Railroading Odd Occupation, Odd Language, Hard to explain Part 2 in Tales of the Jointed Track

Red Ball Freights:

A Red Ball freight is a train that is hot. It is a priority, or can become one . Can haul freight, many commodities that need to be expedited. Or the shipper wants that. Oh yeah they pay for that, because it is expedited premium service. Same goes with the TOFC / COFC the hot ones like 199 (now Z-WSPRIC), is another example, but it is not a freight, it is intermodal.

Most RED BALL Freights, were second class trains, by time table schedule. So if a lowly extra, you'll be sitting in a siding waiting for the train. Remember, from past writings, the first class trains were passenger and fast mail. For those of us, that remember and "date" ourselves, the postage stamp cancellation, with the words RPO, Railway Post Office. That was a letter carried on a fast mail. I believe at one time train 152 and 151 were priority, on the Joint-Line. Santa Fe trains 114 and 314 were hot. My "era", we were all extras...and expedited as the Company saw fit.

It has changed today. Now the Red Balls are "H" trains and the plain old drags are "M" designation. A drag...an example from my "Locomotive Distribution" days, the power desk, M-CHIKCK. That was a drag...crap slough tonnage no priority, an mishmash of locomotives heading for inspection, or break-in trouble shooting. It was always about 8000 to 10,000 tons. Chicago-KC ..it will be broken down at KC Argentine Yard, and on other H or M trains throughout the system.

H trains are H-KCKBAR...H-HOUBAR...H-TULBAR...H-STOSEL...H-STODEN KC-Barstow Houston-Barstow Tulsa-Barstow Stockton-Selkirk, NJ Stockton-Denver a few examples.

Bad Orders:

What is a Bad Order. I still use that term. It is something that is not working, or is in need of repair.

A hand signal for a bad order? Take both of your hands, make a fist bang them on top of each other. That is the Bad Order Hand Signal. You could be a switch man.. :)

A bad order could be in a train, or cars in the yard, to be set out. Locomotives, for various reasons .

Making a Turn or a Turn:

This is a topic all its own... But the vending machine gal sparked this. She said " We need to change things up, and get machine to move a lil product".. I told her "make a turn on it". A look, and the "you're talking train again". Yeah I still do.

A turn could be many things. like the English language, we have many things that mean many things.

If ya need to make a turn on power, what occurs ? Well you need to make a locomotive, have a cab in the direction required for movement.

How do you "turn" power or a single locomotive?. Easy ... yeah for me to say.
1) a turntable... if it is available 2) a Wye... think of a triangle... A to B..to C and back to A and (Trumpets and fanfare bow to the Queen...Majesty.. ) the consist or motor is turned.

For an Operations/ Crew standpoint... a turn is when you go from A to B and return to A. Like a Sedalia turn... You get called out of Denver, go to Sedalia, and change direction, and return back to Denver. Yeah, it never wasn't a Sunday drive. There was local work ...switching set outs and pick ups.

Rips or Rip track:

That is where bad order cars went for repair. Send 'em to the Rips or pull the rips, that was the marching orders to spot and pick up bad orders. Pulled and spotted many a rip track.

Hogger or Hoghead:

Maybe some of you are familiar with the term. Then again some of you are not.

A hog was a locomotive ( steam days term) that was a drag engine. They tied the most tonnage to it, and have a good trip.. Usually was a Mike 2-8-2 ( Mikado) or a Consol 2-8-0 ( Consolidation ) wheel arrangement. The "Hogger or Hog head" was the engineer. And if you were a terrible train handler the trains crews on the caboose might use the F-head term.