25 or
whatever which was right on the line. Well, there are an awful lot
of rules and some of them are good...well they're all good. Every
one that is in there has ben brought in for some good reason. Like
that one with the fusees when the train is pulling out of the siding
and the engineer saw it just as he was pulling out and he had 3/4 of
a mile of train that he was pulling out at slow speed. By the time
he got to where the fusee was way down the line he was rolling right
along.