Buckeye Yard Memories
by Russ Thompson
Part-3 - The Signal Maintainer’s Work is Never Done
Working on the hump could be very changeable. Greasing, oiling, making adjustments due to wear, and keeping the dropped debris from blocking the operation of the retarders was a never-ending job. Normal larger repairs were shoe changes, at 50 lb. plus per shoe, and if you found a broken beam that held the shoes, that was over 500 lb. Simple adjustments required tools that were so large, the average person had never seen anything like them. The smaller tools were like those used on semis.
Many minor adjustments in the early days were done under traffic as the hump was operating. Years later rule changes stopped this practice. Equipment falling off cars was always a hazard. Sometimes boxcar doors were blocked inside with banding and cardboard. On delivery, some locations would only cut the banding on one end, then wrap the cut end around the other end, making a steel loop hanging out the side. These could make a nice steel noose if you were working near a moving car and not looking. Buckeye handled everything from an old 40 ft. empty flatcar to a special load that weighed over one million pounds. For some loads, you had to be especially watchful.
If you had the chance to look down the hump lead and noticed what appeared to be a load of fine coal with dust flying, but saw it was a gondola and not a hopper, there was a good chance it was a load of manure from the King Ranch in Texas, going to a mushroom mine to grow mushrooms. The dust was not dust, but flies! When it went over the hump, the liquid in the bottom would flow to the north end of the car and sometimes slosh out over the retarders. That was not the place to be at the time!
That was not the worst, as sometimes there were gondola loads of animal entrails carried the same way, with the same result. These loads made the manure smell good!
As with any yard, minor collisions and derailments were common. A car going into an almost full track would be going a lot slower than one going into an empty track. This was another situation that kept you alert when working around live tracks.
One of the rarest happenings was during an early morning shift change. The first-shift maintainers replaced the third trick a little early. The third trick left and the first shift was sitting having coffee, and discussing what was needed for the day. Everyone was getting drowsy, as we were discussing what we had done the night before. I said I had to get started or I was going to fall asleep. When I opened the door to go outside, I got hit with a blast of a strange smell in the air. Once I stepped outside, I found that they had shoved a new cut of cars into No 1 departure, and beside our shop was a tank car of ether with a leaking valve.
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