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Life on the Railroad |
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If ever there was a sector of our society where time has nearly stopped, the railroad has got to be the slowest part of our culture to keep up with the relentless march of time. I walked into the yard tonight to report to the job I was called for and introduced myself to Dennis, my conductor, and was immediately struck that he could have walked right out of one of those black and white old time western photos from the fair or amusement park - thinly striped overalls, cigarette hanging from his lip and lantern under his arm, he extended his weathered hand in a kindly introduction.
�How long you been railroading son?�
I work mostly off the �extra board�, which means I get called at any given hour to fill in all over the service unit. Half the time it�s long haul road freight, half the time it�s local jobs, switching out little trains to deliver, or �spot�, to our industrial customers. Tonight was the latter. Dennis and our engineer on the job had nearly 70 years of combined experience and here I come in my orange vest and proud four months. |
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Dennis was a piece of Americana � and a great guy to boot. Happy to be patient with me as the new guy, but filled with experience for me to absorb. Watching him and the old timer engineer work together, herding the engine around the yard, and switching together the train we were building with my modest help, was like watching a giant mechanical chess match or clunking metal ballet. The good crews anticipate each other�s movements and commands and rely on each other both to get the work done and to keep each other safe. It appears fairly simple at first glance, but flat switching a train is an elaborate skill that some people never acquire. I can only aspire to the ease that these �old-heads� put on display for me. It is deceptively complicated and very easy to become lost in the succession of movement�s, cars crashing together, and switches being lined just in time. |
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The thing that dawns on me most often out here, which is also reflected in the UP�s current marketing mantra, is that the railroad literally is �Building America�. Tank cars full of vegetable oil to food manufactures, hopper cars to the brewery and lumber cars filled with freshly sliced pine. The raw materials of construction, fabrication and baking travel coast to coast under our noses without nary a thought � and have done so since the very beginnings of our country. And I bet you hardly even noticed.
Sometimes it reminds me of a giant mechanical rodeo. I learned the other day with another veteran crew, how to ride a cut of cars rolling without an engine attached down a grade and stop them with a handbrake. Pretty fucking scary actually. The purpose was to get the engines on the other side of the cut of cars we were working on. The engines duck into a siding while I roll by on the train we had dragged out there, controlling the speed downhill by cranking on hand brakes. All the while I am flashing back to my five inch thick, Federal Railroad Administration rulebook and wondering if this is legal? The scariest part is, I can�t actually remember. After three months of studying, testing and certification, I am just hoping there isn�t a manager in the bushes to ruin the fun. |
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So far, the over all best day has to be the caboose. Cabooses in modern railroading are a casualty of technology and the march of progress. Back in the day, the �Brakemen� on the trains crew rode in them, so that when the train stopped on the main line, they could set flairs and walk back to �flag� approaching trains of the danger (stopped train) ahead. Today, radios, dispatchers and rear end telemetry devices have replaced flesh and blood to protect same. But � here and there on the railroad there are local jobs that require certain trains to operate with the engines behind the cars for long distances. When geography and the layout of a customer�s facility conspire, some trains �shove� their cars to �spot�. I got on one of these jobs the other day, rode in a caboose employed at the end to comfortably house the employee�s protecting the �shove�. What a trip. Walking in to it was, again, like a trip through a time machine. Caked in railroad dust inside, it still had the old conductors desk, a gas stove and a bed � frozen in time. It feels like you are in a functioning piece of history, haunted by stories and ghosts, but still a technological bridge from the old times to the current era. We stood out on the back porch and �shoved� for several miles as kids waved, cars honked and time stood still on a perfect California spring afternoon. Danny, working next to me for thirty or forty years out here, never let on, but I knew he was proud inside of the job his experience had earned him. I was just lucky that day off the extra board. |
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From LA, we really only drag freight two places long haul. One of them is to Yuma Arizona on what is called the �Sunset Route�. Most of the old timers that hold this run are old SP men that have been there since before the Union Pacific merged (acquired) the Southern Pacific. Corporate balance sheets might reconcile revenues on the same ledger, but these boys work for their own distinctly different railroad. Rumor has it that the UP really only bought out the SP to get their hands on this stretch of main line that they are currently working to expand from single track to double track. The Up used to run from LA north through Denver (Yermo) and the SP had the route south through Arizona to the Gulf States. Now it all pays the same dividend, but don�t make that mistake when you are new and learning personalities and the territory. On one of my last trips to Yuma, out in the middle of the low California desert, my old timer engineer spent the trip playing tour guide and showed me the old abandoned concrete slabs where station and telegraph houses used to run along the only existing rail. |
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In a mysterious and non-descript place next to the Salton Sea, he pointed out the crumbled slab of the old station, and the crude grave markers in the middle of the desert where who-knows-who old railroad workers were laid to rest. It seems impossibly time and reality forgotten that such a place could really exist, but yet there it is, sitting right there being beaten by the sun. Old west looking simple grave crosses and a few lonely desert plants. |
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Seems almost strange to stay in a modern air-conditioned hotel at the end of some of these journeys, but the railroad is all about contradictions � which shall be the subject of my next journal entry if my muse remains interested. |
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UPRR LA Basin Streaming Internet Radio |
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More of my Railroad Pictures |
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Technology Overtakes The Caboose |
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The End of the line |
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