War stories - Episode 8: "White hot trouble?"

Having survived our trainee rotation to Hollidaysburg Car Shop in the summer of 1978, we moved on to the Juniata Locomotive Shop in August.  Part of our rotation to there was spending a few days in the Altoona Car Shop.  Wait. What?  Another car shop?  What was all that time in Hollidaysburg about?

At the very south end of the Juniata shop complex was the Altoona car shop.  They did specialty repairs there.  In fact, Conrail housed the K4s there during it's brief return to excursion service.

cavernous Altoona Car Shop in background

The 1361 in place to be fired up for a weekend excursion

Juniata Shops K4s May 1918

The work they did there was specialty work.  For example, it was where they kept and maintained the ex-PRR monster heavy duty flat car, the "Queen Mary".

A lot of basic car repair is the same everywhere you go.  This was true of Altoona Car Shop.  They did all the basic stuff.  They just didn't have a production line.  The car held a spot in the shop and the work came to the car.

There was one major difference.  While Hollidaysburg had begun using Huck bolts in place of rivets, Altoona still used hot rivets.  I was unfamiliar with hot rivets. We didn't do any hot riveting in our manufacturing methods class in college.  I was particularly unfamiliar with how the Altoona car shop went about doing the riveting. 

The basic science behind hot riveting is simple. A rivet is a chunk of steel with a head on one end and a blank shaft on the other.  You heat the rivet up until it glows red, put it in place, then hammer the blank end down into a head.  You can do this by hand, but usually an air hammer is used to form the new head on the blank end.  Then the rivet cools and shrinks slightly putting the shaft in tension and making a very tight joint.

That's what they did at Altoona.  But, here's the amazing thing.  They had their soaking oven in one spot and then transported the hot rivets to the spot they needed them.  Okay.  That doesn't sound very amazing.

How about this?  They didn't carry them to the spot.  They threw them.  These two guys, who to me seemed about half past retirement age, did the throwing.  One guy would grab the hot rivet out of the oven with some four foot long tongs.  The other guy stood about 60 feet away holding a tin cup.  Literally.  A tin cup - with a handle on it - an ugly version of what you see Civil War reenactors tote around.  The guy with the tongs launched an underhand lob, letting go of the rivet with the tongs at just the right point.  The rivet sailed through the air.  The guy with the tin cup staggered around underneath it like a drunk centerfielder.  And the rivet landed....in the cup!  Sometimes.  Sometimes it would miss and roll around on the floor.  Sometime, it would hit the lip of the cup and bounce God-knows-where.

Now, we were all dressed appropriately.  Long pants, jacket, hard hat, googles, steel toed boots, etc, but the thought of a 1500 degree rivet bouncing off in some direction of it's own choosing was a bit hard to comprehend.  This was just how they did it.  Must have been doing it their whole career.  Must have learned it from carmen from the previous epoch.

I could not think of a more dangerous way to deliver white hot rivets (actually, they were only red hot) unless it involved hungry Bengal tigers.

Amazing.  And I thought I was going to be bored!

War Stories - Episode 7: "Where? Who? Why? What?"

We're taking the low grade route on this story.  Longer, but easier.

Here's a few fun facts:

Railroads were built out in the 19th Century by Civil War vets.
Railroads, like Armies, operate over broad areas where direct, "hands on" supervision is not possible
Railroad culture, up until the last couple decades, was almost entirely "command and control".
Railroads have strong unions.
Railroads, up until the the last several decades, attacked crises by sending people.

How do these facts interact?  Here's an example.  Suppose it's the 1970s and there is a major, mainline derailment in your area.  What do you do?  You round up a bunch of guys, jump on the wreck train, and go to the derailment site where you will camp out until the mainline is open and most of the wreck is picked up.  The clock is ticking for the hourly guys and they get paid handsomely.  For the management guys, its like going on a Boy Scout camping trip - they get to do something different and are away from their parents/boss.  Talk to a retired railroader, particularly a Mechanical guy, about derailments and they'll get this strange wistful look in their eyes.

Snow in Buffalo?  Round up a bunch of guys and send them there to shovel.  Loaded autoracks backed up from NJ to Syracuse?  Send a bunch of guys...

