Buckeye Yard Memories
by Russ Thompson
Part-4 - Railroad Officials, Wildlife, and Snow
Probably one of the oddest stories of the yard was the time the railroad president's Train was left at the diesel facility while the occupants attended a meeting downtown. Whenever the Official Train was in the area, we did not use the radio and stayed away from all tracks the train was to use. Basically, the occupants never saw or heard from any employees. It probably seemed like it was traveling through a ghost town.
During the night the train was being serviced, there was a major derailment in the puller yard. As the train was leaving the next morning, it passed the puller yard, where over 100 men were working to put it back together. I bet that was a strange site!
Wildlife was also a factor in the yard. On the north and south ends, with scattered movement in the area, deer were a common site. They did show up in the class yard, but not very often. Pigeons were everywhere, due to the dropping of grain from the cars.
Once, while checking the retarders at the beginning of 3rd shift, a maintainer walking along group 2 had a rat run out of the retarder, right between his legs. In one leap, he was up on the group. The retarder operator called down, "Was it a biggin?". Before the maintainer could answer, the operator said, “You had better get down from there as the second car off the hill was coming to group 2". Most of the rats stayed out of the main yard as the water supply was near the local yard area.
Winter storms were always a problem, as a large portion of the yard were electric switches and not hand thrown. This meant that the switches had to be kept clear of ice and snow at all times. Even when it looked good, ice and snow falling off trains could block the switches from throwing. The operator at Buckeye, the computer controlling the hump and class yard, did not have access to the weather conditions of the switches.
Only the conductor's tower, with its view of the puller yard, had a visual of the conditions. There were weather sensors involved with the hump activity, such as rain, wind, etc., but nothing to indicate whether a switch was under snow or not. While winter weather made for difficult working conditions, the rain was something else. For some reason, rain on the brake shoes of the retarders increased their noise when breaking a car.
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