Eastern Railroad Discussion > Busted!

Back when the Canadian Pacific used to run northbound coal trains on its Sunbury Subdivision the management were reluctant to pay a helper crew to assist trains up the grade at Laflin, PA. The result wasn't always good.
Ed K. OH WELL PRODUCTIONS
cp Laurel Run

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yeah take pix to document the evidence so the crew can take the blame ... then throw the broken knuckle in the 6ft where an unsuspecting cndr will trip over it and possibly break a leg /arm /head ...

nice vid

I remember that day well!  I was running CP557 and got caught up behind this train.  We ended up cutting away from our train and shoving this train to Taylor with our two SOO SD60s.  Soon after this incident, we started cutting the 4th unit off at Buttonwood and use it as a pusher on the rear all the way to Belden Tunnel.  A year or two later, they increased these trains to 105 cars and CP would provide 2 six axles for pusher power.  Now these trains run Conway-Buffalo-Binghamton with only 88 cars, eliminating the pusher headache all together.  Nice memories!!! 

Jon 

Quick event recorder download would be all the carrier would need to prove or disprove guilt.

Posted from iPhone

EMD100469 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Quick event recorder download would be all the
> carrier would need to prove or disprove guilt.
>
> Posted from iPhone


The train had stalled after slipping on a flange lubricator.  The video shows the engineer trying to get back on the move up the hill, which is when the knuckle broke.  Local management had been pleading with CP upper management to use pushers on these trains, to no avail until a few of these "failures" occurred.  The engineer did not receive any discipline over this.

Jon

Out_Of_Service Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> yeah take pix to document the evidence so the crew
> can take the blame ... then throw the broken
> knuckle in the 6ft where an unsuspecting cndr will
> trip over it and possibly break a leg /arm /head
> ...
>
> nice vid

 Well, this was a few years ago, so maybe we can forego with the conspiracy theories...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/16 16:07 by rev66vette.

(EMD100469 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Quick event recorder download would be all the
> carrier would need to prove or disprove guilt.
>
There's no need to "prove or disprove" guilt on the railroad.  It's always the crew's fault!
(at least in management's eyes)
 
To show you how this works, I was the conductor on a shortline railroad.  Somewhere 
down the line, the locomotive ran out of fuel.  The local trainmaster came and put the blame
squarely on my shoulders.  "Why?" I wanted to know.  I don't have anything to do with 
putting fuel in an engine.  "You're the conductor on this job, so everything is your responsibility"
"BUT THE FUEL GAUGE HAS BEEN PAINTED OVER!" I exclaimed thinking that this would
once and for all settle this.  I was wrong. I swear this is exactly what he told me faced with 
overwhelming evidence that coming back after my day's off and being on a train without fuel
was my fault even though the fuel gauge was inoperative.
"You should have beat on the tank with a rock!"  was what the Trainmaster said.  Really!
(and by now, I'm openly hostile) "You can pick up a rock, bang on a fuel tank and tell if there's 
enough fuel to go from Ashdown (Arkansas) to Hope (Arkansas) and back?!!  Only at this point
that entire sentence should have been typed in all caps.    I must've scared him into believing
that in a few seconds he was about to be clocked because he changed his attitude immediately
and apologized, "Now, now!  We're all friends here!"  (no, we weren't)  But the good news is that 
I never heard any more about it.  (but I'm sure a report went to Oklahoma saying that it was all
that mean ol' conductor's fault for not using an acoustical fuel gauge.) 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/16 18:30 by ecoyote.

Saw quite a few of these starting right after NS took over Conrail in June 1999 and NS and CP rerouted these coal trains using the Sunbury Sub.  Right from the start CP did use pushers, they added an SD40-2 to the Taylor P1 local power on this 94-car 8858 from late June 1999 seen along the North Scranton expressway heading toward Clarks Summit..

The second shot shows an NS 6-axle GE that was split off at Buttonwood and put on the rear.  This required a crew to be taxied to Buttonwood and wait for the coal trains arrival, where they would cut out a unit and then tie onto the rear, which was a bit time-consuming.  This shot is from Davis Street just south of Taylor Yard from Labor Day weekend 2001.  The notes say this one had 90 cars.

I recall several of the pull aparts after they stopped splitting the power, and as resqjon noted, they wised-ip and started using pushers again.

This last shot shows a pair of CP SD40s shoving on the rear of 100 cars near Hudson from January of 2005.  The pushers would be left at Taylor by one of the mixed-freights, then a crew would be taxied from Binghamton to Taylor to get them and head south 20 or so miles to Buttonwood to wait on the coal train.

I don't think it was too much after this that they were rerouted back to the Buffalo routing, which was what was used before the Conrail takeover in 1999.  Resqjon, do you remember roughly when the last coal train came through Sunbury?

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