The Atlantic & Southern Saturday Report

Started by Judge, January 05, 2019, 03:59:09 PM

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GPdemayo

Sorry I missed a perfect operating session.....good story Bill.  :)
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

PaulS

As always Bill, a wonderful story that easily takes us back to a time and place in a bygone era ...   thanks again for our weekly time travel to perhaps simpler times, much appreciated!


All the best to the Saturday Buddy group with both Isaias and the pandemic.
Be well and stay safe,
--Paul
Modeling the Atlantic & White Mtn Railway

ReadingBob

Great story Bill.  That does sound like something a self professed 'efficiency' expert would come up with.  Truly a Dilbert moment.   ;D
Bob Butts
robertbutts1@att.net

There's a fine line between Hobby and Mental Illness.

Judge

Greg, Paul, Bob, Karl, and Curt -  Thanks for the kind comments.  The many victims of the evil geniuses in Human Resources will identify with this week's story. 

We are hunkered down for the virus and this small hurricane that is on its way up the East Coast of Florida.  I can't pronounce the name of this particular storm, but, like all the others, it too will pass. If the storm knocks out our power for any lengthy period of time, we plan on checking into one of the area hotels and eating through room service until power is restored.  Social distancing, you know. 

We have a good time making videos.  Our video cameras are just little Sonys and that limits our ability to get creative.  We plan on upgrading our video production capabilities when we get around to it.  We could start with a mini-cam that we can mount on a flatcar for track level viewing, along with a program we can use for editing.  Sometimes we have to reshoot a scene several times because a whistle didn't blow on time, an engine derailed, a train went into the wrong siding, or an engine stalled on a turnout.  This causes laughter and an occasional cuss word.  Fortunately, the expense of videoing is minimal due to digital technology eliminating the cost of film and development. 

I am searching the April, 1938 Railroad Magazine for ideas for next week's story.  Signing off for now.

deemery

Here's a nicely done layout "ride along" video, and some notes on how he did it in the associated blog posts:  http://sandcrr.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-moving-picture-made-on-s.html


dave
Modeling the Northeast in the 1890s - because the little voices told me to

Judge

#725
Dave - Thanks for the video.  It is much better than most.  I have seen dozens of these videos and most of them are terrible.  I have come up with a few suggestions (Rules?) that will make model RR videos more fun to watch. (Lawyers always like Rules.)

1.  Plan ahead.  Make sure the scene (as seen through the camera) shows railroad and not layout clutter, children's toys, and exposed ceilings.
2.  No full-size people or their voices or noises are allowed in the video.
3.  Add variety.  Include shots other than shots taken from the cowcatcher.  Run-byes, switching, helper service, station stops and the like add interest to what otherwise looks like a home movie.
4.  Use short sentences and phrases to explain what is being viewed - "Big River Crossing," and "the Pacific begins the grade" are examples.
5. Spend the money and get a decent camera.  Download a user-friendly program to edit the video.

Attached is an example of a video taken on the A&S several years ago that should rate no more than a "D."  Admittedly, the video photographer had no chance to edit the video, but there wasn't more than a minute or two worth salvaging.  The trip through the staging area (the Bottoms) was unnecessary and way too much time was taken on the Ovalix.  Additionally, the engineer failed to advance the throttle a notch or two at appropriate times and the whole trip was in notch 1. (I think I was the engineer.) I could go on and on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jdPxNygosE&t=79s

On the other hand, I saw an excellent video yesterday.  It is attached also. It could be improved if the narrator had more of a Southern accent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwx-b-czSSo



ACL1504

NOTE:  This was a video shot by a third party and not by the Atlantic and Southern Video Staff. Just making that clear.

Tom ;D
"If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
Thomas Jefferson

Tom Langford
telsr1@aol.com

tct855

Nice video regardless who filmed it.  Great scenery is great scenery.  Very cool!  Thanx Thom...

Judge

Saturday Report - August 7, 2020  (Meeting held a day early due to schedule conflict)

The Board of Directors met promptly at 0830 hours and engaged in major discussions.  We discovered the A&S has an undec A-B set of Walthers E7s.  These have been in a stack under the layout for who knows how long.   Such a discovery must be put to good use.  While the A&S has a number of locomotives lettered for the road, it has no diesels.  Since those pesky things appear to be here to stay, the A&S has decided to acquire the aforesaid E7's and paint them for the A&S.  Naturally, the question arose as to just what color(s) should be selected for the diesels.  The tentative agreement reached isfor the A&S management to forecast the future and apply a scheme that will resemble the black and yellow scheme applied to ACL diesels after the road phased out the purple and silver around 1957.  The management thought a silver body with a purple stripe about 30" wide on the lower part would remind all fans of the ACL but would foretell the future of the road.  This project is on hold for further study.

