About the Author J. D. Santucci (a.k.a. "Tuch") began his railroading career in 1978 as a trainman on the Missouri Pacific. After a round of lay-offs in 1985, Tuch embarked on a railroad odyssey, working in many different situations for different roads. This column tries to explain some of the nuts and bolts of the job and also demonstrates what we have to deal with on a regular basis within and without the industry. Tuch currently works through freights out of Chicago for Canadian National/Illinois Central. ©1999, 2003-2007 JD Santucci. Logo ©2002 The Railroad Network. By J.D. Santucci

January 2, 2005
I have mentioned quite a bit over the years about getting stuck working on various holidays. In fact, I actually did a piece once on Christmas Day shortly before I had to depart for work about just that; working Christmas Day. Today, we will take a look at how I managed to not work some of them and what happened the first time I ever worked a holiday.

As I mentioned in the last column I managed to escape working Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year. I was able to be off for Thanksgiving this year and I have managed to avoid working both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as well. My job was annulled for New Year’s Eve this year. What that means is it was one of several jobs in Chicago Terminal designated to not be required to work this day. Our primary concern on this assignment is to build a train, the Millsdale Turn that peddles cars off for still another assignment, the Oil Job to handle in spotting industries. When this work is completed we then switch several industries ourselves just south of Glenn Yard. All of the industries we switch and those handled by the Millsdale Turn and the Oil Job are all closed for the New Year’s Eve holiday, so there was no need to run any of these three assignments. Thus, we get to stay home and enjoy the time off.

Even if we would not have been annulled for New Year’s Eve, I would have been off anyway as I scheduled a personal leave day. We are scheduled to work New Year’s Day as it is a Saturday this year, and we perform different duties on Saturdays. So the job will perform those duties per the normal operating plan. I had planned to be “sick” this year for New Year’s Day as the beautiful bride and I have plans for New Year’s Eve and I was not intending to work in the morning. However, the New Year is also first day of the new month and this is significant.

Under our collective bargaining agreement, Engineers may make seniority moves to another assignment for the first of the month. We have to declare our intention to the call board by 0900 on the 20th of the preceding month. This is what is referred to as bumping onto an assignment. The call board is then supposed to send out a notice to be posted at all on/off duty locations within our seniority district. Those Engineers that have been displaced by another Engineer making a seniority move must then exercise their seniority by either bumping onto another assignment or the Engineers Extra Board. Taking the extra board is also a seniority issue as there are assigned rest days for each slot on the board. Each position on the board carries an assigned rest day so if placing yourself on the board, you have to pick which rest day you want which can and often does displace a junior man their who then must make a seniority move to another position on the board. Should I not make a move by midnight on the last day of the month, I can be forced to the extra board.

Clear as mud?

In any event, being that the first day of the New Year is also the first day of the new month, a fellow Engineer bumped me from my current assignment of R937, also known as Job 8. However, for whatever reason, there was no notice of seniority moves by Engineers posted this month. And according to our collective bargaining agreement, I have not been properly notified of my displacement. I did not receive formal notification about my being bumped until around noon on the 31st. Under our collective bargaining agreement I have twenty-four hours from the time I was notified to now make a seniority move. When I tear myself out of bed in the morning of the 1st of January, I will then call the call board and make my move. The assignment I am moving to, the Oil Job goes to work at 0500 hours. I don’t believe I will be arising early enough to make it to work for that job this day, so I will get to enjoy the day off. Sure I won’t get paid for the day, but sometimes the time off is far more important than the money.

Even though I managed to have Thanksgiving and the day after off, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day off this year it hasn’t always been this good. And we are going to delve into that now.

Back when I was still hostling for the MoPac before I was promoted to Engineer, I got stuck working pretty much all the holidays that came along; Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day to name a few. In August 1980 I had a serious motorcycle accident that resulted in some serious injuries and I then missed six plus months of work recovering. I did get all the big fall/winter Holidays off, but I was not in the best of condition so they were good but not the best. However, I was alive and judging from the magnitude of the accident, I shouldn’t have been, so I guess there was that going for me in 1980 Christmas Season.

In 1998 I came down with a serious illness and wound up missing four and a half months of work. I marked off sick after my tour of duty on December 11th and did not work again until May 1st. And of course right in the middle of all this time off was the Christmas and New Year’s Holidays. While I was off work for them, I was too sick to actually enjoy any part of them.

The first year the beautiful bride and I were married, I managed to get sick for Christmas. I had gone to work on a coal train the morning of Christmas Eve at 0345. I had already been somewhat sleep deprived and the very early call this day had me out with a mere five hours of sleep. I didn’t feel bad when I reported for work, just rather tired. The day went fairly well with no problems. The only unusual event was my watch deciding to quit working. When I got off work I headed right to a place that used to be located in downtown Homewood called Central Time. This store featured all kind of watches including the then required, railroad approved watches we were still required to carry in those days. My watch had developed a problem and needed to be fixed and it was going to be in the shop for some time, so I purchased a new one that day. This guy that ran this place was an approved railroad watch inspector and many railroaders took their watches to him for their annual watch inspections. He also gave railroaders discounts on watches and jewelry sold in this store.

For what it is worth, I still have the watch I purchased that Christmas Eve day in 1986 and still wear it to work on a daily basis.

While in the store I noticed a little tickle in my throat and began developing a headache. I figured the headache was from my lack of sleep. I had intended to head home and get some sleep before the beautiful bride came home from work that day, but instead wound up taking care of a bunch of little chores.

