Those days were what they were—not the safest days of railroading, that’s for sure—with alcohol abuse while on the property endemic. Once in Chicago, July 4, with the temperature a cool 100 degrees with a Great Plains humidity to match, I was working the conductor’s job on the pullout at the hump at Proviso.
The locomotive engineer was one of the best engineers I ever worked with. When I came into the cab to tell him what tracks we were going to couple in the class yard, he pops open the ice box and offers me a can of Stroh’s beer. I told him—“Bill, you’re the best I’ve ever worked with, but if you are going to drink that, I won’t get on this locomotive, and when I’m in the yard coupling tracks, I’m going to make you take the reverser out before I go between cars.”
He shrugged, opened the can, took a long drink and said, “OK, you’re the boss, I’ll say “ all set” when the reverser is out.” See you at the send of the job.”
Always amazed me, how cavalier people were with their own, and others', safety.
The worst job, meaning the most dangerous job, to work was the “skate” or the “field man” job. Hump yard had 75 classification tracks and there were three “skates” assigned 25 tracks each whose job it was to apply skates to the rail to stop cars from rolling out the other end of the class yard.
The job was so dangerous, you couldn't bid on the job or work it until you had been on the railroad 6 months, and then qualified in a special class. And once you did qualify, you were force assigned to any skate vacancy at the hump until someone with less seniority qualified.
Took them almost a year to call me for the class, but being the diligent, enthusiastic youngblood that I was, when my turn came, I went to the class, qualified, marked up, and was force assigned. For 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, weeks. In the winter. Because everyone below me on the seniority list, "dropped"-- took vacation, marked off sick, bid out to another terminal. So there I was in the dead of winter, Chicago winter, worse than Chicago summer. You had to wear more clothes.
Job was dangerous. Track centers were so close, and there were still high ladders going up to the top of the car to the handbrake, that when the cars rocked on the track, and you were climbing the ladder, you could feel your back rubbing against the boxcars on the adjacent track.
In the winter, snow would pack into the joints between the rails and you could never hear the cars rolling down the clear alley towards you. We called it "whispering death." Oh, silent night, unholy night, how I dread you. And to make it worse, you'd get a cut of gondolas, with crushed auto bodies. The profile of the cars was so low, that it didn't block out the overhead lights in the yard. The interruption of those lights, the blackness was how we judged the proximity of the cars. I hated crushed auto bodies, James Bond movies to the contrary not withstanding.
Of course the skates were old and beat up, so the tips, which were supposed to guide the wheel into the skate were bent up and just as likely as not, the wheel of the car would kick the skate off the track and you had to “catch” the car, on the side the handbrake was on, and tie on the handbrakes. This was in the day when they still had “stem-winders” on flat cars!
Of course, stem-winders were never supposed to be sent down a clear alley, no locomotive was supposed to be allowed into a track until the skate man reported the car secured and he was in the clear, and you were never, ever, ever supposed to “hump behind” the skateman—drop another car down when the skate man was securing a car on a clear alley. Unless, you, the skateman, said "OK to hump," because after all, you were a railroad man, not a girl, right? And you could handle it, couldn't you? You went to class, didn't you? This was a production yard after all, and what did you think you were getting into? Mother may I?
You don't want your shipment-- be it passenger cars, circus cars, newsprint, loose lumber, cement pipes-- humped? Don't send it to a hump yard. You don't want cars dropped behind you. Come on, don't be a "pussy."
They were going to hump, and you're going to watch out for yourself.
OK, I could play it that way, or so I thought, until the general yardmaster let an engine in on a track without my permission to grab a cut of “reefers’ so it could make the morning market at Wood St. (?) in Chicago. I was between the cars when the locomotive coupled on to the moving draft, and started to accelerate east, nearly throwing me under the wheels. Fortunately (for me, my children, and grandchildren) I grabbed on to the grab iron on the ladder and radioed the locomotive to stop.
I jumped off the cars and told the hump general yardmaster I was on my way to the top of the hump to kill him. He locked the door to the yard office, but I kicked it in and was pummeling the crap out of him when the trainmaster, who kind of liked me, arrived, having heard the radio transmission.
He was about 6’8” and 280 pounds, a bear of a man. He picked me up literally by the collar of my jacket, so that my legs were off the ground, and held me there with one arm while telling me to calm down. It was hilarious. I looked like a puppet on a string flailing at the air. I was so pissed and frustrated I was practically crying. He walked me out the (broken) door, told me to go back to work, disqualified the general yardmaster, and worked the job himself until a relief showed up. No more cars dropped behind the skate. No more engines allowed in.
Meantime, I go back to my position which was “South Skate” and the “Middle Skate” comes over to me, smoking a joint, and offers me one, saying, “Man you sounded upset. Take this and calm down.”
I just shook my head. “Easy enough to get killed when you’re straight, much less when you’re stoned.” I said. The middle skate just laughed and said, “I smoke up every night. Makes the time go by.”
Don’t miss that at all. But that trainmaster, I think of him all the time. First person ever to show me what being a supervisor means.
And when I was a trainmaster at a hump yard, never, never, never, ever humped behind a skateman or allowed an engine in. Learning is a painful process, but it doesn't always have to be bloody.