When I Was Workin’ On the Railroad – Part V, The Ride to Clinton

During my time working on the Locomotive Utilization System at the C&NW, the business analyst that we were working with found out that some of us had not had the opportunity to "go out on the road". He arranged for my partner and me to ride on a freight train from Proviso out to Clinton and back. This was a ride in the lead or second locomotive for about 120 miles one way.

We met the train at about 5:30 that morning at the west end of Proviso. The train was just about ready to go when we arrived. My partner, Dean and I were to trade between the lead locomotive and the second locomotive which was facing backwards. If I remember correctly the lead loco was a C&NW SD40-2 and the second one was a Union Pacific SD40-2 with a long "snoot" nose.

The ride out was the most eventful and I remember the most about it. Dean and I traded between the locos while the train was still moving although relatively slowly. We had been notified of a derailment that occurred the day before somewhere along the mainline. At some point we moved as fast as 79 mph (which was 4 over the limit). The derailment had been cleaned up but the site was obvious and we had to go through that stretch fairly slowly.

At one point we had a very interesting experience. We were approaching an intersection with a road at perhaps 50 mph. We were on the left hand track of two tracks. On the right hand track was a stopped freight train facing the same direction as our train. It was stopped for a signal short of the road crossing. Also on that same track was another freight train facing the opposite direction. It was stopped for a signal short of the road crossing on the other side. The two stopped trains were facing each other with the road crossing between them. We were moving along on the empty track. There were crossovers that one of the two stopped trains would use to cross over to the other track after we went by.

The interesting part of this passage was the behavior of the people in a car at the crossing as well as that of the experienced train crew. A man and a woman were in a station wagon and had approached the crossing. The gates were not yet down for our approach. The man driving the car slowed down to observe the two stopped trains to make sure they were not moving. He didn't initially spot us coming. When the gate came down for our approach, it came right down on the hood of the station wagon! The engineer saw this and pulled the horn and then hit the floor of the locomotive. So does the head end brakeman.

I was sitting in the left hand seat at the front of the locomotive (engineer on the right, brakeman behind) and I saw the crew hit the deck but I just sat there and I saw what the people in the car did. The woman in the passenger seat got out of the car and started running down the road away from the tracks. Then the man was able to back the car out of harms way. Then we went by the crossing and that was it. No accident.

The engineer thought I was dumb to not have hit the deck along with him. He said that you never know what part of a car might fly up right into the cab – maybe the hood of the car. I told him that I saw that the car driver was obviously going to get out of the way and therefore did not see the need to do anything.

The other thing that stands out about this trip was just how noisy it was in the cab. I don’t think they are quite as noisy these days but there was quite a racket in this loco. Besides the engine itself, there was the radio, hissing brakes, warning bells, horn, and the loud talking engineer who never stopped talking.

While we were in Clinton, Iowa, we met with some people and for the most part, hung around for a while not doing much. I remember that our host spotted what he thought was a problem with one of the cars on a coal train that was slowly passing by. He thought it was "off center". Freight cars are not attached to their trucks. They just have a pin that sits in a hole in the top of the truck – not unlike model train cars except unlike models, there is no screw attaching the car to the truck. If a car is off center, the pin has come out of its hole but is otherwise still sitting on the truck. The next event would be a derailment. He immediately entered one of the buildings to notify someone and he got the train to stop very quickly. Fortunately, it turned out to be a false alarm.

I don’t recall what was on the train going out to Clinton but I believe we caught one of the Falcons going back. The Falcon trains were the hotshot intermodal trains that the C&NW ran to and from the UP in Nebraska. Its destination was Wood Street in Chicago. This was a fast train as well and it doesn't usually stop at Proviso where our cars were parked. It didn't quite stop for us either but it did slow down to about 10 mph for us to hop off at the nearby Berkeley commuter station stop. It was a short walk through the weeds to get back into Proviso where our cars were parked.

The whole day took about 12 hours.