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

March 17, 2005
Despite there being all sorts of rules; operating, safety and air brake and train handling in effect, things still have a way of veering off the directed and intended course. Today's lesson will examine yet another round of such occurrences. The established tradition of these Haywire columns again prevails as the names of those involved, the railroads and the locations will be omitted to protect the guilty.

"Just the facts ma'am."

Gaining new business is an important goal of most railroads. New business to compliment the current mix of traffic is most certainly a plus for both the company and its employees. In an era when it seems that most new business is that stolen from other railroads, the capturing of new business away from other modes of transportation is quite a coup. Whenever new business is garnered and first begins to move on the high iron, it tends to draw a great deal of attention for a period of time. Eventually the gloss wears off and it becomes routine like all the rest of the traffic. Nonetheless for at least a few days or weeks, this new business quite an important event when it starts moving.

Oftentimes the first day a car is spotted at the new customer, there is much concern. In some cases railroad officials as well as sales and marketing people will be on hand to kick off, as it were, this new business. In the first part of today's lesson, we'll discover that irregardless of how much planning and preparation is undertaken, there are still some logistical issues that get overlooked.

One railroad signed a contract with a customer that manufactures automobile gas tanks. The plan called for four "high cube" box cars per day to be spotted and loaded at this plant. High cube box cars are 17 foot high; 86 foot long box cars designed with a high cubic foot capacity hence the high cube moniker. The 86 foot high cube made it first appearance in the 1960's and rapidly became a staple for moving auto parts traffic. They are used for moving auto parts from stamping plants to the assembly lines. Other industries have made some use of these cars as well, but the majority of these cars are assigned to auto parts traffic.

So here we go on the first day of this new business. Everybody that needed to be there is there. Everybody is all pleased about the new traffic. The doors to the plant are already opened in anticipation of the first cars to be spotted for loading. Here comes the crew and the cars. As that first car enters the building, that one little overlooked detail suddenly reveals itself, the hard way. It seems that nobody bothered to check the door height of the factory in which the rail cars had to pass through to enter the building.

Ooh you know that's going to leave a mark.

The 17 foot high car did not quite fit through the door. It seems the height of the door was less than the required minimum height necessary to achieve the proper clearance. There was considerable damage to both that first car entering the building and the building itself as a result. Not exactly an impressive launch of this new business.

Don't you just hate it when that happens?

Our second selection is what occurs when an employee, while engaging dutifully in their assignment, gets distracted. It seems that one employee working a job we'll refer to as Job Y was going to assist another assignment. He was going to protect another job, which we'll call Job B, as that other job was going to shove a track. Job B was working at the opposite end of the yard and needed to shove a track into the clear from that end. On the end of the yard that our hero was working, a train was stretched out on the lead. Our hero was observing the move and communicating with Job B when he got sidetracked by yet another job; Job C. He took his eye off the move for one moment too many while working with Job C. He didn't get Job B whom he was supposed to be protecting stopped in time. Job B shoved out onto the lead and into the side of the train stretched out there.

"A direct hit; you sank my battleship!"

A couple of cars not only derailed but also rolled over onto their side. But wait my friends; there is the always popular more. As fate would have it, there was a high tension electrical transmission pole along side of the lead. As fate would have it, this pole was lying directly in the path of one of the cars that was rolling over onto its side. As this car toppled onto its side it took out the pole. And of course as the pole came down, the power lines it supported also came down. A funny thing about wire is that is shares a common denominator with rail; while it will stretch, it does have a breaking point. When these lines reached that tension point, they snapped.
Not only did the power go out to most of the yard, it was also knocked out to a significant portion of the neighboring community as well.

Oops.

I think the power utilities charge by the wire for repairs and they also mark up the price of the poles to make a profit when this happens. And as luck would have it, this occurred "after hours" and on a weekend to boot. So you know the price of the labor had to be quite steep for the crews involved in setting a new pole, attaching new cross arms and stringing the replacement wire.

Another episode took place when insufficient handbrakes were applied to a cut of cars spotted inside of a factory. The track in which the cars were spotted within the factory had a slight descending grade towards the door used by rail crews and their trains to enter the building.

The crew pulled the cars that were requested on their work order and then respotted this industry with the cars they had ordered in. No problem as this is accomplished routinely without incident five days per week. I don't know if the crew was in a hurry or if there was a missed communication between the Brakeman and Conductor or what, but in any case, an insufficient number of handbrakes were applied to the cars spotted in the factory. The crew finished their work, closed the door and departed. Sometime thereafter, the cars spotted in the factory began to move on their own. All of these cars were loads with each of them being around 110 tons.