Those days are gone.  There aren't "a bunch of guys" to grab.  Everyone who isn't doing something vital is gone.  A lot of the old "vital" jobs have been automated. The wreck trains are gone.  They were expensive to keep.  What you do is call Hulcher or RJ Corman, who swoop onto the derailment with their trucks loaded with monster caterpillar "sidewinders" and cranes.  They clean it all up cheaper and faster than you ever could.

One more fact.  Railroads were the first to have their labor relations regulated by the government.  Railroads were so important to the economy that any prolonged strike was a disaster.  Consequently, the rules of the game required all the railroads to negotiate a "national" agreement with each of the unions.  If agreements couldn't be reached, then there were all sorts of attempts at arbitration, cooling off and haranguing before there could be a strike.  When there were strikes, they typically lasted only a few days until the government would order everyone back to work and mandate or legislate a deal.

A particular railroad could opt-out of the national deal if they wanted to.  This was rare.  The two best examples that come to mind were when the Florida East Coast was just plain broke and opted out back in 1963, seeking lower labor costs, mostly through reduced train crew size.  The other was the N&W in 1978.  Notable in both cases was that both roads continued to operate during the strike.  This did not sit well with the strikers who tried many tactics to gain some traction.  On the FEC, some of those tactics were highly illegal, like blowing up trains.  On the N&W, it usually involved moving pickets around.

The N&W and Conrail both operated in Buffalo, NY.  From time to time, the N&W strikers would picket Conrail on the grounds that the N&W was somehow using the Conrail facility at Frontier Yard in Buffalo to circumvent their pickets elsewhere.  This was a pretty common "cat and mouse" game played by both sides, depending who was picketing where for what reason.

So, back to Altoona in the summer of 1978.  It's a Friday, mid-afternoon.  We get a called up to the training room in Juniata.  One of the instructors tells us, "Go to Frontier Yard in Buffalo and report for strike duty."  That's pretty much all he knows.  It's what he got fed from higher up on the food-chain. You didn't question stuff like that. You just took orders and obeyed.  Command and control management, remember?   But, being of an engineering bent, we had questions.  "Where?"  "Frontier Yard in Buffalo" "Do you have directions there?"  Getting irritated,  "No."  Remember, this was a PRR lifer who didn't really know much about the railroad east of Tyrone and west of Cresson - and that was pushing it.  "Who do we report to?"  "Oh, I have that.  They said 'Mr. Hamberlang'."  "Can you spell that?"  Somewhat more irritated, "No.  Hamberlang, or something like that. You figure it out."  "When do they expect us there?"  More irritated, "I don't know.  As soon as possible." "How should we travel?  Should we fly up or drive?"  Really irritated now, "Just leave now!"

Well, there goes the weekend!  Some guys flew up to Buffalo, which wasn't easy.  You had to take one of several puddle-jumpers a day from Altoona to Pittsburgh, then get a flight to Buffalo.  I hated puddle-jumpers and it was only about a six hour drive to Buffalo, so I decided to drive!  I went back to my apartment in Duncansville, packed up, plotted my route on a map and headed for Buffalo about 5 PM.

Headed west on US 22 to I-79 North to I-90 east to Buffalo arriving about 11:00 PM.  Wandered around until I found the locomotive shop at Frontier.  No pickets.  Not much going on anywhere.  Park.  Wander into the shop.  Find the assistant general foreman.  "Hi, I'm supposed to report to Mr. Hamberlang."  "Who?"  "I'm a management trainee up from Altoona for strike duty.  I'm supposed to report to Mr. Hamberlang."  "Oh.  The strike's over.  Did you mean Mr. Hammerline?  He's at home now.  Lets's see if you we can get you a room for the night."

He called the local Holiday Inn in Depew they used for away-from-home train crews, but they were full.  So, they said I should use a hotel in downtown Buffalo.  They occasionally used it when the place in Depew was full. Then, he gives me the phone number for the shop for me to call in the morning and sends me on my way.  It's midnight now as I drive west to downtown Buffalo.

Remember, this was the 1970s.  Urban decay was the norm and Buffalo was about a decayed urban center as you could get.  All I could picture was some ancient, worn out, flea bag that had had it's heyday in the roaring twenties and had been fading ever since.  Oh, boy.

I arrive.  Yup.  Old brick building in decayed downtown Buffalo.  Park the car in a dingy parking garage nearby.  Walk into the lobby.  It's nice!  Hmmm.  Well, maybe they keep the lobby up, but have let all the rooms go to pot.  I check in.  Room rate is $9.  That's right.  $9!  What kind of room can you get for $9?  A cheap chain hotel is $20-30.  $9 is not much.  They won't even "leave the light on for ya" for $9.  Oh, well.  I'm tired and I'm here.  I can survive for a night.

