Desertdweller wrote:Railroads I have worked for had rules forbidding Operating Department employees from climbing on top of equipment. This rule did not apply to Mechanical or Clerical employees.
Some cars are still produced with "roofwalks". Consider covered hoppers or boxcars equipped with roof hatches. Shippers' employees must work atop the cars for loading; grain inspectors must be on top to take grain samples.
Les
Some of the cars I saw in the 70's, early 80's still had the roof walks/ladders, but employees were forbidden to ride up there when cars were moving. This applied in particular to boxcars.
I don't know why I thought of this now, but this reminds me of the cars that used to come into our shops with MoW material, and Mty boxcars that came in to be loaded. It became common to see this little man in a sombrero taking a siesta under a palm tree! He had a name given to him by the railroaders, and sometimes was written on the car itself. At first, when we started seeing this.......and this was prior to prolific "tagging" of cars.......we thought it was some car peck at the Hayne ( Spartanburg, SC) car shop doing this, and even the railroad dicks looked into it, But it turned out that the artist was from some facility out west in Arizona or New Mexico (Santa Fe or UP???)---which would make sense because of the sombrero and the palm tree. Of course, most of the people on this board aren't old enough to remember this little graffiti guy.
I can't remember the little nap-taker's name, but it was cute, and when this guy retired, we stopped seeing the little sleeper on the cars as they arrived at our shops. Gosh! That's been a long time ago............!
GF
