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RE: (erielack) The Hamtin dwarf signal

Common sense was annulled by General Order years ago.

- --- On Sat, 4/25/09, Bradley Butcher <llyengalyn_@_hotmail.com> wrote:


From: Bradley Butcher <llyengalyn_@_hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: (erielack) The Hamtin dwarf signal
To: "EL Mail List" <erielack_@_lists.railfan.net>
Date: Saturday, April 25, 2009, 7:08 PM



Yeah, there are days when I'm tempted to call the center for disease control to notify them that we have an outbreak of stupid here, can they send a cure?

> Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:24:01 -0700
> From: wsmith5957_@_yahoo.com
> Subject: (erielack) The Hamtin dwarf signal
> To: s2choochoo_@_bellsouth.net; railwriter@comcast.net; overcrailway@aol.com; alfred_runte@msn.com; papag1954@gmail.com; jake153315@aol.com; snopercod@citcom.net; lackawanna@bellsouth.net; lackawanna@bellsouth.net; erielack@lists.railfan.net
> CC: pemchugh_@_aol.com
> 
> At the last meeting of the FEC Chapter of the NRHS, I related a couple stories about the OLD Auto-Train. As I was leaving, the members asked for an encore but since I was short on time, I promised to WRITE a story for inclusion in the monthly newsletter. 
> It is my contention that the operating departments in the railroad business have (like our banking industry) gotten more and more careless. I first learned this at the OLD Auto-Train in Sanford where I worked as an engineer in the yard there. The Vice-President/Operations was Mr. Arne Q. Olson who had previously been in charge of the private cars of the wealthy 'snowbirds' who came south for the winter. This required a great knowledge of all the systems of passenger cars - electrical, water, air, steam, air conditioning............you get the picture. It did NOT require a knowledge of the OPERATING department and therein lay our problem. All us folks on the switchcrews had to do was get the cars to the wheelpit, riptrack,...wherever. Just DO IT. 
> In the 3d or 4th month of operations, Mr. Olson asked me to go up north and look over the Lorton operations for a week or so and see if I could make any suggestions to improve things. When I returned, I suggested that we hire a real switch crew to augment the 2 engineers employed there rather than simply grabbing a pipefitter, electrician, or laborer to handle the train up there. (AMTRAK did this from day one) My idea was put on the floor for debate and one of the managers stated that he "Didn't intend to pay 2 switchmen to sit on their asses most of the day". I said that we'd likely lose more money by having people doing the switchmen's jobs who weren't transportation people. This brought a roar from Mr. Olson,"Walt what you're saying is CRAFT UNION BULLSHIT!!!". I tried to protest and heard "Not another Goddamned word!! That's all union bullshit!!" End of meeting & could have been the end of me.......I now realized that Arne Olson had many
> run-ins with union people at Jacksonville and hated labor organizations. He later told me that "Everybody at the Auto-Train has to do everybody else's job and help out".
> One of the results was that anybody felt free to jump on an engine to - move it, switch out a car, etc. I had a flat tire on the way to work and arrived to find a car foreman on my engine telling a laborer who occupied the engineer's seat "This here is the throttle and this makes it back up & go forward - the brass handle is the brake to stop it with." I said "You weren't really going to let him handle a 30 car passenger train were you??". "Hell, yeah, YOU weren't here!!". One day while my switchcrew had taken a dining car to the wheel pit, a car knocker foreman had to get a sleeping car to the north end of the train where the sleepers were usually placed. He simply got a laborer and another carknocker as an impromptu switchcrew and they proceeded to the north end on track 1 to place the sleeper on the train which was on track 3. Problem here was the north end of the Auto-Train yard was very close to the mainline of the (then) SCL. There
> was a simple answer to this - one of the car foremen had a SCL switch key and was able to unlock the switchlock and line the switch so they were able to head out onto the mainline for headroom with the old Baldwin switcher and sleeping car. This led to an interesting radio conversation which went something like this.....
> JACKSONVILLE DISPATCHER TO SANFORD OPERATOR.
> SANFORD OPERATOR, GO AHEAD JACKSONVILLE. 
> I'VE GOT A TRACKLIGHT ON HERE AND #97 (THE SILVER METEOR) IS BY ORANGE CITY. 
> WHAATTT????
> (I'll explain that the old ACL/SCL station had a clear view of the Auto-Train property and the operator saw the old Baldwin creeping out onto the mainline)
> IT'S THOSE IDIOTS AT AUTO-TRAIN, THEY'RE OCCUPYING THE MAIN TRACK.
> Up north, this would have been the equivalent of a New York Central yard crew opening up a switch for headroom as
> the Twentieth Century Limited approached........of course the Auto-Train car-knocker crew was blissfully unaware that there WAS a problem. Problems like this were usually resolved by inviting Mr. Dunn (SCL yardmaster) to the dining car commissary on Persimmon Avenue and loading his car with sippin' whiskey, a few cases of Michelob, wine.....and promising to be good and not do this anymore. 
> My conductor and I were appalled since within a few days it was back to 'business as usual'. After about a week, I got a 2 pound Danish ham tin and saved the lid which I cut 2 round holes in, one over the other. I sprayed it gray and epoxied a circle of red plastic over the top hole & yellow plastic over the bottom hole. I put a light socket in back of each lens and wired a switch into each light so I could make it appear yellow or red over yellow, or red. I then put it in the seatbox on the fireman's side of the old Baldwin. The opportunity for fun presented itself 2 days later when my crew was told to place a domecar in track #2 at the north end before the train got in. We rolled north in track #3 and stopped at the end of the platform where I place the hamtin dwarf on the ground & covered the cord with ballast before plugging it into the 110 volt power box. The foreman soon appeared......."Whatthehell'stheholdup???" I delivered the bad
> news....."After you guys delayed #97, the SCL placed a signal here and it's red - we can't go by it." The carknocker foreman was dumfounded and turned and literally began leaping across the parking lot screaming "Mr. Olson, Mr. Olson, the Seaboard put a signal up ........ By this time I caught him & told him to calm down. I was rewarded with some cussing & a lecture on "Yankee smart-talk". I figured I'd better dispose of the evidence & the 'dwarf signal' went in the dumpster. 
> The really sad part of this is the carknocker foremen didn't SEE the danger of what they did. I was abou to say WE never did anything this dumb, but in one of the TABER books is an incident where a switch crew decided to get 'JUST A LITTLE ROOM' and blocked the mainline as the Lackawanna Limited (making up time) hove into sight. The big 4-8-4 ripped the cylinder off the heavy switchengine and the superheated steam exhausted into the coach that got stopped there, killing many passengers. The road engine went on it's side killing the enginecrew. I always think of the many times a switch crew has asked me to 'just pull up a few feet' and the yelling and screaming when I wouldn't. Rule 104-d is in most rulebooks and states "A train or engine must not foul a track until all switches or derails are properly positioned for movement etc., etc., and THE NORMAL ROUTE IS SEEN TO BE CLEAR". Of course we didn't have any rulebooks at Auto-Train.
> After near-misses like this, Mr. Olson had another little saying. It went like this, "We've been mighty lucky today at the Auto-Train, Mighty Lucky.
> 
> Regards to all,
> 
> Walter E. Smith
> 
> 
> 
> 
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