I go up to the room.  The elevator seems in good condition.  The corridor seems in good condition.  The room is....very nice!  Neat, clean, moderized bathroom, nicely decorated!  $9?  How can this be?

As it turns out, the New York Central Railroad had negotiated the $9 rate decades ago when they regularly used the place and sent a lot of business that way.  I don't know if they used it for crew lodging ever, but the rate stood even as the NYC turned to PC and then to Conrail.  It stood even after the hotel was modernized a few years prior.  It stood even after Conrail had almost no business travel in downtown Buffalo.  It stood even as inflation eroded the value of $9 down to the price of a couple record albums or a few rolls of slide film.

The next morning, I called the shop and talked to Mr. Hammerline.  He told me there was no reason to hang around Buffalo.  The picketers weren't coming back anytime soon, so I headed for home.  It was a really nice day, so I did a little railfanning along the way.  Even caught one of those N&W strike trains that had stirred up the trouble in the first place.

N&W strike train run by management personnel east bound from Cleveland to Buffalo.

The low grade line.  Hope you enjoyed the scenery as we snaked along the curves and followed the babbling brook on the way to our destination.  There'd be other strikes, other "send a bunch of guys" duty, other interesting places to stay, but those are stories for later!

Get Smart

Control or Kaos?

Remember "Get Smart"?  The old show with Don Adams as Maxwell Smart where the enemy was "Kaos".  Well, this isn't that.  It's just me trying to figure out how to control trains on my model railroad.

Control:

Here's the background.  Most everyone knows that train sets come with a "power pack". Hook it up to the tracks.  Turn the knob.  The train goes.  Simple.

What happens if you want to run two trains at once?  On the same track?  We'll, you could separate the track into sections and run each section with a separate power pack.  Each person runs a train through their section of track.  For a big train layout with lots of trains, this gets complicated, quick, but it is doable.  And, you need a person for each section of track.

The "holy grail" was to have each person run one train - just like a real train engineer runs a real train.  A bunch of clever people developed a number of ways of doing this over the years.  The first used relay logic that would connect your "power pack" to the section of track with your train on it, so you could follow your train around the layout.

Then came some really clever analog transmitter/receiver systems.  Power was always on the track, but each locomotive only "listened" to it if it received a signal from the "power pack" (now referred to as a "cab" - as in the controlling compartment of a locomotive).  So, the cab had a transmitter that send an analog signal in the rails to the locomotive that had a receiver tuned to listen to it.

There were various versions of this that had varying degrees of commercial success in the middle 70s and early 80s.  They were pricey, but quickly gained popularity among folks who were interested in trying to run their model train layouts like they were real railroads.

I was - or at least I was planning to - so I bit on one of the more popular systems called "Dynatrol".  You could run up to 16 individual locomotives with it.  The "cabs" cost about $100.  The locomotive receivers cost about $40 - in 1985 dollars.  I had a few cabs and a about 10 locomotives equipped.

Kids arrived.  Focus shifted.

Now, it's 30 years since I started with Dynatrol.  The world of model railroad train control has moved.  A lot.  Now, all the equipment is digital.   It is cheaper (in constant dollars).  It does more things.  Model trains can have realistic sound, for example.  But, it isn't free.  And, I have all this Dynatrol stuff.  I even bought more over the years - from ebay - for a song.  It all works. Sort of.  One by one, the locomotive receivers have failed.  There is a guy who operates out of his basement, who will fix these things - maybe.  But, his price is twice what an new digital receiver costs.

So, I'm afraid the handwriting is on the wall.  It's time to ditch the old Dynatrol and buy some digital stuff.

Which brings Kaos.

There are at least a half dozen manufacturers of digital equipment out there.  The good news is that the basic locomotive receivers are compatible between the manufacturers.  The bad news is that nearly all the other stuff you need is not.  And, there are levels of systems, and methods for expansion.

Digitrax
Lenz
NCE
Bachmann
CVP Easy DCC
MRC
et.al.

None of this is clear to me.  I've been all over the internet trying to figure out what I'll need and how much stuff to start out with.

So far, it's just been all Kaos.   I need Control.  Will I figure it out?  Maybe.

Anyone need some old Dynatrol?