Lesson 8; Working the Markham Local
Today was not the usual, got pulled from chain gang for the Markham Local as
there were no extra board Engineers and the regular Engineer is off sick.
First time I've worked this job this year. It was ordered for 1140, a far
cry from its normal 0900 time as there were no rested Brakemen until then.
We started off well with no power for the first hour and a half. They had
RMK-10 double up our train so it was read to go (almost when we did get
power.
We were told we would get the 3121 and another GP40R, but wound up with CN
4012 and Elcon 2000. The 4012 had some ground relay trouble earlier in the
day, but seemed to settle down some. I never did have to cut out a traction
motor.
After our airtest, we departed Markham at 1400 with 32X34, and ahead of
GLME. We passed the waiting MEGL when we left. He had an SD40-2R (didn't
write it down) and two SD70's. His train just cleared Vollmer Road, so this
wuld have given him around 9000 feet of train. While doing some switchng at
Matteson, GLCE and GLME both passed us. GLCE had some telemetry troubles and
had to get it taken care of at Markham.
We didn't make the run to Kankakee today as normal, just did industry work
and delivered the EJ&E's. They stuck the 3K cars on GLME, and I would bet he
didn't make it all the way to Champaign. We didn't pull the J as the IC yard
at Matteson was full of cars that hadn't been brought in for several days.
They were probably instructed not to pull them as they either were on short
time or Markham was plugged. (Maybe they should feed them Sliders, they seem
to open up the most congested bowels).
We switched Georgia Pacific in University Park and then got in the clear at
the "Park" to work industries there. Fortunately for us, IO-1 was very tardy
again this evening or we would have had to clear up earlier to let him by.
After switching at Governor's Gateway Industrial Park, we watched CPGL go
north (missed the power though), Amtrak 59 go south and then were given
permission to come out after "NS" 3619 went south. It was dark and we were
far enough back to keep Rt 50 clear so as to not clearly see this guy's
engine number. I could tell it was a Conrail unit though and not an NS unit.
As he passed I called him to verify and he told me it was the "Conrail" 3619
and not the NS. A call to Chicago South to get this resolved. According to
the instructions given me, I was to come out behind the NS 3619. He had to
call this guy (69V BTW) to straighten this out and then give me the OK to
re-enter the main. Got to be very careful about this kind of thing as
carelessness can cause big disasters. 59 met CPGL at Stuenkel and told
Chicago North that he took a 7 minute delay for this. Ah yes, single track
railroading again at its finest.
We stopped back at Matteson on the way north to pick-up everything there. We
didn't pull the J delivery from there yard as we were already going to be
rather big. We wound up with 100 cars for Markham. This was plenty as they
are still jammed. We would've never made it back with the extra 30 or so
cars from the J due to our rapidly waning time.
I pulled up at the board at Homewood with literally seconds to spare, and
quietly expired there at 2340. We finally tied up at 0055. Another good one;
nobody was hurt, nothing got wrecked and best of all, nobody got fired.
Tuch
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