The descending grade, the heavy loads and luck of sufficient handbrakes were a great recipe for disaster. The cars quickly gained enough momentum to allow them to roll right back out the door, the very same door that the switch crew had closed before departing. Being that this door was closed, the cars rolled right through it demolishing this in the process. You know this is never good.

When all was said and done, the Conductor got some discipline for the incident and the railroad had to pay to replace the door. For what it is worth, at least the Conductor didn't have to reimburse the railroad for the cost of the new door.

The next two episodes involve me, so I can explain them in first person. We were shoving into a facility that loads and unloads all sorts of chemicals and fuels. We spotted nothing but tank cars in this facility and handled all sorts of weird and scary stuff; the kind of stuff that could blow up and wipe out the entire surrounding area if something went horribly wrong. Some of this stuff, if released into the atmosphere could easily rival the Bhopal, India disaster.

We were shoving a "TankTrain" to spot for loading. TankTrain is the proper name of this equipment developed and marketed by General American Car, now known as GATX. This is a string of tank cars interconnected with piping.
Only one car needs to be spotted for loading or unloading. The commodity being loaded or unloaded from this equipment will be pumped through all the cars to or from the one spot making it quite convenient for facilities that do not have the capability to connect more than one or just a few cars at a time. These cars have blocking devices on the couplers to prevent them from being uncoupled once all the piping is in place between each car. TankTrains can be set up in different car amounts to accommodate the requirements of the shippers involved. I have handled them in configurations of 17 to 35 cars, but have observed them operated in up to 60 car blocks. Each car in a TankTrain can operate independently as a stand alone car or as part of a unit TankTrain.

So here we have this TankTrain and we are shoving it to be spotted for loading. It was very windy that evening, quite windy actually. The Conductor and Brakeman were riding the lead car back into the facility, one guy standing on either side of the platform on leading car. All of a sudden the Brakeman starts screaming on the radio "THAT'LL DO, THAT'LL DO!!" When you receive a transmission on the radio like this with the sound of panic or deep concern, you stop as quickly as possible and ascertain problems later.
I was only shoving around 8 or 10 MPH. All of these cars were empty and we had the air connected and I already had an application of the brakes set to control the slack. I dumped the air immediately and we stopped very quickly.
It then got deathly quiet on the radio; too quiet. This, my friends, is never good.

"The silence was deafening."

I finally broke the silence and asked if everybody was alright. I got a yes in response. This is at least one good sign. I then asked if we were still on the rail, again getting a yes in response; a little better sign. So now the big question; "What is going on back there?"

The Brakeman responded that we struck one of the racks used to load cars in this facility and tore it up.

"Bad, really bad."

"Do I need to call somebody?"

"No, not yet" was the response.

So I decided to investigate and got off and walked back to see what we had done. I observed one of the racks all bent, the post to which it was mounted leaning over with part of the ramp itself caught up against the catwalk and railings around the dome at the top of the car. Hmm, we are completely on the rail and are not excessive width, so what in the wide, wide world of sports just happened?

It seems that the ramp that leads from the rack to the walkway at the top of tank cars was not secured properly from when it was last used. The wind caught it right about the time we were passing it with the second car of the cut. The ramp dropped and started rubbing against the side of the car making all sorts of racket. The Brakeman heard the sound and knew something was horribly wrong. He just yelled out for me to stop them quickly. But it was too late as the ramp caught the walkway of the tank car before the move came to a halt.

The Conductor seemed unsure of what we should do. We had to inform somebody of this. We sure couldn't just leave the cars like this and depart. So the Brakeman took charge suggesting we contact the Foreman from this facility. I suggested that if nothing else but to protect our own interest, we really need to contact the Trainmaster as well. Both steps were handled, the former by the Brakeman and latter by me.

The Foreman came out and immediately tried to blame us; a programmed response. Of course I suppose that comes from years of the railroads coming in and tearing something up. The Trainmaster came out and assessed the situation. He claimed there was no way we could be responsible as we had no excessive width cars. Both the Conductor and Brakeman stated that there was nothing in the way and no ramps hanging down as were making the move to spot the cars. Closer examination of the ramp clearly showed the locking device used to hold it in the stowed position was not in place. Somebody merely pulled the ramp up and out of the way probably not ever giving consideration to a strong wind coming along and blowing it back down. The wind must've caught it right about the time we came up along side of it. I believe the vibration of the cut of cars passing this ramp might have also been a factor as well. The ramp dropped catching the side of the car and then got hung up on the walkway around the dome which then pulled it over.

