Dear Cy; As always, I enjoy the "Crossroads"; although I've missed it these past few months.
I was saddened and shocked by your article about crew fatigue, which seems only to have gotten worse since I was there. Here's a story for you that dates back to around the Spring of 1984, when I was trainmaster in the Missouri Pacific's Dallas Terminal.
We had had a run of bad luck with the Southern Pacific at Miller Yard, which seemed like a black hole. On third trick, we'd send a crew with the cars going to the SP. They would return with the SP's interchange to us. Suddenly, it started taking hours to make the round trip.
The delay was at Miller, where our crew would sometimes wait several hours for the SP to line up our cars. At least once that I remember, the crew died right in Miller Yard, and we had to send the first trick gang after the engine and the interchange cut. So, I started riding the SP job to ascertain what was going on at Miller.
One night I was riding the engine back from Miller. Now I don't recall that it had been a particularly long or strenuous shift for either me or the crew, but, after we rumbled over the Trinity River Bridge west of Union Terminal, we all fell asleep -- the entire crew in the lead unit AND me -- the trainmaster.
The dispatcher had us lined into either the Browder siding; there was (may still be) a 10mph restriction through that turnout. Now, back then, the highest speed allowed in the terminal was 20mph, and we were plugging along at all of that when we hit that 10mph switch.
The engine took a VERY emphatic roll to the left, and then straightened up, rolling all of us the same way. As we resumed the "straight up" position, we were all suddenly WIDE AWAKE!
The engineer calmly set the brakse, just as though nothing had happened. None of us said a word, for we all knew that we'd all been asleep, and we all knew that we all knew!
Neither crew nor trainmaster dared say anything to one another for obvious reasons, and, to my knowledge, never a word was spoken about that incident.
But there was one yard crew and one trainmaster who got a "wake-up call" that night - in more ways that one.
Best wishes,
Tom Greco
4-98