UtahRails.net Blog

A recent note from John Gezelius on Trainorders.com about UP’s U50s reminded me of a couple memories I thought I’d share…

I started at Union Pacific in October 1969 as an apprentice in the Salt Lake shops. My first shift was from midnight to 8am. One of the jobs I helped on that first night was to change the air reservoirs on a U50. They were mounted under the walkways, and because the U50 was so tall (walkways were eight feet above ground level), we had to have the unit pulled right next to the shop door so that we could use forklift to remove the reservoirs. It took us all night to do the four reservoirs (three along the fireman side and one at the rear on the engineer side) because of the height above the ground, and having to use a forklift and step ladders. The U50s were in service from 1963 to 1977.

After I became a journeyman, a U50C came into Salt Lake with one of its two very large radiator fans inoperable. The fan bearing had seized and since the fan was so large, it kept spinning and self-destructed, taking out the fiberglass ducting that surrounded the fan. The flying pieces of fan also dinged the bottom of the radiator sections pretty bad. There was also lots of damage to the equipment blower and air compressor that were mounted adjacent to the fan gear box, all within the radiator intake compartment. The unit was in the shops for well over a month while the replacement parts were purchased, delivered and installed. My job was to install the fiberglass duct ring, which was over six feet in diameter. It was not designed to be put in after the locomotive was assembled and definitely not from the top through the radiator grille opening, so we cut the ring in half and drilled some additional mounting holes to ensure a solid mount. Removing the beat-up duct and installing the new duct took two shifts. The U50Cs were in service from 1969 to 1978.

In the General Code for Operating Practice for railroad saftety, Rule 6.5 states: ”When cars or engines are shoved and conditions require, a crew member must take an easily seen position on the leading car or engine, or be ahead of the movement, to provide protection.”

My own oops came back in 1979 when I was protecting a shove of ore cars on Kennecott’s Utah Copper Division. I was second man on the midnight shift on the Magna Yard Turn, with one of the old Nevada Alcos as power. One of our regular jobs was to switch the Magna car shop to swap the bad orders for the repaired cars, about 10-15 cars every night. I was protecting the far end of 12 cars when at the last moment I noticed from my perch up on the car that a switch was against us. Oops. I was out of sight from the hogger and did not have the radio (only one per crew, and the foreman had it). The standard “big hole it” signal was to take off our hard hat and wave it above the top of the car. We were in a bit of a hurry and two cars got through the switch before we stopped. One was on the ground and the second was half-off and half-on. We were all greenhorns except for the hogger, Holly Nielsen. He was an old Bingham & Garfield guy from the late 1940s who liked graveyard shift. We were standing around scratching our heads at 2:30 am, when Holly walks up and simply says to back up and hope for the best. It worked and no one found out. The switch was sprung, and we had to use a six-foot pipe to pry the lever out of the switch stand, and to bend the lever back to where it belonged.

And then there was the other time I was on the far end of the Fogarty (Magna) dumper, uncoupling cars after they shoved through, two at a time. We had to make sure the knuckle was open on the cars as they rolled away. It was production work, dumping cars as fast as possible. An accident waiting to happen. One night I was busy setting and releasing hand brakes on the cars as they were pushed through the dumper and rolled away, and did not notice that the cars on the dumper had rolled out about two feet. The guy at the other end gave the dump operator a green light and up the cars went. The end hanging out made a big crashing sound as it hit the dumper frame, shaking the whole building. It wasn’t the first time, nor I’m sure the last time. But it was my job to catch it and I missed it. I learned some new words that night from my foreman, the dump foreman, and the mill foreman. The whole Magna mill was down for four hours because they could not dump while they fixed the damage. All because of Don. Much to my surprise I wasn’t fired on the spot, but I had a long talk with Bruce Morrison, the boss of Ore Haulage the next morning. He had hired me, and was willing to overlook the on-the-job hard lessons. When I quit a month later, he actually tried to talk me out of it, saying I was a natural railroader, and not at all like the yucks they were getting off the street.

Kennecott was not an ICC or OSHA railroad. It was a mining railroad and under MSHA rules, which were a lot less safety oriented than ICC/FRA/AAR. Loose grab irons, in-op coupler pins and handbrakes, leaking air brakes. The list goes on. After almost ten years on Union Pacific, I couldn’t take the lack of safety and brutal hours which were 8-on and 8-off. It was very good pay, but at what cost. I quit after just three months.