The A&S recently acquired a device called an Accutrack II Speedometer.  This device is powered by two Tripple A batteries and looks like a short tunnel.  As a locomotive passes through it, the device measures the speed and publishes the result on an led display.  This handy gadget is most useful in speed matching locomotives for a consist.  Speed matching has become of great interest to your reporter lately and it is amazing how many videos on the subject can be found on Utube.  The videos by the DCC Guy are the easiest to follow. He uses the Accutrack II to demonstrate.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nVycLtC-pM

The meeting  next week will also be a day early due to the Babe's monthly hair appointment.

There is Covid -19 all around us here in Central Florida, but none of us are infected - at least not yet.  Your reporter and his spouse are basically hunkered down except tor occasional forays out to the grocery store and your reporter's trip to the A&S property.  "If you don't like a mask, you really won't like a ventilator!"

This week's story comes from the same addition of Railroad Magazine as last week's story - April, 1938.  The caboose is possibly the most interesting of all rolling stock.  It was required on the end of freight trians for over 100 years and the definition of a train included an end car with "markers."  The number of stories about these rolling bunk houses abound and here are two of them - One from the NC&StL and the other from the Pennsy.

                                                                                                             Life in The Caboose

    Down on the NC&StL, sometime before the depression, the crews used to have an unpaid member called a "caboose helper."  He was an ambitious colored boy who attached himself to the crew.  He cleaned lamps, cleaned windows, polished the markers, and generally kept the crummy spotless.  He became a first class cook who could make a meal as good as in any restaurant in Chattanooga on top of a pot-bellied stove.  He washed dishes after each meal and polished the conductor's shoes before a drag pulled into a terminal.  Then he departed until the next morning's run.  For all of this he got his meals free when on the road and usually picked up a dollar or two from the rest of the crew for his efforts.
    Signing on as a "caboose helper" may seem like a menial job, but in those days railroads paid better wages than laborers received.  Lots of railroads in the South hired Negro brakemen, but they had to learn the job while they worked it.  Competition for brakeman's jobs was fierce and, since the "caboose helpers" were a known quantity who had experience working with the train crews, they had an advantage.  After a "caboose helper" had been on the job for five or six months, his conductor woudl give him a letter "to whom it may concern" stating the bearer was a "qualified brakeman," and you could bet all the cotton in Jaw-ja he was.  Some of these men made the railroad a career and a few were promoted to firemen. 
    On the Pennsy, there was a crew of boomers who decided to stick around long enough to get a stake before moving on.  Most of the cabooses on the Pennsy had their interiors painted a sickly cream color.  This particular crew decided to make their crummy home and mooched paint from the shop foreman.  They painted the ceiling a dark green.  Then thry sanded down the walls and applied a coat of varnish to them.  They somehow found comfortable mattress cushions for the bunks in the cabin and took up residence there to avoid paying boarding house prices for a place to stay.  Their crummy was the envy of the division.  They even got the RIP track crew to jack her up and grease the springs until the crummy rode like a Pullman.  The trainmaster heard about the accomodations and regularly rode with the crew  when his schedule required his movement along the division. 
    But it wasn't to last.  One of the boomers did a job of short flagging and an extra piled into the caboose, which went up in smoke from the fire in the stove.  The flagman was fired and his partner quit.  They ended up in North Carolina working a shay on a logging pike. 
    The caboose is gone from the rails nowadays, but old-timers remember the red car at the end of the train fondly.   

PRR Modeler

Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

GPdemayo

Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

ReadingBob

Good one Bill.  I sure miss seeing a caboose at the end of a train.  A flashing rear end device doesn't hold any appeal at all.    :'(
Bob Butts
robertbutts1@att.net

There's a fine line between Hobby and Mental Illness.

Jim Donovan

Loved the story, like going back in time.

Jim D
Holland & Odessa Railroad

Judge

Saturday Report - August 15, 2020 - Temperature 98 degrees and rain expected in the late afternoon.

The weekly meeting of the Board of Directors started on time at 0830 hours.  Topics of discussion included speed matching and consisting.  Your reporter has been watching videos produced by the DCC Guy and has become fascinated with these topics. 

We applied the DCC Guy's method of speed matching to a couple of SAL GP7's and were very pleased with the results.  Both engines were Proto 2000's and decoders were TCS Wow Sound, so that made it much easier.  Our attempt at Universal Consisting did not work out as well.  We need to go back and watch the video again.  Making addresses identical solves most of the consist problems and results in a "Basic Consist."  The main disadvantage to basic consisting is being unable to break up the consist easily and having to mute the horn and bell by following the directions of the bi#ch in the boiler. (She comes gratis with all Wow Sound decoders.)

The URLs for the DCC Guy videos are provided without charge for anyone who is interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=WuWAtJ91Nxw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcTl9CD1TsM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nVycLtC-pM

BTW. we bought one of the speedometers the DCC Guy uses for speed matching and it works great and is a lot of fun.

