Prototype Railroading: A Few Random Thoughts

Someone asked me recently how the railroad was going.  I told him it was still going.  Some weeks are just like that.  I would say nothing out of the ordinary has happened lately, but that would not exactly be true.  In fact, it feels more like nothing ordinary has happened at all.  As I mentioned last week, I am back on the Glendive West Pool, which means I basically go Forsyth a lot.  Sometimes I think that would be a better run for someone who lives in Forsyth, because we usually spend more time there than at home.

A couple of weeks ago I got an unusual assignment.  The phone rang early in the morning, as it seems to have a way of doing.  I was called to deadhead to Forsyth.  After I accepted the call, I tried to check who my engineer would be.  It told me that there was no information available for other crew members.  It usually does that when an engineer is called off the extra board, because engineers are called 15 minutes after the conductor.    The computer knows who it is going to call on the extra board, but for some reason it will not say who the engineer is when they are called off the extra board.  Because of that, I did not think too much of the fact that there was no crew information.  A little over an hour later, I got to the depot and started tracking down my paperwork and my van driver.  My paperwork showed I had no engineer either, which was unusual.  I figured a conductor must have gotten sick in Forsyth or had an emergency and had to lay off.  If that was not the case, it looked like it was going to be a long boring day.  Not much happens without an engineer on the crew!  Before I hopped in the van and headed off to Forsyth, I decided I had better call the dispatcher.  That was no help.  When I told him who I was and my assignment, there was a long silence, following which he said, "I had no idea they called you.  I don't have any idea what you are supposed to do."  Thanks dispatcher.  Oh, and thanks for all the consistently awful meets you plan, but that's another story.  The dispatcher had no answers, and the chief dispatcher was not answering the phone, as usual, so I figured I would go to Forsyth.  I figured if they did not actually need me when I got there, they could send me home, and pay me for the round trip.

Two hours later, I arrived at the Forsyth depot.  The ride was at least interesting.  I had quite a character for a driver, and he sure could talk.  I was afraid he'd talk all the oxygen out of the van.  But it was better than a two hour silent ride.  In Forsyth I learned a little more about my assignment.  I found some paperwork that had a train symbol on it.  It was the U-GILNTW5-05P.  That did not tell me much about the train, except that it was some sort of unit train.  Well, a unit train, that is not specifically designated as a coal or grain train, could be just about anything.  I asked the trainmaster if she knew anything about it, and she said it was on six track, and it was a maintenance machine that needed to get to Glendive.  I walked out to six track to investigate.  Sure enough, there was a Loram ditch digger there, with all the lights turned on and the engine running.  I could not see anyone on it, but I finally found something!  I went back inside to call the dispatcher again.  By this time a new dispatcher had come on duty, and he had more information.  The chief still was not answering the phone though.  The dispatcher sent me the necessary paperwork, and then I walked back out to the machine to see if I could find any of the machine operators.  They must have seen me wandering around the machine, because one of them came out of the caboose and asked if I was their conductor.  After some introductions, someone was finally able to explain what was going on!

Looking forward from the cab of the Loram
ditch digger.

I was called without an engineer because locomotives engineers are not qualified to run the ditch digger.  They needed a conductor on board to copy track warrants and act as a pilot, since the operators were not BNSF employees, but actually Loram employees.  They were permanently assigned to that machine, and went wherever it went.  Railroads, like BNSF, rent the machine to clean up messes along the line, and with the machine, they get a three person crew to operate it.  The railroad just has to provide a conductor.  That was my job.  The machine I was on was DC 4, and it consisted of a power unit, which provided horsepower for moving as well as electricity and hydraulic pressure for the entire machine.  Behind the power unit there was a scoop and series of conveyor belts which were controlled from the same cab, on the power unit.  At the end of the conveyor belts was a side dump car, where any dirt would go after being scooped up by the machine.  At the end of the train was a caboose, which served as an office and a tool car.  The entire thing was about 225 feet long, and was capable of about 40 mph.  We would not be digging any ditches.  We were just moving the machine.  They had been working in Wyoming, but the machine was due for an overhaul, so it was travelling on the BNSF to Northtown, MN, where it would go over to the Canadian Pacific to its final destination, just outside of Minneapolis.  Once we had a briefing and we were all on the same page, I talked to the dispatcher and we started heading east.

Looking back from the cab of the Loram
ditch digger, at all the machinery.

The trip was pretty routine, except that I was riding in a ditch digger.  Also other trains found it confusing to meet us.  For some reason, the computer system that the BNSF uses does not allow locomotive identifications to start with the letter "D."  This machine was the DC 4, but since the computer did not take that, it went as a Maintenance of Way machine in the computer system.  So whenever anyone got a warrant which went into effect after we passed a point, it said they were meeting the MW 4.  We had more than one crew call us on the radio and ask if we were the MW 4, even though the machine said DC 4.  Other than a bit of confusion caused by the identification, it was a normal, slow day.  There was actually a lot of maintenance out, replacing the plastic pads under the rail, on concrete ties, and since they had most of the railroad tied up with that project, we did not make it to Glendive.  We tied the machine down at Tusler, only 53 miles from Forsyth, and called it a day.  It took us 12 hours to get that far.  I went home, and the machine crew went to a hotel in nearby Miles City.  The finally made it to Glendive the next day.

Lately there has been a lot of maintenance going on, which I find surprising, because it is November, and soon to be December.  Typically that is not an ideal time to be doing any track work in Montana!  It has been surprisingly warm, which is nice, but I just find it odd that the railroad decided to replace about 30,000 feet of rail only a few weeks ago.  Normally there would be several inches of snow on the ground by then!  They have also been replacing pads on concrete ties.  It sounds like a simple enough project, but it is actually pretty labor intensive.  Concrete ties are used in most of the curves on the Forsyth subdivision, because they are extremely durable and last a long time.  As the train moves across the rails, they shift, just slightly.  The most noticeable shift is downward, but there are also longitudinal forces on the rail.  As the rail shifts along the concrete ties, it would slowly grind down the concrete.  To prevent this, there is a plastic pad placed on every tie, under the rails.  It is only about an eighth of an inch thick, but it protects the ties, and it is significantly cheaper to replace the pads rather than the ties.  Replacing the pads, while easier than replacing the ties, is still a pretty involved process.  The metal clips that hold the rail down have to be removed, and then the rail must lifted up while someone swaps out the pads.  The rail is then set back in place and the clips are replaced.  This has to be done about every 18 inches, in some places for several miles.  While I have never personally been involved in such a project, I would imagine it is a very tedious process, and I know it is time consuming because I had to wait for them!

The rest of the time out here has been pretty normal.  Well, as normal as the railroad ever gets.  The last few trips have been in the dark.  Night runs always have a way of feeling about three times as long as they actually are.  Of course it does not help much when the dispatcher gets caught up in his solitaire game and forgets about you.  Yes, he actually plays solitaire on the job.  Other dispatchers have verified this.