When she got off work, the beautiful bride and I went over to her aunt and grandmother’s house for Christmas Eve dinner. It was then that I really started to feel a bit off center. I wasn’t hungry which is most certainly not like me and didn’t even share a Christmas cup of cheer with father of the beautiful bride, her uncle and some cousins. Instead I wound up heading over to father and mother of the beautiful bride’s house and lay down. That was when it hit me. I quickly developed a high fever and whatever bug it was that hit me settled in just in time for Christmas. I wound up spending the next four days in bed before recovering enough to finally make it back to work. Now being that Christmas is all about caring and sharing, I managed to successfully share the bug that I had with the beautiful bride just in time for New Year’s. She spent New Year’s Eve and the next four days in bed recovering. So much for our first Christmas together.

Back in 1987 the first few months of operation on the Wisconsin Central were somewhat turbulent. I’ll get into that saga in a future column. We were short on help and working a great deal of hours. However, Ed Burkhardt and the rest of the powers that be made every attempt to see that everybody got to have at least part of the Thanksgiving holiday with their families. Thanksgiving morning had me working about 0300 on turnaround job between Fond du Lac and Milwaukee. We had just made the move from Indiana to Fond du Lac a few weeks earlier. Nobody was exactly sure how we were going to work for the holiday, so the beautiful bride went back to Chicago to stay with her family and at least guarantee herself of having a decent holiday.

The railroad gods decided to smile on us that day and we had a really good trip. We tied up around noon. I was able to go home and clean up, throw a couple of things in a bag and then raced south to Chicago, a three hour trip door to door. I managed to make it to father and mother of the bride’s house just in time for the blessing just before dinner.

Our first Thanksgiving as a married couple the year previous didn’t go quite this well. In fact, it didn’t go well at all. I was called to work a coal train at 0900 Thanksgiving morning. We made twelve hours, went dead on the hours and even made a little tow in time that day and I didn’t get home until nearly midnight that night. Far too late to do anything but nibble at a little of the leftovers and hit the racks.

Going way back to my days at the MoPac, in 1983 I got stuck hostling for the entire month of December. It was a brutally cold December that year with lots of sub zero temperatures. I was working the daylight assignment which had Saturday and Sunday off. I was going to be off for Christmas Eve and Christmas day, but I had to freeze my tail off for the entire month in order to earn this rare opportunity. Christmas week rolled in and the notice came out that my job was to be annulled for the 26th, the day after Christmas. This meant a three day holiday weekend for me. This much time off meant I was free to plan something fun to do. The little dolly I was dating at that time and I decided to make a day of my free day by going to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, doing dinner in the city and then strolling around and looking at the lights and decorations downtown in the Loop. Nobody or nothing was going to stop this plan. And I do mean nobody or nothing.

So on that morning of December 26th while I was in the shower and preparing for the day, I heard my phone begin to ring. I figured it was either the dolly calling to make sure I was awake, or the railroad wanting to know if I wanted to work. In any event, I let it go to the answering machine while I got ready. Several minutes later I heard my pager go off. I knew this was the railroad. A couple of minutes after that, my phone began to ring again. Oh ya, like I’m really going to answer it now.

“I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.”

Once I was all spiffied up and ready to leave, I checked my messages. There were two of them from the caller informing me that they wanted to bust my annulment and have me come to work. It seems that apparently nobody thought there would be any northbound trains showing up before 1500 hours so they annulled my job. They had the afternoon and night hostling assignments working but mine was the only one annulled. They seemed genuinely surprised when all these northbound trains started arriving and they needed to move all the inbound locomotives for servicing. I’m guessing these trains all just fell out of the sky and landed on the rails right out side of town starting at dawn.

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

I did not return their calls as I was not required to protect my assignment this day. I went out and enjoyed my holiday like all the civilians.

The first holiday I ever worked as a railroader was, oddly enough, New Year’s Eve. I had talked to the caller earlier in the evening and he told me I was two times out and there were no vacancies showing. He said that most of these guys scheduled to work tonight would likely all work as they were getting paid the big bucks for working the holiday and didn’t want to pass it up. I told him I would be out for the evening but would have my pager with me just in case. I was heading to a big party and was now planning on having quite the time. This evening would provide my introduction to the railroad gods and their ability to turn all that is good into a pile of goo.

“Oh the best laid plans of mice and men…”

Within what seemed to be a few short minutes after arriving at the big party to which I was invited, the pager begins beeping. ARGH! So I call in and am told to report for the 2345 lead job at the South Tower. So much for the partying and revelry this evening. I headed home, changed into my work attire and headed to the job. It was snowing like crazy that evening and the roads were already starting to suffer from the weather conditions. And I was not in a good mood.

So I report for work, we get our instructions and begin switching. Within a few short minutes after we commenced our duties, one of the cars we sent down the switching lead derailed. It was a significant derailment as it tore up a bunch of track, track in a strategic location. The Trainmaster came out and assessed the situation. After checking with his superiors it was decided they were not going to call the wrecking crew or the track department out for big money this night to clean up the mess. So they sent us back into the shanty to “await further instructions.”

They kept us sitting there in that shanty for some three hours before deciding to have us tie up and go home. I guess maybe they figured that being they didn’t get much out of us for the big money; they would make us earn it by depriving us of the chance to partake in the festivities of the holiday. Just after three that morning they sent us home. Little did they know that my friends at the party would still be going strong. I headed right back to the party and managed to get to achieve some celebration that night. While I rang in the new year standing on the switching lead in 9 Yard at Yard Center in the snow, cold and wind, I more than made up for it when I got back to the party.

And so it goes.

The beautiful bride and I would like to extend wishes of a joyous, blessed and Happy New Year to all of you and yours. May your 2005 be a better year than 2004.

And so we go.

Tuch

Hot Times on the High Iron and HTOTHI are both ©2005 by JD Santucci