Are you a switchman? (3)

Thanx for your post. It is very interesting to a non-railroader.

Rob,

Wow. Thanks for taking the time to answer the general question and then create a "simplified" scenario for us.  I haven't done a good job of keeping up with my Real Trains digest reading lately, but luckily your post just popped up.  I will try and wrap my head around the puzzle later this week with pencil and paper in hand.

Tomlinson Run Railroad

I understood your explanation perfectly, Rob. With a long tail track on the Belt at the west end, that would sure make things easy! Nice work.

I have often said that switching cars is like playing Chess with 200 ton pieces.

OGR Webmaster posted:

I have often said that switching cars is like playing Chess with 200 ton pieces.

I like that line.

Thank you Mr. Melvin.

Hey Rob... Can you leave empties on tracks 1 or  2?   I think my first move would be to  couple on to warehouse track #1 with the engine and set the loads out to track 3... Then same thing with warehouse track #2 set loads  to track 3. All the loads out are now in track 3   ( 8 cars right? )

I'm not going any further until I find out if I'm getting way-freight or Road switcher rates.

For Gregg,

We would come out with everything including our HOLD cars. In our scenario there are hold cars that could be left inside, but we would bring them out to catch our kick cars.  The real Lawton warehouse was just under 1000' feet long and each track inside held 16 fifty-footers. And we didn't want to make noisy joints inside the warehouse or have cars drifting where we could not see.

There are many questions left unanswered when I post these things. In the previous puzzle Big Jim alluded to the allowance of continuous shoving on a track to make multiple joints and call it 1 move (that is what we would have done as long as it was safe).

If anyone has an old switch list, please do us a service and scan it in.

Rob Leese posted:

For Gregg,

We would come out with everything including our HOLD cars. In our scenario there are hold cars that could be left inside, but we would bring them out to catch our kick cars.  The real Lawton warehouse was just under 1000' feet long and each track inside held 16 fifty-footers. And we didn't want to make noisy joints inside the warehouse or have cars drifting where we could not see.

There are many questions left unanswered when I post these things. In the previous puzzle Big Jim alluded to the allowance of continuous shoving on a track to make multiple joints and call it 1 move (that is what we would have done as long as it was safe).

If anyone has an old switch list, please do us a service and scan it in.

 

Rob,
Take your pick: Switch Lists

The link in Big Jim's reply brings up another aspect that hasn't yet been mentioned; hand written switch lists made by station agents who didn't care to type versus typed or machine printed lists.  Our OKC yard switch lists were generated from stacks of IBM punch cards sending the data to a dot matrix printer that sounded like a giant mosquito.  Those lists were easy to read.  Down the line either direction it was a tossup if you got a typed list or a hand written list.  Good old George, whose photo is in the Hofsommer book The Quanah Route was a great character, but whose handwriting resembled ancient runes.

Big Jim's link sure shows some major diversity.  Some list formats seem easier to read than others.  Rob, I'm particularly intrigued by your mention of IBM punch cards (been there, done that).  Who would typically be the one to generate those?  The station agent?  The end result, as you say, must have been nice but the effort to get there may have been an entirely different story.  One wrong punch and it's start all over.   Of course, a good conductor would have lots of experience punching holes in paper .

Interesting additions to the initial puzzle.

Tomlinson Run Railroad

TomlinsonRunRR posted:

Big Jim's link sure shows some major diversity.  Some list formats seem easier to read than others.  Rob, I'm particularly intrigued by your mention of IBM punch cards (been there, done that).  Who would typically be the one to generate those?  The station agent?  The end result, as you say, must have been nice but the effort to get there may have been an entirely different story.  One wrong punch and it's start all over.   Of course, a good conductor would have lots of experience punching holes in paper .

Interesting additions to the initial puzzle.

Tomlinson Run Railroad

In my experience, punch card lists/consists, et. al., only happened at major terminals. Clerks might make a list tracks if the on line yard was big enough to have a clerk. Otherwise, the agent did that if on duty and if not, the conductor made his list of tracks. Agents wrote out instructions as to what work needed to be done. Some were better at it than others. 

Switch lists like many of those shown in the link were written by the conductor and turned in to the yardmaster with the other paperwork and should have contained the proper order of the cars in the train as they were brought into the terminal and marked if they were loaded (unmarked if they were mty).

CR10 reports did not need to have cars listed in proper order (although most conductors did), but, needed to show where the cars were picked up, their content and approx. tonnage.

Rob Leese posted:

For Gregg,

We would come out with everything including our HOLD cars. In our scenario there are hold cars that could be left inside, but we would bring them out to catch our kick cars.  The real Lawton warehouse was just under 1000' feet long and each track inside held 16 fifty-footers. And we didn't want to make noisy joints inside the warehouse or have cars drifting where we could not see.

There are many questions left unanswered when I post these things. In the previous puzzle Big Jim alluded to the allowance of continuous shoving on a track to make multiple joints and call it 1 move (that is what we would have done as long as it was safe).

If anyone has an old switch list, please do us a service and scan it in.

 

Hey Rob thanks for the update.... I was never a believer in moving  cars  that didn't have to be moved but your explanation covers it.

Talking about switching.... Did you ever work a job that only the conductor would actually see the list... everything was done with hand signal and both brakeman were usually kept in the dark.

On the other hand 2 good brakeman could make a Conductors job the "life of Riley" All he had to do was the paper work  and flag the odd crossing...It's fun thinking about it now.

From Gregg:  " Talking about switching.... Did you ever work a job that only the conductor would actually see the list... everything was done with hand signal and both brakeman were usually kept in the dark. "

When I worked on a local switcher or a yard job, the answer would always be 'yes' to your question.  One of the first things we were was taught was to take and pass signals.  If a person understood what was being signaled and how to carry it out, then he didn't need to know much more in regard to the switch list.        In return, I would ask you if you ever saw a conductor hand lists to his rear brakeman and let him and the pin puller handle the switching while he stayed in the waycar to figure tonnages and sort bills?  Frisco conductors commonly did this when the list wasn't a nightmare.  I can remember Walt Wendell saying to us, "I'll go unlock all the switches and derails while you run to the station to get the list and figure out your game plan."  After that, he went and did paperwork.   Head brakeman on thru freights that only had big S/O's at several stations...in those instances all we needed was a copy of the wheel report to make our set outs.  This was usually an instance where we ran short crew, and the lonely conductor stayed in the caboose.   Then, a local would come behind us and do the work.

Yes, it is fun for me to think about it, too.  That is precisely why I get on this forum and dredge it all up again.

Goolsby, Moulton. and Lacy on local 444 in a Dave Townsend photo.