I entered Santa Fe Engine Service as a Fireman at San Bernardino, on June 11, 1970, was promoted to Engineer on the old system (full written examinations on operating rules, air brake rules, and mechanical rules, followed by oral examinations, with no simulator) in 1973, and was promoted to Road Foreman of Engines on June 1, 1984. I could not have hired out at a better time. All but about 10 of the Engineers senior to me were steam men, most of whom gladly shared their tricks of the trade. These days, an Engineer has to do everything by the book, following a process. Event recorders monitor almost everything, and upload it to a data base constantly, by radio. When I was an Engineer, we had a mechanical speed recorder on the engine, with a stylus and a paper tape -- not much on-board surveillance.
Leaving a terminal, there was a round sign bearing the word "ZERO" (the zero board), followed by similar signs at intervals, identifying the distance every 100 feet from the zero board. When the waycar passed the zero board, the Conductor would callout "Zero board" on the radio and the Engineer would give him a train length. Then the Conductor called the Telegraph Office and gave the departing "soup ticket": number of loads, number of empties, and train length. The crew and the Dispatcher had to know the length in order to know which sidings the train would fit in.
When I passed the zero board on the engine, I started counting communication poles, and mentally noted the number to the place where the Conductor called out the zero board. That way, I would know where the rear of the train was, when coming out of a curve or other slow order, and could already have the engines working hard when the Conductor called out "green board" (at the end of a permanent or temporary speed restriction) or "round the curve" leaving a restricted curve. This was also useful if leaving a siding or taking a crossover between Main Tracks.
On an ascending mountain grade where the train would be making about 15 MPH with the throttle in Run-8, there were places where wheel slippage could occur, particularly on curves or passing over flange oilers. The draft force on the couplers had to be kept constant, as fluctuating force could cause a knuckle or drawbar with stress cracks to fail. Then you would be on a steep grade, with your train in two parts, having to delicately couple it back together, stretch it, pump up the air, and begin moving under really bad conditions where more wheel slippage could easily occur. When entering a location where wheel slippage was likely, I applied sand and 2-3 psi of engine brakes with the throttle still wide open. Having the brake shoes just barely against the wheels would wipe the tread clean with every revolution, and slightly warm the wheel. Clean wheels hold the rail better than dirty ones and I'm not a physicist, but that slight difference in wheel temperature seemed to be helpful, especially in cold or wet conditions.
With a troublesome locomotive consist on a heavy grade, even more had to be done. When one of the engines was slipping on straight track, I would go back and use the traction motor cutout out switch on that unit to cut out one motor (on engines with 4-wheel trucks) or a pair of motors (on an engine with 6-wheel trucks). This would reduce the horsepower of that unit and usually stopped the slipping. I would rather let the speed drop 1 or 2 MPH, instead of fighting that bear all the way to Summit and risking a broken knuckle.
Sullivan's Curve, a famous photo location in Cajon Pass, was one of the places where fighting wheel slippage was critical, as was the last curve coming into Summit on the old alignment. They were 10-degree curves on 2.2% ascending grades, and each had a flange oiler. If some wheel slip occurred even with a little engine brake applied, then reducing to Run-7 would usually do the trick, but the train would lose about 2 MPH. Then it could be tricky when deciding to advance the throttle to Run-8 again. You had to watch the speedometer for micro-increases in speed, on order to decide that enough of the train was coming off of the curve to enable safely increasing the draft force by going to Run-8. And, if there was not 2-3 PSI of engine brake in use, I would apply it and keep it in effect until I had gained at least 1 MPH, at which time it could be released. I would rather go all the way to the summit with the train in one piece with a couple of speed reductions to 13 MPH if that was necessary. Sometimes a locomotive would have a speed recorder cable that needed more lubrication, in which case, the speed indicator needle would bounce at speeds of 15 MPH or below, in which case, you just had to pay very close attention to the performance of the engine consist and feel your way through critical locations.
Another way to avoid breaking in two, was to keep the speed constant after the engine began to crest a heavy grade, by reducing throttle, unltil half the length of the train had reached the crest (by counting communication poles). There were a lot of knuckles replaced at the crest of heavy grades.
None of these procedures were in the Air Brake and Train Handling rules, which were written by the Mechanical Department and that department was only interested in its budget for equipment maintenance. Many of their train handling rules were completely impractical in real use, and, if applied, would have made for slow trips across the railroad with more in-train slack. I will forever be grateful to those steam men for showing me these, and many other, unauthorized methods of getting a train over the road. They were real Engineers who ran steam engines with varying conditions, completely manually operated, and with no speed indicators, and they really did know things.
