Servicing Celanese and APCo - And Other Stories

[NW Mailing List]

I feel it is my obligation to send you all this turnip joke in honor of the turnip connection with this web site.  My grandfather, who lived in Parrott, and as a lad worked in the mines there.  He retired from N&W at S. Xing as a Carman and Derrick Car Operator.  He was also on the westbound team that took the VGN wires down after the merger.

Skip Salmon

> On June 8, 2022 at 6:32 PM NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
> 
>     Donnizetti asked about switching Appalachian Power at Glen Lyn (N&W side.)  As I recall, the switch into Appalachain/Glen Lyn was already torn out by the time I hored in 1964.
> 
>     In the 1960s, I often worked a job called the Ripplemeade Turn (6AM out of Bluefield, Monday-Friday) which set off and picked up at Appalachian.  I never remember that rain leaving Bluefield without AP cars on the head end.  It seems like 25 to 35 cars a day.  The Ripplemeade Turn then went another 16 miles east, to  Ripplemeade, where it turned around and headed west.  Any local work between Ripplemeade and Bluefield (40) miles was handled by this job.  On the westbound trip, we always picked up empty hoppers at Glen Lyn.
> 
>     Matter of fact, we never called it Appalachian or AP... we just said, Set Off at Glen Lyn, or Pick Up at Glen Lyn.
> 
>     "Ripplemeade" is a long word, so we usually just used the much shorter Station Number (314) to shorten it, and just wrote "314 Turn."  Everyone knew the Station Numbers for all the locations on the Division, and that is the way we recorded things.  260 Salem, 272 Elliston, 285 Christiansburg, 292 Vicker, 330 Glen Lyn etc.  The Bristol Line Station Numbers were prefixed with the letter "P."
> 
>     The 314 Turn was not a desirable job for a man who lived at Roanoke, but if the job went no-bidders (as it often did... because few men wanted it,) the youngest Brakeman on the Roanoke Extra List was force assigned to the job.  I was force assigned on it a number of times.  The job only made five days pay per week, whereas most of the men working out of Roanoke were working six days per week, and if they were on a regular run they made seven days a week as those jobs had no assigned days off. 
> 
>     And there was seldom any overtime on the Ripplemeade job.  But the regular Conductor on the job, Dave Eastburn, had a brother-in-law who was the daylight Train Dispatcher, Basil Ramsey, and if there was any overtime to be had, Basil threw to to his brother-in-law.  Basil was from Oakvale, and as I recall he was born in 1906.  I remember one cold Winter day laying in a sidetrack somewhere east of the Kellsyville Crossover while 9 trains passed us, and as I recall 7 of them were westbounds.  We could have easily gone to Bluefield ahead of that parade of westbounds, without delaying any of them at all.  I had a big bag of mixed nuts with me that day, and I remember cracking them on the windowsill in the cupola of the caboose, and waving to the crews of the westbounds running around us.
> 
>     Being assigned to this undesirable job meant riding No. 3 from Roanoke to Bluefield on Sunday night, then walking a mile from the depot to the Cab Track at East Yard, and sleeping on the caboose until the 5 o'clock the next morning.  We had to check in with the yard Master and let him know where we would be, so he could send someone over to the cab track, to call us for work.  The regular caboose on that job for years was the 518389, and she was an old "hard head" cab (i.e. she had no cushioned underframe,) so when the slack ran in or out, you better be hanging on. 
> 
>     And then on Friday evening, one rode No. 16 home, which got back into Roanoke somewhere around Midnight.  All the high class freights which made good time back to Roanoke left Bluefield in the daylight, so No. 16, the Cavalier, was about the only choice for getting home.  If one missed No. 16 for some reason, the alternative ride home was No. 78, the "Hot Shot," which made it into Roanoke sometime around 4 AM and was so light it "ran single" at Whitethorn (i.e. it did not stop for a pusher.)  Should there be congestion at Whitethorne (i.e. several trains ahead, waiting for pushers,) the Train Dispatcher would sometimes run No. 78 on the "Christiansburg side." 
> 
>     All eastward Time Freights "filled out to tonnage" with coal at Bluefield, except for the Hot Shot.  The coal was always added to the rear end by a Yard Engine, which had hold of the Radford Division caboose and the coal filler.  From the standpoint of train dynamics, this was a bad practice and led to a 40-some car pile-up of Time Freight No. 86 west of Kumis on May 7, 1966 - I was the Head End Brakeman on that train.
> 
>     As I recall, at that time we had only one Trainman who lived on the west end of the Division, and that was E.R. (Eddie) Hoage, who lived somewhere around Bland and liked to work the head end braking job on the Turn.  Merle C. Brooks, a Radford Engineman, often worked the 314 Turn.  Everyone enjoyed working with "Pappy" Brooks, and the ritual every morning, as the train was leaving Bluefield, was for Pappy Brooks to hand the Head End Brakeman his shoes, a can of black shoe polish, and a shoe brush... and the Brakeman handled the shoeshine routine from there.
> 
>     My first day of Brakeman's pay, in 1964, was $17.56 for 8 hours or 100 miles, whichever came first.   If one were called for a local (like the Ripplemeade Turn or the Salem Shifter,) he was paid an additional 5-cents per hour for coupling air hoses, total 40-cents per day extra.
> 
>     BTW --  "Serving" and "servicing" were not in the railroad vocabulary back then.  It was either called switching or working, as in Working Glen Lyn or Switching Glen Lyn, but definitely not "servicing AP."    "Bowl," meaning the classification yard below a hump, is another neologism - I never heard that one until I got around the New York Central birds in the 1980s.
> 
>     Here is an old term for you:  Two to Go.  Anyone know what that meant?  No, it has nothing to do with alcoholic beverages.  It means that the Conductor has given two short blasts on the train air signal line, which is the signal for the Engineman to proceed.  The Engineman "whistles off" by two blasts on the engine whistle, and starts the train.  Some day we shall talk about "Whistling a meet," which is another long-forgotten practice.  
> 
>     -- abram burnett,
>     Disclaimer:  Our Turnips Conduct Opposition-Research on Rutabagas
> 
>      
> 




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> 





SKIP SALMON
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