Troubleshooters diary ...what I remember in Tales of the Jointed Track

I was still on the local, was great job. I was asked to become a mentor, due to my electrical and mechanical skills, plus I was a promoted engineer. I didn’t take it? Why?, Saturday and Sunday off, I slept in my bed every night. I had regular calling hours, and I didn’t have to work nights.

I did a lot of troubleshooting, previous, on the “OJT” plan. I figured out a lot of “routine problems”, were a simple, think and reset. Like the Older C-30-7’s at the time. You had some just working their asses off, and some under, throttle 8 and not producing nothing. I discovered, that there was a circuit failure breaker failure. The “excitation circuit”. No, not that type of excitation, but the electrical current and energy, off the main generator. Sometimes, this would trip, and it did. It cut the main generator, from distributing the power to the traction motors, problem..no load, but the pole breaker didn’t completely drop. The breaker is still up, but both poles didn’t drop, it looks like its okay, but it is tripped …The fix?, isolate the unit. Drop the excitation breaker , wait 1 minute, and pop it back up. Make sure you felt a hard click, and place the unit on line. 96 % of the time, it started loading up. and you could tell how the diesel engine was staring to make power to the main generator. The main generator was producing current, and the diesel was straining, to keep producing current. Like the Barefoot Contessa says on her cooking show , “How simple is that”?

During, a drop in business, the local was still switching out maximum traffic. The BNSF management, now mostly BN and they still hated the Santa Fe people, said we’re changing this. They didn’t want a unit stationed at the “Springs”, they hated we got things done and had “Time” off. So lets, change this to operate out of Denver instead of Big Lift. Let’s pay for two or three crews each way. Wondering why, they started to loose business, and get major complaints. The local, couldn’t get over the road, because the dispatchers, thought we were a hassle. I left, the local, and marked up to the Pueblo engineers extra board. About 3 months later, I was asked again, can you help us out, and do this mentor job? I accepted.

I was a former Company Officer with the Santa Fe and BNSF. I had the tools, and some ideas, on how to streamline the job. I brought some of this in slowly. I found out they has a LISS program. Locomotive Inventory Service System. I used that at as a AMLU ( asst manager of locomotive utilization ) working locomotive distribution for the Santa Fe and BNSF.

I accessed the program, I sorta signed on. it granted access. I was able to place stations in, and monitor what power was coming in. I could see “color Codes”, what were the problems.. BINGO this is going to be major!!

I called my supervisor, the General Road Foreman of Engines, and he fired for me, and I trained him as well. Plus we battled a few times when we were in management, but that’s water under the bridge. “Larry, we need authorization, and read only access, for all of us. I’ll teach ‘em”. Read only gave us, information, and we could place our stations in and not have to create them over and over each shift. It would save the info. We were starting to foresee, problems coming into Denver, before they caused major problems. An extra set of eyes, whether they like it or not. A simple wire and follow up phone call, prevented failures and caused early planning. A lot of major failures, due to crews not telling the terminal, or a trick dispatcher not following up or notifying the Chief. This was a “how dare you move”. But a thank you so much, later.

This became another tool.. and great one at that. I’ll elaborate on how this worked out for us. Thanks for reading