Clean out tracks
NW Mailing List
nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Wed Dec 5 16:48:48 EST 2018
Ed,
I suspect most people in the know would question the intelligence of
anyone who would _willingly _transfer from Roanoke, VA, to Wilcoe, WV.
Gordon Hamilton
On 12/4/2018 10:06 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:
> Gordon – that was the facility I worked on; it was very early ‘60s
> because I left Shaffers at the end of 1961 and went to Wilcoe. We
> used a Trackmobile to move the working cars down between the two
> tracks of box cars. I never knew who designed it, but I enjoyed
> working it.
> EdKing
> *From:* NW Mailing List
> *Sent:* Tuesday, December 04, 2018 6:52 PM
> *To:* NW Mailing List
> *Subject:* Re: Clean out tracks
>
> My recollection of the Roanoke box car clean out track dates from the
> early 1960s when I was designing diesel locomotive servicing
> facilities (such as those in the new yard at Bellevue, OH), in the
> same office in the N&W Motive Power Office Building as a fellow by the
> name of Bob LeNoir (a native Mississippian with a speech accent to
> match) who designed freight car repair facilities (Shaffers Crossing,
> Lamberts Points, etc.). As my imperfect memory recalls, Bob designed
> an improved box car clean out facility just west of Shaffers Crossing
> in the location mentioned by other contributors on this subject. It
> consisted of three parallel tracks with the clean-out box cars on the
> two outer tracks, and a specially designed train on the middle track.
> This train on the middle track consisted of flat cars specially
> equipped with decks that extended beyond the normal sides of the flat
> car so that there was only a small gap between the extended deck and
> the box car floors on either side. This arrangement allowed the clean
> out carmen to easily enter a box car (no need to use a ladder) and
> provided a place to accumulate the junk dunnage removed from the box
> cars instead of just tossing it onto the ground. Inasmuch as I was
> not directly involved in the design and operation of the new box car
> clean out facility, I can only guess that a yard engine would
> occasionally re-spot the cars on the middle track and then at the end
> of the shift take them somewhere to unload the junk. Of course the
> flat cars with the extended decks would have been handled as wide
> loads. I seem to recall that some wags (plenty of them on the
> railroad) soon started calling the flat car train the "Mule Train"
> after a popular cowboy song of that era. I don't know how long the
> Mule Train operation lasted.
>
> I see that no one else who has posted on this subject has mentioned
> the Mule Train. Can no one substantiate my memory on this clean out
> "improvement?"
>
> Gordon Hamilton
>
> On 12/4/2018 3:44 PM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List wrote:
>> Jim, Jim and Ken,
>> In my days on the yard, 1981 onward, the tracks Jim and Ken spoke of
>> , I knew as the "dirty hole", or "clean-out tracks". Even though
>> there was no cleaning of box cars at this date, there was an area
>> toward the east end of these tracks where MofW disposed of old rotten
>> ties, fill dirt, etc. There were only three tracks, I believe, that
>> were used at all. MofW stored their cars on two of them. The third
>> was last used to load fuel oil (for company use). We would spot as
>> many as 25, or a few more. Trucks from Montvale would continuously
>> ran back and forth filling these company tank cars. Almost every day,
>> a 2nd shift yard crew would pull the loads and re-spot the empties.
>> Concerning the customers job of cleaning out their own cars, some
>> still didn't get the message! Crews were instructed not to pull cars
>> with trash still in them.
>> I forget which year, but the old "dirty hole" was turned into a nice
>> looking EPA approved landfill.
>> I personally believe the "super-elevation" was simply the lack of
>> track maintenance, coupled with the fact of the ground settling
>> around all the junk that had been dumped over the decades. It was
>> obvious during my time there was no maintenance on those tracks,
>> unless they were cleaning up a derailment!
>> Jeff Sanders
>> On Tuesday, December 4, 2018, 1:11:12 PM EST, NW Mailing List
>> mailto:nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org wrote:
>> Thanks Jim and Ken!
>> On Tue, Dec 4, 2018 at 11:52 AM NW Mailing List
>> <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
>>
>> Jim
>> Just to add to Mr. Blackstock excellent write up. The are west of
>> Shaffers was referred to, at least by my father a Radford
>> Division conductor, as the “Clean-out hole”.
>> Now, my father was a child of the depression, and always wanted
>> to repair, fix or use something over rather than buy something
>> new. Now, I am not faulting him on that. So, with that in mind,
>> at least once, I recall him taking me down there one time to
>> pick up some good plywood he had spotted them tossing out, so he
>> asked, they said help yourself, and we went back in the truck to
>> load up. I honestly don’t remember what we used the stuff for,
>> but I remember walking around and like Jim said there was trash
>> and nails everywhere, did not remember seeing any rats. But it
>> was cardboard, paper, wood, scattered all over, and maybe 3-5
>> tracks full of boxcars.
>> I suspect there are not many if any photos of the area, not
>> because it was unappealing to rail fans, but it was deep on
>> company property. The area is now all filled in, nicely covered
>> with grass, and fenced off, hard to tell what might be buried
>> under there.
>> Ken Miller
>>
>>> On Dec 4, 2018, at 9:43 AM, NW Mailing List
>>> <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Jim
>>>
>>> The clean out tracks at Shaffers Crossing was just west of the
>>> engine terminal on the South side. The old stock pen was in the
>>> same area.
>>>
>>> Re excessive super elevation. Not sure on this. Could be that
>>> the area between the tracks were worn down by removal of some
>>> dirt every time they ran machines to clean up the debris. On
>>> the other hand it could have been by design to keep those rats
>>> from jumping in the open box cars.
>>>
>>> I was only at the clean out tracks three times. One time to
>>> show me as a new employee where they were, one time to check on
>>> the location of a car and another to check out some interesting
>>> junk to see if it had potential use. When you were at the
>>> location you had to watch every step. There were plenty of nails
>>> and rats to avoid at all cost. I never did see a rail fan with
>>> a camera taking any photos in this area.
>>>
>>> As for me, I would rather walk through the stock pens than the
>>> clean out tracks.
>>>
>>> Several years after my clean out experience when I was in the
>>> Traffic Dept. we put in charges for cleaning out cars. This was
>>> a tariff charge that required all empty cars be cleaned by the
>>> customer before releasing the car to the carrier as an empty.
>>> The only exception was dunnage used to block and brace the load
>>> being returned to the original shipping origin. This eliminated
>>> the need to operate the massive clean out tracks.
>>>
>>> Jim Blackstock
>>>
>>> On 11/28/2018 12:57 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:
>>>> On another list there has been a discussion about clean out
>>>> tracks and the cleaning of cars; some photos show the clean out
>>>> tracks to have excessive super elevation that assisted in the
>>>> removing of dunnage and the cleaning of the car, i.e. steam
>>>> cleaning.
>>>> Does anyone have insight in how N&W handled cleaning of box
>>>> cars, etc? Were the clean out tracks super elevated? Any photos?
>>>> Thanks.
>>>> Jim Brewer
>>>> Glenwood, MD
>>>>
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