N&W vs. Southern Railway

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

WAS II:
Never had to buck the extra board ?  You sure missed all the fun --  sleeping
in your car or in the station warehouse because the railroad didn't  pay
operator's away-from-expenses.  Or how about getting called at 3:00 AM  to
protect a job at 7:00 AM that's 165 miles away and you only have $15  in
your pocket ?
 
Bill, there's more to getting coal to Tidewater than rolling it down the  
hill.
Most tidewater coal passes over three summits and that means tonnage
ratings, pusher crews, and consideration for the hours of  service.  Most peo-
ple identify the cars as a load of coal, but,  in fact N&W had  over 600 
classes
of coal.  At Lamberts Point, the selection of coal classes has to  be removed 
from
storage and placed on the barney yard when ordered.  Then there's the  
equitable
distribution of the empties to the mines, the return of foreign line  hoppers 
to the
correct junction, etc. Coal is a study in itself.
 
Traffic Control came to the Winston District about 1971.  The  complexion of 
the
traffic handled completely changed.  Instead of moving smoking  tobacco, N&W
began hauling automobiles and unit coal trains (to Duck Energy).  The  4500 ft
sidings just couldn't accommodate that kind of traffic.  Wouldn't it  have 
been a
little inefficient to install traffic control, extend the sidings,  and keep 
the operators
in place ?
 
D. W. Brosnan was indeed a messiah for Southern Railway.  He's  credited with
snatching SRS back into the 20th century.  To his credit, he made many  
innovations.
1- New welded rail was stored between the existing rails instead  outside 
along the
     berm line before it was ready to be  laid.
 
2- He substantiated the purchase of "Big John" covered hoppers by claiming  he
    could get an unheard of 10 revenue trips per month (by  hauling them 
Barber, NC
    to Knoxville on the rear of The Carolina  Special).   
 
But Brosnan had some rather unorthodox management techniques.   Remember hats 
?
If you were an officer on the railroad, you were required to wear a  hat (I 
had a straw
hat for summer and suede hat for winter).  When Brosnan moved across  the 
railroad
it required a squad of Property Protection people, several  trainmasters, and 
a Road
Foreman of Engines.  On one trip Atlanta to Washington, the Road  Foreman's 
hat blew
off while he was making a rolling inspection and on arrival at Monroe,  
Brosnan fired
him.  Brosnan was also great for firing an official one day, then the  next 
day making
the man feel like he was the greatest thing since television.  Then  there 
was the
incident in Atlanta in which Brosnan tried to engage a yard engineer in  
fisticuffs because
he'd made a hard coupling. "Boss" Brosnan sentenced his VP- Traffic  to serve 
30 days
on No. 153 because he dared to disagree with him.  During the '78 BRAC  
strike, some-
one may have taken a shot at Richard Freeman Dunlap (and missed), but  someone
did try to assassinate Brosnan in Asheville. He was very well liked.
  
Skinflints ?  General Electric at Raleigh had a movement of  transformers that
required a depressed center flat.  The plant was on NS Rwy., but NS  didn't 
have any
depressed center flats. Southern supplied the flats.  Would NS's  partner in 
transpor-
tation allow NS to haul the load Raleigh - Charlotte so they could get a  
division
of the revenue ?  No.  All NS Rwy. got was a terminal switch  charge (about 
$12.00)
 
My impression of the merger was this -- if you went to a former N&W  point, 
it was
the Southern that dominated the merger.  At Southern locales, it was  that 
awful
N&W that dominated.  In reality, Southern dominated the  Engineering, 
Transpor-
tation and Sales departments, while N&W prevailed in Mechanical,  Executive, 
and accounting. As much as you'd care to bellyache about it, today's  NS is 
far superior
to the wooden axle outfit that's headquartered in Jacksonville.
 
So you want an N&W innovation ?  How about one that keeps traffic  on the 
rails ?
It takes power to move the freight (coal or mdse).  Maybe it was  C. E. Pond.
Maybe it was R. R. McDaniel, but  remember the blue card mounted on  the fire 
wall
of the locomotive cab ?  That's the federal card.  By law, a  locomotive must 
be
tested once every 92 days.  That blue card is kinda like a state  inspection
sticker on an automobile.  Go over the 92 days and the "federales"  will fine 
you
to the tune of $1,000/day. There are three parts to the federal test  -- the 
mechanical
part (every 92 days), the air brake part (with 26-L brake I think it's 2  
years), and the
meters (every 368 days).  Probably in the Pond-era, N&W scheduled  maintenance
so that the mechanical, brake, and meters fell due on the same  day.  
Southern ?
Why the mechanical due date would fall on one day, the meters  maybe 10  days
later, and the brakes 10 days after that.  Maybe when one test fell  due, 
Southern
did them all (and gave up unused time) OR maybe Southern hauled the  
locomotive
to the shop when each test was due.
                                                                       Harry 
Bundy
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20051025/98cf0c47/attachment.html