This week's story is one of safety.  I got the idea for the story in the March, 1938 edition of Railroad magazine.  I've had to cut it short due to my self-imposed limit on word count, but you will get the idea.  My grandfather was a conductor on the ACL from before 1900 until he died in 1936.  He is supposed to have said, "There is no such thing as a minor injury on the railroad."  I guess he got that right.

                                                                                                      SAFETY FIRST ON THE A&S

Back in the early '20s when the A&S was still a local line limited to intrastate travel and not subject to federal regulations, the observance of the standard Rules of the Road were often ignored, including Rule G.

One day a boomer conductor named Pat Tilden found his way to A&S headquarters after having spent a couple of months on the Live Oak Perry & Gulf narrow gage up in north Florida.  He wandered over to the yard office in search of the Superintendent to ask him for a job.  The Super, a tall, slender man in his 60s, shook Pat's hand and, being in need of a freight conductor, hired Pat on the spot.  That seemed a little odd to Pat since he had not taken an examination or received a physical by the company doctor, Dr. I. B. Staysic.  The Super said, "Pat, can you take out a train tonight? We've got watermelons that need to go to Jacksonville."  Pat replied, "I guess you folks do things kind of informal here.  I haven't even gotten familiar with the road."  To that the Super replied, " Don't worry none, Pat, you've got an experienced crew who have been with the A&S a long time and they know the way.  The train leaves in thirty minutes and it is going to be powered by Number 835, one of our new Mikes." 

Pat grabbed his gear and headed to the yard to hitch a ride on 835 to Sanlando Yard where the watermelon train was waiting.  As he approached the engine, the hogger gave two shorts and as Pat climbed into the cab, the engine started to move.  Pat introduced himself to the engineer, whose name was Buck Maben, and said to the head shack, "Don't y'all wait for a feller to climb aboard before pulling out?"  The shack replied, "When Buck whistles off, you better be in the cab." 

As Number 835 backed into her train at Sanlando yard, the hind shack, Willie Williams, climbed over the coal pile and lowered himself onto the tank's coupler.  As the engine backed into the lead watermelon car, he jumped to the ground and positioned himself between the the engine and the lead car.  He adjusted the knuckle on the tank and jumped out of the way just as the the engine slammed into the lead car.

Once the engine pumped up the air, Buck cracked the throttle and eased down the ready track headed towards the main.  Willie lowered himself to the ground while the engine was making about 5 mph and threw the king switch to the main.  Then he grabbed the ladder on the back of the tank as it passed and climbed back to the top of the coal pile. 

"Hey, Buck," said Pat, " that was a dangerous chance Willie took to throw that switch."  "Not to worry," said Buck, "we follow our own rules on the A&S."  "Well, what happened to the conductor I replaced?"  "Oh, he grabbed for the caboose when we pulled out of Jacksonville and missed.  He fell and broke his shoulder.  Should be out for several weeks." 

By this time the melon train was making time on the mainline.  A meet with the Florida Special was scheduled at the Piney Woods station and Buck's train was supposed to go into the hole there and wait until it passed.  The rule says ther must be at least fivce minutes vetween trains, but Buck announced he would pass Piney  Woods and meet the Special at Bedford Forest.  "Bad idea," said Pat, "there ain't time to make it."  "Don't worry," said Willie, " we do this all the time." 

It was a good thing Numer 835 was new because the fireman shoveled more than a ton of coal into the firebox before the train approached the siding that would detour the train around the Ovalix and miss the Special.  It was a wonder that the caboose cleared the switch, but the Special missed it by mere feet. 

As Number 835 headed into the yard at Summit, Buck slowed her down to about 5 mph and Willie hit the cinders and ran ahead of the train to throw the switch at the yard throat.  He bent the iron and ran back between the rails towards the engine.  He attempted to mount the pilot on the moving train and slipped.  The pilot caught him on the chin as he fell and the engine ran over him. 

Buck, seeing the mishap, hit the brakes and brought the engine to a stop.  " I shore hope the boy isn't hurt," said Buck, "he's done that trick hundreds of times." 

Unfortunately, Wille became a fatality.

With that, Pat went back to the yard office and told the Super he was quitting.  "What's the matter," said the Super?  "I've been on many a railroad, but this is the ost unsafe place to work I've ever seen." 

Pat drew his time and walked to the main office, where he reported the situation to the President of the railroad.  The President immediately rehired Pat and put him in charge as the safety engineer for the road.  Soon, the rules were followed more closely and the number of accidents were significantly reduced.  And Pat put signs on the crummies and other places on railroad property  that said things like, "Hold tight until the footing's right," Watch for slack and save a smack," and Take a tip and have a safe trip."  The SAL took up the idea and made the slogans famous.  Pat, not to be outdone, resigned from railroading and went to work for Burma Shave.




deemery

Modeling the Northeast in the 1890s - because the little voices told me to

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