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Times on the High Iron - |
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July 19, 2007 I know I am dreadfully late in getting one of these little diatribes out but life on the railroad can do that to you. As you all have noticed, I haven’t produced one since mid-May. I have been working a yard assignment for the past few months that has pretty much been twelve hours (and sometimes more) most of the time. With only one day off per week it can be tough to do much of anything. And I am trying to spend as much quality time as I can with the wonderful baby. She is now 17 months and now walking too. So this makes life much more interesting as well. Also during this time period my lap top decided to give up the ghost and the disk I have most of the manuscript for the book also went bad. I lost one complete chapter but was able to recapture most of the rest of the manuscript. So there is that set back to this little project that I’ll discuss in the near future as well, but not today. Like Rosanne Rosanadanna used to say. “It’s always something! If it isn’t one thing it’s another; if it isn’t another thing it’s something else!” I am now back on the road again working between Glenn Yard and Champaign effective this past Monday working one of the 336/331 turns. I am hoping this might give me some more time to write as I lay over at the away from home point. And now, on with the show. Cranial Rectal Inversion, as many of you already know, is the medical term for the increasingly common affliction in which one can take their own head and insert it into their own ass. The more common name street name for this malady is headupassitis. Preparation H will not treat this ailment. In fact, there is no know cure and as far as I know, there is no research being conducted and certainly no telethons being staged to raise money for awareness and a cure. Today’s episode involves three railroads and a single official. I guess you only need one railroad manager to create the CRI epidemic. At the time of this occurrence I was working a train on railroad A. The yard from which we are going to bring our train out of parallels another railroad yard that is about half a mile or so to the north. This is railroad B. Yet a third railroad, we’ll call this one C has a line that crosses and connects to our line, just east of our yard. Railroad B also uses railroad C to connect to railroad C and other railroads in this region. Again you’ve probably noticed that names, locations and dates are changed to protect the guilty and afflicted. The layout would sort of look like this; |
__________|___ Railroad B
\|
_________/|\__ Railroad A
|/
| << Railroad C
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We are ready to depart with our train. But before we can begin our trip, Railroad C must first move a train of Railroad B over the crossing with our line. After waiting for several minutes, the northbound train belonging to Railroad B indeed shows up and begins across our line. He is moving rather slowly as he has to enter the diverging route to leave the main tracks of Railroad C a little north of the crossing and connection with us and onto the connection track that leads to the home rails of Railroad B. At the end of this connection track is another signal that is used to hold trains of Railroad B on this portion of the railroad until they can handle the train into their yard or directly onto their main tracks. There is also a very busy road crossing located just beyond this holding signal so they help minimize delays to motor vehicle traffic by holding the trains there as well until they have a clear route ahead for the train. As what seems to be the standard operating procedure here, Railroad B cannot handle this train in a timely manner so they have to hold this train. And as per norm, the train is long enough that they don’t clear the crossing where Railroad C crosses us. So Railroad B’s train comes to a stop blocking the crossing for us preventing us from going anywhere. I’m sure some of you are enjoying this as you are already seeing it for what seems to be, poetic justice; a train blocking another train at a crossing. Oh yes, this is just as common as a train blocking motor vehicle traffic at a road crossing. So there we sit, blocked. And we wait and wait. For nearly hour half an hour there is still no movement from the train of Railroad B. Our Trainmaster calls me on the radio looking for our departure time while we are sitting waiting. I inform him that we have not departed as we are blocked at the crossing of Railroad C. He inquires as to whether the cross traffic is moving and I inform him that it is not. He then wants to know which way the train is heading and if I noticed whose train it was. I responded that was a northbound of railroad B’s heading back to their home rails. More time passes and we get another call from our Trainmaster wanting to know if the cross traffic has cleared or at least begun to move. “No and no.” More time elapses and yet another call from the Trainmaster. And again it is “No and no.” He complained to us that something should be done about this recurring problem. Of course that is like preaching to the choir as we have witnessed this problem occurring at this very crossing time and time again for years. I suppose if both or one of the railroads involved wanted to spend some big money here and build an over or underpass the problem would disappear. But we know that isn’t going to happen. So we wait. After a little while longer, we get a call from the Trainmaster again. He has been working the phones trying to ascertain the problem and how soon it might be corrected. It seems the crew on the train of Railroad B has expired on the hours of service and gone dead. Railroad B will not have another crew to move this train for at least another hour from now. The Trainmaster is not at all happy with this information and begins to concoct a plan. Well, plans in his mind anyway. In the meantime we still wait. More time passes, nearly two hours since we were ready to depart when the Trainmaster calls with his plan. When he presented us with his idea, we deemed it to be far more of a caper than a plan; a caper that could get us all in hot water with both Railroad B and C and the Federal Government. This guy suggested, serious as a heart attack mind you, that he would come and pick me up, drive me to the head end of Railroad B’s stopped and crewless train. He would then have my Conductor walk to the crossing and have us cut the train to clear up the crossing. Almost sounds harmless, almost if you discount all the legal issues here. And there are indeed some significant issues at stake. First off, I asked him if he had spoken to the either of two railroads involved here to see if they would give their blessing to perform such a chore. He told me he had not. He just wanted me to operate and move a train, somebody else’s train, albeit a very short distance on not one, but two other railroads without their consent or even their knowledge. Without anybody’s permission to make such a move, we would be tampering with a train. In other words, we would be violating Federal laws by cutting and moving this train without any authority. They hand out big jail time for such offenses. From what I’ve heard, places like Quantico and Leavenworth become the homes for people that commit such crimes like this as it is interference with interstate commerce. “Give him ten years in Leavenworth or ‘leven years in Twelveworth.” “I’ll tell you what; I take five and ten in Woolworth.” I would also bet that the housing accommodations in such institutions are far less than what I have grown accustomed to at my humble abode here in Indiana. Although they do feed you three squares a day, allow you one shower a week and, well, we won’t go there. Perhaps the beautiful bride could bake me a cake with a file in it. Nah, she probably wouldn’t even notice that I was even sent up the river. She would’ve figured we went dead again and the once again, waited forever for the cab to find us. This Trainmaster was actually pretty adamant about having us commence to doing what he had suggested in moving this offending train. I told him flat out that I am refusing to move a train under such circumstances without all the parties involved giving their blessing to such an idea as it is illegal. He thought about it and then proceeded to contact Railroad B and inquire about making such a move. From what he told me, they pretty much told him to go and get stuffed, although that is paraphrasing it just a bit. You can use your imagination as to what they really said. Railroad B informed him that he would not make any moves with their train on their railroad, under any circumstances, at any time; period. This response pretty much negated the need to contact Railroad C and inquire about gaining their authority to undertake such a move. And it pretty torpedoed the life right out of that plan immediately. “What in the world were you thinking?”. So we continued to sit and wait while the Trainmaster fretted and worried. Eventually Railroad B’s train began to move. Once he cleared, we received the signal to proceed and then we departed. It was only a two and half hour or so wait. Not really such a big deal because in railroad time this is only “a little while.” And for what it is worth, this railroad official is still around, still managing and from what I have heard, has climbed the ladder in the process. I guess they promoted him into a position where he could affect less damage. And so it goes. Tuch Hot Times on the High Iron and the HTOTHI initials, ©2005 by JD Santucci. |
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