Thanks for filling in the blanks; knew about Karner & Carman but couldn't get the right numbers with the locations. Forgot about Canastota completly. We serviced the West Shore at this connection with a Traveling Switcher out of Utica two days a week; the other three days he went to Pallatine Bridge for Junket Foods. The West Shore had a short stub west of the connection to the main line. It was our practice at the end of the day when returning to Utica, to drop the entire train by at this location to get the engine on the east end for the return trip on the Main Line. This saved the time of stopping at Oneida and running around the train. Engineer on this Traveling Switcher was Bill Lorraine and one particular day the Crew Caller at Utica called me and said he was out of Engineers for Mohawk assignments and that Bill would not work resulting in the need to annul the job. I got Bill on the phone and learned he would not protect his job because it was going west that day (14 hour job) and he needed to be home for a family birthday party that evening. I promised we would arrange the work so he would be home and he accepted the call and the job went to work. In the late afternoon on this day a westbound rung off a journal at Greenway and tied up the main line preventing this Traveling Switcher from returning to Utica. Immediately I drove to Canastota and found Bill Loraine still down on the West Shore waiting to come up the connection to go east. He was putting foot prints all over the sides and roof of that old S-2 mad as could be with language to match account he was to miss his birthday commitment. I told him to get his grip and get in the car that was sitting in the six-foot and go home leaving the keys with the Crew Caller...what an instant change in personalty. I remained with the TS Job and got in much later that evening. After that, as a new RFE coopereation with the crews was great.
Personally had a 'headlight meet' at Karner during the late winter of 1971. Was comming down the long tangent (1+ mile long) on #64 and observed a headlight on the single track approaching us. Immediately got on the radio getting us both stopped with plenty of room to spare. CP-7 had a one unit Absolute Signal on the main line for westward movements that was set at Stop for us to diverge into the Controlled Siding at that location. A D&H northbound (west on our railroad) had
run thru the signal and power switch out on to the single track. Investigation revealed that the D&H Engineer interpreted
the signal as Stop & Proceed because it was a single unit signal; on the D&H it took a two / three unit signal to convey Stop & Stay.