Once this issue of the cause was resolved it was decided to have us go about the business of spotting up the cars. It was at this moment that the Conductor and Brakeman pointed out to the Trainmaster and industry foreman that the ramp was still in the way. The industry had to bring out a front end loader to push the ramp back far enough to get the cars safely past it.
However that was not enough. While it cleared the rounded tops of the tank cars, it would not clear the cab of the engine. More persuasion was required by the front end loader to get it back further from the rail head. Once pushed back to the point it was determined would provide for sufficient clearance the front end loader back off. The rack and now badly bent out of shape post would not stay put; this entire assembly kept sagging back towards the rail. It was finally decided to lash up the post with the rack to another post nearby in order to hold everything in place so that we could finish our work. Situation resolved.

This lashed arrangement lasted for the better part of a month before a new post and rack could be installed.

While we did have to fill out wreck reports, we did not have to appear in any investigation to prove our innocence. The Trainmaster, a well seasoned veteran with plenty of experience on the railroad and investigating mishaps such as these, quickly and correctly understood that we were not responsible for this episode. Therefore, we were not on the hot seat. I just wonder if this would be the case today.

Our last episode for this lesson occurred at this very same facility. Again we were shoving cars in to be spotted on this very same track, only this time for unloading. The Conductor was giving me a car count down. He told me "ten to a stop." This meant I had ten car lengths to the point in which I would have to stop the move. I had gone about four or five car lengths when he yelled "That'll do!" in quite the panicked tone. Before I could even attempt to dump the air, the slack ran in extremely hard. We stopped as I was putting the cut into emergency. Oh oh, what did we run into? Were there cars on this track already that he did not notice?

A couple of moments elapsed and I asked him if everybody was all right. He responded that they were fine but that we had a serious problem. I asked if this problem was anything that involved a hazardous materials leak. I was greatly relieved when he told me no. He did suggest that I come back and take a look though.

It seems that we had a little less railroad available to us back there than he though when we first began this move. Apparently we used up the entire length of railroad available to us and then went above and beyond; literally. There were skates at the end of this track. Skates are heavy cast iron devices that are bolted to the rail. Their purpose is to prevent cars that have reached the end of the track from going off said end of the line.
They usually work and work quite well. However, when the cars coming against these skates are still being pushed, they don't always work as designed.

The first set of wheels on the truck on the lead end of the car climbed right over the skates. The second set of wheels on this set of trucks got caught on the skate bringing them to a stop, but not the car. We tore the leading end of the car right off that set of trucks. Somehow though, we missed ripping off the valves at the bottom of this car. Had we torn them off we would likely have caused a spill.

Being that we were closing in on the point at which I was expecting to stop, I was not moving that fast. If I was going a few miles per hour faster, this could have very quickly become quite the situation.

When asked what happened, the Conductor admitted that he wasn't paying as close attention as he should have been. Instead of watching he started looking at the work order and misjudged the distance from where he was to the end of the track. He thought we were actually further back from the skates than we were.

This is one of the reasons that I avoid being in a big hurry when switching inside of an industry; routine tasks can easily go haywire. And being in a hurry can and does frequently make them go horribly wrong.

"And now for something completely different."

Here is an update about the book prospects. I finally got to meet with the guy that wants to turn my manuscript into a book. We recently met for dinner and discussion. Unlike the character in an old Three Stooges short that wants to produce the boys and the girls they met for a show, this fellow seems completely normal. Nobody in white coats came for him when our dinner meeting ended to escort him back to the home. This fellow is serious as a heart attack about taking on such a task. While we have not yet signed a contract, we are in agreement that he will indeed be the publisher.
Therefore, I am equally as serious about providing him with a suitable manuscript. We discussed at length, some ideas of what is already prepared and what changes, revisions and additions are required. Of course what this means is I have some serious work ahead of me as there are significant changes to be made to what was already written, then rewritten and subsequently revised.

I have between six and nine months to get an overhauled manuscript back to him so that he can begin the process that will convert it all into a book.
So that means I will probably resort to producing these HTOTHI columns about once a month so that I can have more time to work on the manuscript.

Another issue we discussed was price. We both agreed that we don't want to deliver a finished product with a huge price tag. We are looking to make this book affordable to everyone. Therefore when the time comes that it hits the market, you'll not need to refinance the house in order to add this book to your library. Stay tuned for further bulletins.

And so it goes.

Tuch

Hot Times on the High Iron and the HTOTHI initials, ©2005 by JD Santucci.