Rolling Railroad Crew Changes Mid to Late ‘70’s in Tales of the Jointed Track

I thought of this while in Portugal. Funny how things will trigger your thoughts. We were boarding a gondola, like those you find at a ski area. No, no skiing but a tram to the upper part of Gaia, across the Douro River, from Porto. The tram car comes off the cable, rolls into the station, then connects to a large wheel. Speed is 2 to 3 mph, doors automatically open, you board doors close, then the tram car rolls down toward the cable. The car clamps in, and your off. The same procedure applies when getting off the car.

Now there was a time we changed crews, on the fly, on the railroad. Usually C&S train 151 or a light 77 with no fill. Sometimes a Santa Fe First 114, all TOFC/COFC for Big Lift. The Second 114 will yard and fill, maybe a “Springs” set out and/or pick up,and yard at Denver.

It depended on who was the inbound C&S engineer. If it was Red Heinlein he was going to stall em and get off. Ray Rotondo, was so so about it. He call on the pack set saying he was getting off on the fly. 151 was mostly 5 to 7 units and 90 to 125 empty beer dedicated boxcars, for Coors. Why so many units? Most of the time it was locomotive repositioning, and about 4 would be online making power.

At the 4th Street overpass, they’d stall the train to about 5 mph, throttle 1 just to keep momentum. The headend crew would spread out. The inbound crew would dismount, and we threw our grips aboard grab the step and off we went. Train was kept at 12-15 mph till the caboose would call South Pueblo. Throttle back to one, and “4th Street!”. The rear end would repeat the same procedure. “All on, out at 0132”.

Throttle would slowly be advanced to stay around 20 mph, over the curve at Cañón
City JCT. “Highball the JCT”. “Highball”. Time to get after em. I would start bringing out the throttle, one notch at a time, making sure the slack was tight. Around the whistle board for 29th Street, I’m wide open throttle 8. Blowing for 29th, almost 60 mph. Not bad, for about 95 empties. Plus we’re heading upgrade about 1.4%.